Your road begins with today’s first stop for coffee. It only takes half of minute until I’m surrounded. Where from, where to and so on. Until a certain point, the movie is according to the well-known scenario. Many smiles and wonderings, seasoned by random shaking of disapproval. Then one of the men asks me something I don’t understand. He tries to gesture, but still nothing. I’ll be damn if I manage to understand anything from what he’s trying to say. Until the man in front of me has an idea that leaves me speechless. That’s it, he knows how to explain me what he wants to ask. He crouches and he clumsily draws with his forefinger in the sand Doyle is making shade to… a question mark. Why – this is what my Kazak friend is striving to ask me. To such a beautifully put question, the only answer crossing my mind is that of the other friend I met at the Ukraine-Russian border: “for the soul”. I know I’d go deeper in this communication maze if I answer this way, so I comfort him with a brief “tourist”. Ahaa, well, ponemayu.

I empty the cup of coffee and I set off, as I have some riding to do today. This is why I woke up at seven. I have to ride at least six hundred kilometers. I know, you’ll tell me this is not at all my style, to chase my horse this way, but I have an answer for you. Today, dear Amalia, I meet Alexandru and Mark in Almaty. They are the other team that left from Romania to Ulaan Baatar almost at the same time I did. Unfortunately, they haven’t managed because Alexandru’s motorcycle passed away after few kilometers of riding in Mongolia. They came back in Russia, at Barnaul and then left to Almaty, after a long waiting and thinking they have fixed the damage. They’ve been waiting for a package with parts for seven days now and the package is still being late. So this is the reason I’m forging today. Except the citizen of the Republic of Moldova, no one has spoken to me in Romanian for two months. It’s hard to explain how much I miss speaking this language. Neah, it’s not about patriotism or any adjacent feelings; I’m not occupying my soul with this kind of feelings. Besides Petrila, I don’t feel much for this country, not even from few thousand kilometers away. I only want to speak, to be spoken to, to ask, to be asked, to understand, to be understood, to curse, but not to be cursed, I hope. So, I was saying this is the reason for the long journey I’m having today.

My way is through the desert. Non-stop steppe. Desert to the left horizon, desert to the right horizon, desert in the shape of black asphalt before me and behind me. I notice that my cruising speed has decreased from 110 km/h to 95. I have no explanation for this, but I’m feeling damn good. I stop few times in this desert where it happens to meet a car once in thirty kilometers and I only listen to the silence. There’s absolutely nothing. Ah, loneliness, how many masks are you wearing?

I realize that while I’m going southwards I’m catching something or something is catching me that I wasn’t thinking I’ll feel till home. The heat. The one that I’m so fond of, with sweat and all.

Before crossing the line of one hundred kilometers to Almaty, I have to make one more stop to meet, for the first time in wilderness, the one-hump camels. The girls are busy crossing the road at the moment. How these dear ones have come to the conclusion that the infinity of grass on the right side of the road is better than the one on the left, well, this is something I’m not getting. But I respect their wise decision and I grant them right of way.

I ride a little more and again I have to stop, as it’s getting serious. I’ve spent my past few kilometers trying to understand what the hell is wrong in the picture with those clouds far away. I’ve got it: they are not clouds. They are the snowy mountain tops. But they are far away in the sky.

While I’m staring bewildered at what’s in store for me ahead, a truck pulls over on the opposite lane. Again someone to shoot me? No, the driver is crossing the road running and he gladly hands me a business card, telling me he’s from Almaty and I should call him if I need anything, as he owns a Kawasaki. I’m feeling that great feeling of comfort again, taking into account the fact he’s not speaking anglisky at all. He also warns me two police teams are in place along the following kilometers and this is good to know, as I’d have fully run into the first one, with a radar, as it was so strategically in place. I haven’t found team number two, though.

