2017/08/29

Day 31: nearby Schemonaicha (Camping) - nearby Zharma (Camping)

The night I slept not very good and unfortunately my Thermarest has a small puncture and is loosing air - I patch it in the morning.

My stove was shakened into parts, so I have to assemble it first - then I prepare a coffee using pre-mixed powder - better than nothing. And I eat bread with butter and honey. Everything's fine.

The sun comes out, everything is getting dry, so I can pack. My satnav is confused today so I go back to Schemonaicha. In Öskemen, I get some money from an ATM, because you have to pay in advance and with cash for fueling here too, and I decide to buy a Kazakh SIM card with hotspot feature (for 7.50 euros). Today a lot of selfies with some Kazakh people.

I follow the - wrong - routing and pass through a really wonderful autumnal landscape, mountainous, bendy. Finally I notice that my satnav wants me to ride the shortest route through China. The detour of about 200 km was absolutely worth it. But of course I don't get as far as I wanted. And when I speed up, this leads to the some material problems - I have to attach the right turn signal again and the left rear mirror has also loosened. So I have to care about something getting loose all the time. In addition, I feel, that my shock absorber is not really well adjusted, sometimes I can feel heavy beats on these bad asphalt roads.

For the next refueling I have to check 3 gas stations, two are sold off 95 and 92 octane benzine,the third gas station still has 92 octane. I am paying about 8 euros for 20 l. In a small supermarket (called magazin here) I buy some stuff, vegetables filled pastries and water and so on.

Around 7 pm I started to look for a place to camp. Only small villages are around here. I take a small dirt road over a hill and suddenly see a 4WD parking in the landscape - also tourists, a British couple. They like to have a neighbor for the night and even invite me to dinner. I put in my pastries and the some nuts from Germany as dessert. They also know Dan, Sara, Trevor and Orvar, met them several times on the Pamir Highway.