| so translators were found, reports were filled in, days were wasted, fines were paid wrists were slapped, authorities were authoritairian, jobs-worths were unhelpful, bribes were taken and delays were encounted and the embassy were so good to me, i thought embassys were only there when you were found to have 20 kgs of cocaine stuffed up ya bum but my embassy came through for me just for this minor infringment of not registering my visa within 5 days, i even got to ride in an airconditioned 4x4 with diplomatic plates through the city.It was,they said the first time this had happend, and I'm sure as more tourists come, if this stupid rule remains in force a lot of people will be paying a lot of fines and the embaassy will be besiged by tourists. so on the 3rd day I was free to leave and I decide i would just ride my bike around this beautiful city and take a few photos, its all desinged so simetrically and as i roed under an archway towards the pyimid of peace i was flagged down but a police man, he was most excited, but not in a good way, i had ridden to close to the presidantial palace and broken protocul, 'oh come on, i'm just a tourist, please' but no my passport was taken and another plain clothed man got out of the cop car and spouted to me in russian 'like i would understand the same speal if it came for a mouth that was not in a uniform, and then thye both went back to the car and started to fill in forms, i was fuming, fuck this city, its been noting but beauocracy fines and authorites, i was so looking forward to being here and its been shit. now i cant even leave, i just wanted to look at the arcitechture, i was ready to explode at this pig, 'may be you should say on the visa that you dont want tourists cus thats the impression i'm getting and so will everyone i tell.' but i keep my big offensive mouth shut, and thats not an easy thing to do. and i get out a pen and the card of the man from the British embassy wiht the intension of taking the cops number and making sure he knows what i'm going to do with it. the 2 men deliberate over the form in the car and i sit on the bike and wonder if i ride off now without my passport how smart of an escape plan that would be. then th e plain clothed guy gets out the car with the form and into another car, and leaves, the cop comes back with my passport and explanes the way i should go the the pyimid of peace, turns out the from filling was for the other guy who was not a cop at all, and i was free to go. i was so relived, i shook his hand , he almost dropped his presious batton of power. and i left, see my big offensive mouth would have only antagonized the situation, i kept it shut and i won, phew. i shut my gob and, i won so i leave astana,
its so good to get out of town and ride through the steppe (as opposed to a step through) (trust me thats a funny play on words) as i ride south the driving deterioates, cars pass so close im not sure if they are just inquitative or just dont give a shit after they pass me they pass the next car with more space, it really pisses me off, if i move over i hav e no where to go if i stay put i feel like i desereve to be cut up. also as i head south the tempreture increses, i feel the delearium of my brain boiling in side my lid, i have experianced this before , i know the signs, like whne i have painted to much gloss paint and i know the thoughts i am having are from a mind in an aultered state. and whne a car jumps out from behind an oncomming truck and i have to tale ivasive action its with space man movements that i avoid a head on colission, i stop at the cafes and eat dead animal tender from being on the boil all day, if some one else is eating i point at their dish in not i just have soup. luckily im easy fed, my diet is as diverse as the last customers oorder.
a few days on the road south to almaty. i camped one night by a canyon that had been flooded to make a resiviour. i roed down a slope that was too steep, when i say roed i mean kind of locked up my front wheel and slid down intensionally, the sun was going down and a storm was blowing in, no worries i could see it would pass, i got out my poncho and sat on my bike totally exposed on the side wall of a canyon, to one side the downward path of loose rocks to the other a cliff face and deep water below. humm . along comes the storm thunder rattles round the canyon the wind blows like a demond and i straddle the bike still fully clothed in lid and boots and dont ride the storm out. i'm wet it doesnt matter, thne the wind changes direction 180 degrees and my poncho shelter turns into a sail and it blows me and my bike over. bollocks. so in pissing rain on the edge of the of a cliff and a poncho pulling at my legs i get under my bike once again and from somewhere i find the strength to lift it up just at the