I don’t have two essential things – one in my pockets and the other one in my tank. Money and gas. I fuel as much as to still have money for a coffee and I stop after few other kilometers. I’m at a halting place and I bathe in the sun, enjoying the coffee I bought with the last change in my pockets. A truck also stops in the empty parking lot and Biek gets down, letting the engine running. “Have you eaten?” he asks, after weighing Doyle, parked few meters away, with his eyes. I say no, I’m honest, and then I lie, saying I’m not hungry. Aaa, waaait, I know your breed – the Kazak truck driver that hunts for bikers in the parking lots. I don’t get to finish my thought that… was I saying I have no money? Biek is standing with his arm stretched towards me. The hand is holding four hundred tenghe, that is about two Euros. “Take it, eat something”. The borsch in the inner pot of feelings has the following ingredients: a tint of embarrassment, one piece of burst of laughter and me feeling like holding him and kissing him. Biek, dear Biek, you are an angel, I know, but I have to say no. I thank you with all my heart. This gesture of yours has the gift of filling a man’s heart, not his stomach. Ok, then take this pack of cigarettes, and he hands me a sealed one. I take it, with my head down. I can only think of asking him to let me take a picture of us that I can send by post when God will bring me home. He also asks me to give him my address, after I explain him what’s the distance between Romania and Germany as, if I got it right, he’s gonna go to Germany to buy a car. The consequence will probably be that my mother will open the door of her house in Petrila to Biek in a sunny day.

With vapors of gas in my tank and illusions of coins in my pockets, franticly overtaking on the mini-highway at the city entrance, struggling to keep the fifth gear… Welcome to Almaty, the city where two Romanian speaking people are waiting for their motorcycle parts.

The frantic fight with the traffic is stopped by the tank gage light, which has been on for too long. I put two liters inside the tank, more to delude Doyle and, after I pay, at the gas station exit I see the coolant spot lying underneath the horse. Well, the welding I made on the lake shore hasn’t last too long. Another reason to step on it until the meeting place, so that I don’t lose all the water in the circuit. I’ve told you it’s hot, right?

Third Dormitory, that’s the name of the place I’m gonna sleep in. It’s a students’ dorm and its last floor is used as a cheap mini-hotel. Message to Alexandru to go out on the porch and here we are, hugging as Romanian as possible in front of the entrance. I should put the luggage down and check in, but it takes me about an hour to do so. I chat with Alexandru and I enjoy every minute of it. Eventually, as it’s getting dark, I check Doyle in the parking lot across the street and I’m in the room.

Beer, vodka and pickled cucumbers – this is the salt and bread I’m being welcomed with by my fellow citizens. It seems they’ve only learned great stuff while being busy fixing in Barnaul. In the first night, we’ve done nothing more than dealing with partially emptying the bottles. We’ve gently been rubbing the mint until sleep stroke. First man down: me, as the six hundred kilometers baptized with beer have started to hurt. In fact, my entire staying in this city with the mountains waiting to fall down over it has been a continuous lethargy, interrupted every once in a while by some deed. And again, as it happens when I’m staying for more than one day in the same place, I’ve lost track of the events.

We’ve taken breakfast at a students’ canteen where we’ve also paid like students. Alexandru is a master of research. Otherwise, it’s common knowledge that if you give this boy a million and send him for three months in Central Asia, he returns with two millions and few extra kilos. Then we took a stroll to Panfilov Park. Almaty is off Kazakhstan. It’s a big cosmopolitan city, with expensive stores, last-generation cars, stylish chicks and nights full of life.

Our pupils turned white when we got to the park gate. The white of the hundred bride gowns around us was making the green of the park fade away. These Kazaks are getting married like crazy. And the park is the favorite place for the photo session. On the grass, on the stairs, under the statue, photographs and cameramen are stepping on each other. I step on them a little, but shier, shooting along with them to make things right. A small, but refined entrepreneur is carrying a cage with white doves and if a couple wishes to do something mega-cool, he gives them a pair to let go, on money of course.

In the evening I’ve learnt a new technique from my guys. I don’t understand it, not even now, but it’s been interesting. It goes like this: you walk on the streets until your soles hurt and your throat is burning, looking for a place to have a beer. At one of every five terraces, you stop and ask for the menu, you take a look and then you go away, until the waiter gets to notice it. You do this four-five times, until you reach the end of the city, where you find a tavern and the entire previous effort is rewarded.

One day, while the guys were out with a local friend to take a bath somewhere, I was alone in the room and I wanted to start the laptop. Surprise: nothing. The little lights are turning on, but this is all that the laptop can do. Again the sky falls over me. I suddenly am not alone in the room. Beside me, lying on the bed, legs crossed and in great shape, a beautiful depression is lasciviously smiling. I’m gonna share the bed with this creature. I keep turning on and off, hoping like crazy this is helping. Still nothing. What is going to happen with all the pictures and stories and everything else I have inside? What if they’re lost? What if there’s nothing left of what I’ve gathered so far? I go to bed. I’ve dreamt the laptop was working.

