because of the climate

The wind comes up early with the sun these last days. My chilly, quiet tent gets quickly hot and noisy, making it difficult to waste the morning. But I try. Correcting for conditions in those slow stages of waking, fumbling earplugs and less and less bedding until the sweaty inevitable. In sleepy innovation one morning I deftly slung and tied my blanket over the flysheet for shade and in this way lay-in past eleven. Getting up I try to refrain from the tendency to vain speculation about wind direction relative to road. For or against, it blows regardless. Two days upwind, two days down; perhaps I've finally found my peace with it. I arrived in Semey blissed out on a brilliant South Easterly.

When you think of a trip like this the weather is obvious; being its constant subject. People always ask what do you do when it rains? Another favourite question is what if you get a puncture? (favourite answer - go home, of course). But it's not only the climate and thorns. There's an entire system of physical circumstance, the adverse interconnectivity of which still surprises me. Meadows mean ticks. Still water, mosquitoes. Gusts mean dust, wind; blind. Warm days, flies in eyes (I've a little mirror always to hand). Rains mean sleeplessness and exhaustion misanthropy. Those long, tented mornings when everything's controlled for are valuable. In Iran I complained that headwinds offer no achievement. They do; to be unruffled. But I try.

Last week I had a day of perfect inclemency. First were all the normal, petty complaints. Wrong road backtracks, dropped kit backtracks, upwinds and parasites. Spilling first dinner and then coffee in mosquito evasion. Rain and then punctures and getting hit in the face improbably by my bicycle in their repair. The afternoon was more pernicious. I arrived first and alone at an horrific crash to many screaming and one becoming silent. Futile CPR and then telling his mother; glad of training but awfully impotent without any language. We were sixty miles from anywhere and I spent all of my drinking water trying to wash my hands. Later in the rain I accepted a ride to the next town, to drink and send frantic emails. I camped in a wet building-site and in the morning there was first a lovely text from Oleg's family, Kaleb where are you now? We miss you and are very very worry and then an extremely welcome email from my old trauma-care instructor, debriefing me yesterday's drama. The sun dried everything; here and there a soar of eagles would up from the edge of the steppe. A friend I made in Almaty said something poignant about realising the potential for joy and sorrow to be simultaneous.

Given the weather I decided to forgo my lake detours and find a way to spend a week in Semey, planning to be invited. Arday flagged me down near Kalbatau, gave me a telephone with his English speaking son. Would I stay with them?  Here I am.