Almaty almost alone

My companions of the last ten weeks took an apartment in Bishkek and I envy them a little their semi-settling. A month or two off cycling to teach English and upset discos, their trips rather longer than mine. I left, having fitted the new and nimble tyres and jettisoned my Winter gear, a little maudlin. Head full of yesterday's Tanqueray and today's yet-again goodbyes, to ride into Kazakhstan and landscapes that actually really resemble those of a year ago along the German Elbe. But for the near river there and the far mountains here it could've been the same place; the same Poppies, Cowslip, and little blue ones (some distant, steppe-relative to the Blue Bell perhaps, are they out yet?) amongst that singular green. In a sense it is the same place, alone again and moving steadily into Summer. Assuming Siberia has one.

There's a useful website which gives decent-road distances for truckers. Latvian, I think. Anyway it says I've got almost four thousand miles to get to Beijing by my preferred route. Preference is relative of course, there's just one trans-Siberian highway; apparently the plague-like skeeters and toothy horseflies let off a little just East of Novosibirsk, around where the swamps dry out. Beset by doubts is a little strong, but it feels a daunting long way in three months. I'm vainly spurred (not only) by the thought of a good line on the map.

Yesterday a restaurateur invited me for everything he had, a feast gratis. Soup and bulgur, horsemeat and potato, side salad and cheese platter before the chocolates and halva. With everybody watching I ate clumsily. Later somebody flagged me down with a gift of cakes and I camped undisturbed in a wildflower meadow to watch nesting crows on a pink sky; snowcapped Kyrgyz mountains lit cool blue and long across the view. It felt a perfect day bicycling. Breaking camp this morning I stood on my Kindle, breaking it. An hour later my headphones fell into the front wheel and in a morning I'm rid of reading and music. Perhaps Almaty has English paperbacks; there seems to be everything else. The road stinks of money, gas cash; killing the apples, I read. But a welcoming place. My Couchsurf cancelled last minute so I did my Iranian trick of advertising my phone number as an event, to be besieged by invitations. I took the second of several and find myself immediately in company for barbeques and artsy stuff; a studio to sleep in as long as you like.  I'll be here a few days for that Mongolian visa.

Bishkek

Kazakhstan

Almaty