We find a computer store in the morning. It also has a service and we get there crammed in a bus. Well, despite the goodwill of the miss at the reception desk, it would take a month to have it fixed. I haven’t a month to spend here, so we leave, resigned, with the deceased laptop in the backpack. We find a kit of cables to latch the hardware to a computer and try to save what has been buried inside. Internet Café, the deceased latched on, nothing. That’s it; this is all I could do. Here from, the hardware goes to Romania, via DHL. I hope Ion manages to do there what I couldn’t do here. Go Romania!

I’ve taken a stroll with the guys to a customs office near the airport where they were hoping to take the parts from, as they seemingly arrived, but we fail, as we did with my laptop. We take advantage of the situation and go to the garage where Katy, Alexandru’s bike, is lying naked. We find out the radiator I keep carrying with me in the bag has many chances to be fixed tomorrow at a factory by few masters of welding.

The next day, in front of the gate of the place I left my radiator into, under the promise it will be ready in one hour, I shake hands for the last time in Kazakhstan with Alexandru and Mark. They go to have one more try with the parts and I go to have a coffee and then, depending on how fast things are moving on, I set off to Bishkek, in Kyrgyzstan. I come back in an hour and the radiator is ready. I can tell you these guys have made such a welding that if a bomb will be dropped on us, the welding will be the last thing left to tell the story to the entire humanity. Run back to Doyle, pack, then mount, with an endless disgust for the heat all over me. The immediate goal is to find, without the map or GPS, the exit from the city that’s been keeping me hostage for the past five days. It takes me a while and getting lost on the streets without having any idea where I am or finding any road sign. I take advantage that my getting lost takes me to an automotive fair and I stop in a parking lot with many little stores on the sides, thinking of buying a sticker for the tanks. I’m surrounded. I think there are twenty of them. I tell them what I want and they’re desperate to help me. A little too desperate if you ask me, as they insist to stick huge stickers all over Doyle, wherever they find an empty space. I tell them they’re too big and I go ten meters away to look for myself. I don’t find what I want and, when I return, my army of supporters is proudly showing me how they have stuck a sticker on a tank. And one on the other tank. And one on the plate. Pfff… what a disaster they’ve made. Ok, dudes, thank you, I’m leaving. Nooo, wait a minute, I have this Russia flag that has three threads left and now one of them is running to bring me a flag of Kazakhstan. The flag shows up, is tied to the headlight and ready, I’m free to go, I hope.

Let’s see if we still know how to ride after five days.

I still manage to say what I intend to do today and I get the address on a piece of paper and I’m told I can get there easily by taxi. There’s a line up of taxies in front of the hotel, nothing out of ordinary so far. The road there is four hundred units of the local currency, that is about three dollars. I get to a building that doesn’t say anything and, at the first door I knock at, waving my passport, I’m told to try at the building nearby. Ugly, too. I think I’m at the police headquarters, as everyone is in uniform around here. I get to a pay-office with a metallic door, I say that all I want from them is a stamp and the door is opened to me and the end of the hallway is shown to me. Here I’m invited to sit and I sit for about ten minutes, when a miss in uniform finally shows up, ready to solve the problem. She takes my passport, I tell her what I want, she leaves and returns in five minutes. It’s not ok. You tell me? I was thinking it won’t be that easy. She keeps showing me that I have Caspian Travel Agency written on the visa at the chapter “Inviting organization” and she also asks where I’m staying. Gratska Hotel. Well, what I understand from the Russian I’m being talked to is that I have to bring the invitation that led to the visa and a receipt from the hotel I’m staying at.

