Cycling Day 4: Paniflov to Maldybai

 I tore down all of my stuff in the morning, ate some more plov, and was on the road by 5:30. 

 Cows coming through my campsite as I tore down my tent

I was only 5 miles from the border so I didn’t want to lose too much time. Fortunately, I was early enough and avoided the lines, this crossing didn’t take more than 20 minutes. Although they did insist on scanning my bags, which they hadn’t done at the last stop, but other than that I sailed right through and was back on the road.

Crossing the border back to Kazakhstan 

I stopped at a store for a quick refresher of iced tea and energy drink and started riding. On the maps I couldn’t see a whole lot between the border and Taraz. Some dusty towns, but I figured I would just ride as much as possible and close the distance. 

I stopped for lunch in Lugovoy and even had lunch in an air conditioned yurt. I ate some manti but sort of dozed off in the air conditioning until the owner came and said something about me sleeping there, so I changed locations. It was well over 100 degrees so I just found another restaurant where I could hang out. Although I just ordered a drink, they brought me salad and some fry-bread. It was cool in there, so I hung out until later in the afternoon when some clouds rolled in and cooled everything off. Then I rode another 40km until about 7pm. 

The lunch yurt

I was passing by a small village and wasn’t sure I would make it to the next village (about 20km away) before sunset. I got off the road and started looking for some suitable places to camp, there were a lot of fields, but not a lot of trees. A man approached me with an inquisitive look on his face, so I pulled out my standard “I’m riding to Taraz, can I put my tent in your yard?” It appeared as if I was standing in front of it already, because he told me I could stay with him and proceeded to open the gate and lead me into his compound.

The compound was a hodgepodge of small structures, a guest house, store room, shower, toilet, main house, kitchen and chicken coop were all separate structures in his enclosed property. He asked if I wanted to take a shower which, judging by the sweat caked over all of my clothes could not have been more apparent. He then built a wood fire under the boiler in the shower room so that I would have hot water. He also put my clothes in the washing machine. I took a warm shower (I could mix the hot water from the boiler with cold water from a basin that was also inside the shower).

The fire underneath the shower boiler

After my shower he invited me into his kitchen and gave me some sorpa (сорпа) - a kind of potato soup, and lagman, a noodle stew. 

View of the compound from the entrance gate