By Marijke and Trudy

3 days of riding.

We still have a few days to drive to Almaty and decide to take a detour so we can skip the main road for a bit. A good plan and it feels like a day out. At the beginning of this detour we go steeply up over the mountain and then on the other side of the mountain a sea of flowers blooms in the green.

Dirk and Nico enjoy driving through the mountains and we enjoy the beautiful view.

Are we heading in the right direction? We see a camel in green.

Is this correct?

A river flows quickly through the land. The mountains look soft (cuddly).

The road is not very passable.

Finally, we see a yurt, a sign of habitation, because apart from many horses we have not seen many living creatures yet. The yurt is on the other side of the river. Do we also have to go to the other side? There is no bridge here.

After a nice drive we come to a bridge, but we are not allowed to cross it.

Then just go back a bit. We are lost!!

We come to forest rangers who are eating and drinking. (vodka?) A ranger gets on his motorcycle and leads us to a river. We have to go through that, then over a bridge and then through a river again. How exciting it all is.

But we made it. It was a special day out.

Marijke sees that the LandRover’s tire is soft and the next morning we see that there is a bolt in it. First replace the tire and Model T maintenance. We are allowed to take a look at the yurts on the site. Here are the yurts for the restaurant. The lady at the hotel would like to take a spin in the T-Ford and then we’ll leave again.

We’re going up again. Dirk checks the ignition again. Dry it thoroughly. Yesterday the inflammation felt so much water when we drove through the rivers.

The land once again has a silver shine due to a carpet of grass blades and is full of flowers. It is a colourful whole.

But if you look closely, the high mountains, covered with snow, are not even that far away.

Here we don’t feel the cold of the snow, it is still warm here. We eat in the shade on the edge of a village.

Then we still have to take the main road for a while.

In Saryozek, after some confusion, we find 2 bedrooms with shower facilities. But there is no running water. It would flow in half an hour, but the next morning there was still no water. But yes, we are used to something and don’t need that much.

What was really nice there is that the owner drove his car out of the garage and the T-Ford was allowed in. This also gives him a safe place to sleep.

On this third day of travel, we want to drive towards Almaty via the singing dunes. First we drive past flower fields on both sides of the road. Yellow, pink, blue, silver, white, red. The

blooming spring in the Netherlands is fully compensated by the beauty of flowers in the country and along the roads in Kazakhstan.

We took the exit towards the singing dunes.

We ate a sandwich in the shade of the trees near a village. Then we come to a road that reminds us a lot of Mongolia: a bumpy road. The environment is desert-like and later we saw reeds and bushes.

We still didn’t see the reference to the places we had so neatly written down. The road goes to the northeast: that’s not right!

The road ended in the yard of an old farm. We can’t go any further. We have to go back.

We discuss what to do. A little later a park ranger arrived. He drove us out of the park. There was no main road through the nature park.

After this we drove towards Zharkent via a beautiful pass. We’re almost in China.

In the city a man takes us to a hotel. And luckily there is water coming from the tap.

In the evening, we eat a Uyghur dish in a restaurant on the advice of the chef. It’s a nice ending to our three-day outing.