point my phone rings, arrggghhh, im out of hands. it does make me laugh though. what the hell am i doing? the Uk '3' network could learn a bit from Kazakhstan phone recption , at home i cant ger recpetion in town, in my house on a train, anywhere, all my conversations end with 'hello? ya still there' but in this country of vast open unpopulated space i always have 5 bars of reception on my phone. so the storm turns into a rainbow, cloths dry and bike is up right again. its hard enough in this place to find a flat spot to put up the tent as for getting tent pegs into the ground, its impossibled so i gather rocks to stop the tent from gusting off , after the poncho experiance i decide not to tie the tent to the bike, i dont want to stand there like a child watching my bike take flight beneath my tent like a heylum balloon ( some words are a dislexic nightmare) so i climb a little to photograph the sunset, and become awear of just how steep this incline i decended in the name of a 'perfect camping area' is. how steep? ever tried to photograph steepness? ya cant capture it can ya? i ve captured it , thats how steep, in the list of gradiants 'vrs' surfaces equaision loose jagged rocks on the side of a steep canyon this rates as 'fuckin steep'. and thats enough to loose sleep over, even a mindnight snack of marmite on stale bread under a black poncho of night peirced by a million points of star light doesnt take away the daunting prospect of the beginning of tomorrows first 500 meters most of them vertical. in the morning i walk the path i have to ride i've done it 3 times now every time it gets steeper, i move some pertictularly sharp pointy rocks which have puncture written all over them. i dont so much pack up and mentally prepare my self to ride back up again out of the canyon, despite the heat i put on all my safty cloths, thick bike pants with padded knees, i think about leavign a message to be found if i cant get it up, something along the lines of, 'awfuly sorry this has never happend before' i warm up the bike i give my self a firm talking too, my motivation is to not hurt my slef, i could take off my pannires and make 3 trips up so the bike is lighter whne i ride it up to meet them, but im my laziness i convince my self i need the weight over the back wheel, i need speed and confience and a little control wouldnt go amiss either, i have my phones stratgicly placed so which ever way i fall, what ever leg the is trapped under the bike i can still reach a phone, . people have done greated things on lesser bikes, im about to push my limits find where my caperbilities end. like evil kanevil i survey my ramp, ok i have to get into 2nd gear by this point i cant let off the throtle till that point, i have to bump up this rock and not take that route cus it will lead me over the edge. waht a prat i was for comming down here in the frst place. ok lets go, hard on the throtle. accelerate up the track, into 2nd faster than seems sencible,hit the loose rocks, stay on the throttle, bump up the ridge, wheels dont collapse, dont throttle back ya wuss stay on it, bang the second part loose balance, i stop, 'why did ya stop, you prat, go on go on,' i go on wheel spins rocks fly, traction is speradice, leap forward, a little bit of control ,yes i am riding this bike , i am negoiating its diirection, and im up ive bloody done it. ive got it up. no apoligies, baby i went up better than i went down . im so pleased with my self and with the bike, i ride past a heards man with is flock of goats and a farocious dog foaming at the mouth chases after me, i have to ride fast down the dusty track to escape his fangs, do i really need this, can i not revel in my accoplishment for a minute? no not if ya dont want ya calves peirced by rabid fangs ya cant. so i ride to the road and have a brife period of self elation and back to the chalenge of the day
into almaty and there are no road rules left at all, lanes mean nothing, they swurve , they cut you up, they come staight at you, they pass you and then stop , when in roam... i ride like a twat too and i get along just fine.get in the right lane to best the line of traffic turning left then turn left in front of them, whilst holding up the traffic behind, ok i can do that too, other drivers seem to expect it , expect it or feel the impact. im on my breaks on my throttle and on my guard. im on two wheels and im on a misssion , same one, i dont want to feel pain.
now i have i another dilemma, im invited to stay with the parents of the guy i met in northern Kaz, they dont speak english. i spend my first night in Almaty in a soviet styled prison of a hotel , its dingy the receptionist only learnt english so she could be strict and abusive and the misery of commuisnt russia is recreated perfectaly, 'do you want cheap room or not?'