Pfff… again taxi, again the hotel. I give three hundred to this one. At the hotel I explain I need a receipt and I take the invitation letter from one of Doyle’s little tanks. Back to the taxi. How much? Five hundred. Fuck it, when did it raise up? No way! Four hundred? Ok, come on. Again I’m at the police station and again I’m invited to sit down. Again I’m handing the papers. Now it should do. Papers taken, I see the little police woman walking them from office to office. She comes back. It’s not ok. Do I have the hotel phone number? I do. I give it to her and she calls. She speaks for few minutes and starts waving the papers at me, explaining in the purest Russian why it’s not ok and what I need to do to make it ok. I’m looking dumbly at her, I don’t get a damn thing. She shows me it’s Almaty written on the invitation and we are in Karaghanda here and that only one day it’s written on the hotel receipts. How many days am I staying? Two. Well, why isn’t ‘two’ written, then? I slowly start losing mi patience. I tell her I don’t understand anything from what she’s saying and, moreover, no matter what she’s saying and no matter how widely she’s waving the papers at me, it doesn’t make any sense, as everything is supposed to be much easier. I can make this registration in any town, no matter what’s written on the invitation and it also doesn’t matter if I stay for one or two or fifty days at the hotel or in the tent or in the train station. She keeps babbling in Russian about her side of the story, that I should leave and return with the papers. Or at least this is what I understand from what she’s telling me. I recall the Russian police. What is going on here starts having the same intensity at that episode back there. Except my courage was on trial with the Russians and here someone is mocking with my nerves. I call Eugenyi but he doesn’t answer. Then I call Tatiana, my savior from Romania, who speaks Russian fluently and I ask her with all my heart to help me. I give the police woman the phone and they talk for few minutes. I take the phone back and Tatiana tells me I should bring some paper from the hotel, a receipt that says I’m staying there for two days, not one as in this one I’m having. I hang up and I start babbling at my turn. I look at the police woman: well, this is ALL I need and that’s IT?!? This and… again she waves the paper with the invitation and shows me it says Almaty. Eugenyi calls, I call him back. He talks to the police woman at his turn and then tells me I need the paper for two days from the hotel plus one more paper, also from the hotel, from the management, that has to say something too. I hang up and listen to the police woman talking in Russian for five minutes, with such a relaxed tone that it pisses me off.

That’s it. I’m literally banging my head on the counter, I raise my forehead, I touch my hair feeling like tearing it, I feel waves of heat, I think I’m red as a lobster. And I burst out, in Romanian: “God damn it, woman! Why do you keep babbling in Russian explaining that I should bring I don’t know what fucking papers, different each time? Is that hard for you to understand that I don’t get a jot?!? I know, I KNOW, you see, that I can register this visa in Almaty, in Astana, in Karaghanda, in Pavlodar, in any place that call itself a town and it’s within the borders of this country, so don’t wave that invitation paper at me, as I piss on it. On it and on every paper that you say you want, according to some regulations made up by you and you only. And what the fuck do you mind if I’m staying at the hotel for a night or for two or at what hotel I’m staying at? It’s only my business and mine only what river beds I’m putting my tent up on. And why do I have to go from you to the hotel three times in a row with money spent on the cab and all? I only need a fucking stamp from you, only this, a fucking stamp, that takes less than a second, not all this eternity. A fucking stamp, a fucking colored ink on that fucking paper. Do you get it, woman? Do you understand what I’m saying here in Romanian?!? You don’t? Really? Well, I don’t understand either what you’re talking about and please be noticed that I’m appreciating big time when you and all your kind are talking to me in Russian for hours, without raising your hand to gesture, without taking a pen and draw a map on a piece of paper, a hen that’s shitting an egg, anything that would make you understood, with your bureaucracy and the Babel Tower and all, you morons!”