can i see cheap room? 'no' can i see expensive room? 'yes' its shite , ill take the cheap one 'you pay' how much? 'i told you know you didnt 'i told you the price' no you didnt you said cheap or expensive you didnt say a price 'bla bla bla' i'm sorry i didnt catch that 'give me money' bitch ya beginning to piss me off, i didn't say i give her money, 'room 435' its the shittiest furtherest from the stairs smelliest, most mozzies, thinniest mattterss, worst view, next to the constriction zone, constant banging and drilling room we have she doesnt say. my guide book says to unplug phone to avoid prostitues calling, 'how much is cheap one? but i dont pay for sex , at least not directly, with the investment of time, emotionally, physically, mentally,and financally in an indirect way , but not money on the dresser kind of way, but just out of interest 'how much?' i un plug the phone. any way she would be all sweat by the time she reached my room. the parking attenedent surgests i take everything off the bike , which is a pain at the best of times but in a hotel where i am on the 4th floor and no lift and at the end of 3 long corridors i dont want to make that trip the 6 times it would take, so i take whats important, and monket is relived of his guarding duties at the insistance of the car park security it would be beyond his capabilites to defend the bike againt the dangers this city has to offer, so as not to make him feel inadiquat i take him off with the intension of washing him. this city is situated in the shadow of a mountain range, its right there big and imposing and snowcapped, no foothills to speak of just vertical wall of rock that looks as inpenitrable as a chasterty belt . ok so i suppose i better meet the parents , next morning the bike is still there and i am given directions i dont understand to meet people i dont know and stay in a place i want to go to, but im obliged, i'm met by yet another big flashy car and follow it out f the city, i have a good idea i'm heading for somewhere nice , with every turn i'm thinking yeah this is looking ok, the side roads have less properties which occupy bigger lots and then we stop and two big iron gates open and reveal a white marble house 3 stories high. everything is marble , tile and hardwood, and the smiles are as welcoming as a key to a chastery belt .first i am led to the shower, showed how the speakers work the mood lighting and the built in fan, but not how to turn on the actually water, i hear my name being called , i open the door in a towel, thats an ice breaker, yes im a tattooed hairy freak and im in your shower, they show me how to turn then water on with koi smiles , like a carp? and i rock out as the sweat and filth wash away, lady ga ga is over this country like paperatize over a discraced politicion, world domination i;m all for it, then im fed large quanties of meat, fruit , chocolate cake, and even some beer. thne im taken to the mountains , mother drives us in a 4x4 she drives so badly, no indicators, swerving , never looking in the mirrors, stopping for me to take photos in the middle of the road, god i hope i never rmeet her when i'm on my bike. people hoot at us, cut us up, she is oblivious, she talks on the phone, she cant even steer the thing whne we get to mountain hairpins the wheel is yanked at the last minure and we are slung to the side of the car she puts it in 1st for the incline and keeps it there reving it to 6000rpm the engine is screaming to be put into 2nd but she wont listen, its apauling , i try to cover my discust at her driving with gratitude but its not easy,i did not come all this way to be killed in a 4x4.luckily it rains ad so we turn back but even down hill its kept in first gear, untill we miss a vista point and then we reverese up hill and the clutch burns like bile in ya throat. in the evening i'm taken to a posh reatraunt where we are given our own personal yert and all kinds of food are bought to our table, finally a use for horses , they taste really good, im told to stay till wednesday when the son comes back from northern Kaz, its akward as hell, last night another beautiful restraunt and lovely meal and i cant pay, they are genuinly offende that i offer, i am a guest and i will be trated like one, it is their honour to have me here, thats what i'm told, if had no coinsious, this would be easy but i do and i cant just freeload, i dont care its Kazakh tradition to give me everything but their daughter, what about english tradition i need to pay my way. i dont want to offend them, being humble is one thing. i just cant describe the generosity and trust of these people. am i lucky or is this normal? if thats not enough a swiss guy has made contact with me, his riding buddy had got ill and had to return hhe wants to get together . i met him this morning and despite the fact he rides a bmw he seems ok, we will ride together to Mongolia and we are both relived and excited we are of the same opinions, budget and destination,and get this, he has a copy of office he can load onto my notebook so spell chack is iminant, wont that be nice? in fact i feel quite proud of my self cus i ordered in the restraunt and comuicated wiht a local about the map where ive come from where i go, i have just a few words but im getting somewhere, its a facinating language, and if i learnt it the right way and could pronounce the backwards '3's' the *'s and the upside down 'N''s i would really make some progress, i can read a few words now , a bit like my english really. its as much an adventure to get off the bike as it is to ride, im so pleased to have the time to experiance this, its hard and embarresing and a constant learning experiance but i cant be impaicent to get to mongolia i have to remember its the journey not the destination that makes the trip such an experiance, its blows me away i roed out of my garage 7 weeks ago, i could have been going to do a food shop its the same bike i take to Asda but instead im in southern Kazakhstan and im sitting on a marble varanda and no one is around to laught and point a finger at my pink laptop. whne he is relived of his duties monklet smiles, when the lightening strikes so close his fur frizzies, he smiles. when cars pass close enough to kick their door in he smiles. when i un plug the phone he smiles and when i have to pretened hes for luck not comfort he smiles in a way that says perhaps hes for both |
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