Two big deer eyes are looking at me from the other side of the counter. It seems that the illusion of a smile appears on the corner of the mouth of my missy in uniform. She answers something, but it’s too late. I’m packing and I’m setting off. Again taxi to the hotel. Four hundred. Ok, bye. No, three hundred. C’mon! I get to the hotel and the lady at the reception desk gives me the second receipt for the second day and a letter from the hotel management, in Russian, where I don’t distinguish anything besides my name and the room number. Aha, so here they are, the fucking papers! I’m getting out. Another cab. Five hundred. Go away! Four hundred. C’mon. I get to the police station. For the third time. The driver hasn’t any change to give me back. I’m thinking that it couldn’t last too long, as I hope I have everything I need this time, and I tell him to wait for me, as I return and he’ll take me back and we see what we do with the money then. I enter the police station, pass the bars and my door at the end of the hallway… is locked. A militiaman with a cap at the entrance door tells me it’s lunch time and I should return at three o’clock. It’s ten to one. I feel like fainting. I knock again at the door, I try the handle, like a mad man, like a wet dog full of fleas, abandoned in the Kazak desert. The man at the end of the hallway insists that I’m doing this for nothing and he opens the bars for me to get away. All the cursing I know in all the languages I know are flowing inside my head. I’m at the end of my powers, boiling with anger. I’m going out with the chin in my chest and my look to the ground and I head to the cab staggering. We leave and I tell him to take me just a little bit further to reach the five hundred, so that there’s no need for him to give me change. He takes me for about six hundred meters and I ask him to stop. I’ll take a walk through the city, to freshen up. I give me five hundred and… he asks for two more. What for? Well, this is a new run. Fuck, dude, we haven’t even made one kilometer. Nothing. Two hundred, he insists. This is the moment when I’d win by far the contest of smashing Kazakhstani cabs with the sledge hammer, then arsoning and blowing them. Stop, you chain of shitty events happening to me!!! I’m over, I surrender, what and how much do you want from me? I can’t go on like this. Someone who still has nerves and strength, please take the strings. I don’t have anything. I’m fucked up.

I get down and I don’t understand anything. I linger on the streets like crazy, until I find a tavern and I get in for a coffee. I’ll wait here for three o’clock when I’m starting all over again. Scottish Pub, with wireless. Unless this wireless is not working, what a surprise. I eat some chicken and I sip a coffee. The two hours pass faster that I expected. I take a stroll to the location. I know the road by heart. I dream it, except this is not a dream, it’s a nightmare. So I nightmare the road. I get, the bars are opening, then the door, I get in and I wait. My official lady shows up, busy reading something while walking. She stops near me, shoulder to shoulder, and keeps reading. She finishes, looks somewhere in the void, towards the end of the hallway, like analyzing whatever she was reading, she passes by me, as I’m so tiny, and enters an office. I do not exist. She goes out in few minutes. She sees me, ah, what a surprise. Good afternoon. Do you have the papers? I hope so. She invites me to the pay-office and I’m looking at the ceiling while walking beside her and beg for the Divinity this is the last time in my life that I’m in this place. She looks at the papers… yes, yes, yes and yes. Go to the other office, take a signature, come back, return to the office, the stamp. Myyyyyyyyyyyyyy staaaaaaaaaaaaaamp!!! I’ve seen many stamps in my life but none of them had the value this one has. It’s somehow like a medal, something that you get very hard and it’s granted only to those who survive. You see, Oana, on this journey I’ve conquered until now two castles, captured two treasures, climbed the podium twice – the Mongol asphalt and the Kazak stamp. I remember now that the guide says this registration can be made for you by the most of the hotels for 20-30 dollars. I thought I haven’t this money and I didn’t even try. I’ve spent almost as much on cabs and telephones. I move on. I don’t look back.

A short walk to the fast-food with internet and back to the hotel room, at dawn. I’m leaving tomorrow. Please, let it be well.

I’m riding, on my way to Balkhash, a town on the shore of the lake having the same name. I’ve left all the anger and demons behind, locked in the hotel room. It’s an empty road, but the landscape starts being not as boring as it’s been so far. “With birds I share this lonely view” – this is what’s singing inside my head. Not that there’s a single sparrow around, but if it was, I’d gladly share with it fifty-fifty the emptiness in front of my eyes. We ride upwards easily, without feeling it. Still steppe all around, until the horizon, but small hills are showing up and these small hills are turning into small mountains. I stop for the first time after seventy kilometers, to sip some coffee today. I pull over in front of an empty halting place and I find inside, hot and waiting for me, a coffee as black as the pitcoal. I sit outside in the sun, as the weather is finally starting to get warmer. Nurlan shows up, a gentleman of age, who sits near me and starts questioning me. He tells me he served the army in Germany, many years ago. Between questions, he sings. And I keep telling in my mind “don’t stop, don’t stop”. He’s not listening to me, as he has few more questions to ask. Where do I go, how many kilometers, for how long?

I leave this halting place behind too, to stop at the next, one hundred kilometers later. I’ve stopped here because this place is dear to me. It’s some kind of a wagon that has a yurt in front of it. I sip my tea together with the two ladies here. They ask me if I want some bread also, that is those home-made doughnuts, and I say no. I go outside, the ladies go after me, I’m being asked again and again I make them smile with my answers. I enter the yurt, where there are some tables and some chairs, when the wind starts blowing outside. I finish my tea and when I enter the wagon again to pay… nothing, no one wants to take my money. I insist and one of the ladies asks if I have some coins, showing me a jar with some other coins inside. I say yes and I take a fistful of them and the lady picks a tiiiny, tiny one, which is almost nothing. I thank again and again I’m on the road.

When I was busy minding my riding and admiring the landscape, a jeep overtakes me, honks and the guy on the right seat, as there are two guys inside, makes me a sign to stop. Oh me… I remember that episode in Long Way Round when a car pulls over near the guys, also in Kazakhstan, and asks for small presents under the threat of guns. Then I think that maybe there’s something wrong with the bike and the guys only want to tell me. Well, I pull over, but I’m careful not to stop the engine. I have my hand on the clutch and the foot on the gear lever. And I also don’t stop behind the car as I intended, but in front of it, so that I can leave squeaking the tires if the case might be. They come to me almost running, with smiles upon their faces and the arms outstretched towards me, to say hello. They start talking incomprehensibly and I see the one on the right taking his hand towards the inside of the jacket. He talks to me and keeps the hand in there for few seconds. You’ll see what cold barrel of a gun I’m going to taste now. And he takes out, with a wrist movement that makes my back staining a little… a wallet. Wow, how this has been. I stop the engine. They’re over-excited about meeting me. They want to give me a business card, but they don’t find it, so I write them my e-mail address on a piece of paper and we say goodbye very cheerful. I ride for fifty meters, as there’s a halting place on the right and I need to lube my chain and maybe eat something. I should do that, shouldn’t I?

I get inside, no one. I try a hello, still no one. And I hear a voice when I’m about to leave. It’s a granny that leaves here alone, at the edge of the world, and fills in crosswords. I want again a coffee and some food. I’m dealing very well, I must say. I’m getting some macaroni with meat. I get out and the granny brings a tray with what I’ve asked and sits beside me. She doesn’t say anything. She only wants to know where I’m from. She sits with me while I’m eating, in perfect silence, interrupted once in a while by stray trucks that run on the highway. She’s so dear to me. I notice her companion is a sexy kitten, very proud, as she doesn’t want to talk to me and, moreover, runs away when the photo session is about to begin. I pay and I leave. I go to Doyle and return. May I take a picture of you? Yes. Wait a minute, the granny has to put her show glasses on. The ones for crosswords don’t make her look best in pictures. Thank you.

I get to Balkhash, where I should stop. Three hundred and sixty kilometers today is enough, lazy as I am. Except I don’t see anything interesting here. Although this city has an entire lake that bears its name and on the shore of which is placed, I don’t see any trace of any drop of water. I decide to leave the city and go on easily to Almaty and I have to find something, as I’m riding on the beach, sort of say. After ten kilometers I see the water, which is stretching to the horizon, and a road sign saying there’s a human dwelling on the left. And to the left I ride. I get to some very small thing, with dusty little roads, which seems to be some kind of resort, but no soul is moving around. To its end, at the last houses, I see a yard with colorful little houses. I stop at the gate and a young man welcomes me. Yeees, I can sleep here. I’m very glad. I have the same feeling I had back in Mariupol, in Ukraine, when I found the beach with tents. What I’m feeling is peace, somehow. The thought of staying here for two days is crossing my mind, but I’m exaggerating a little. Doyle is staying also in the yard, quietly, under a shed, and I have a small room, in a colorful little house, in a yard where there’s no one else. Maybe the season is over already, I don’t know. Anyway, this thing looks like a little Chernobyl. And the mini-catastrophe must have happened yesterday, as everything is still up. I walk among the empty little houses and I find the beach one hundred meters away. I sit on the sand, listen to the waves, look at the horizon at how this lake of a muddy blue is melting in the madly blue sky and I try to conquer a beer. I don’t have to struggle too hard; I’ve always been successful with beers.

I return to the room and I reckon to change the brake plates, as the light is still on and I kinda rub the mint. I bend a little and I find out the news. Oh, what wonderful news! The frame the tanks are fastened on, on the left side… is broken. I don’t know since when. I have no idea when it could have happened. I don’t think it was in Romania, when I fell, as, although it was on this side, it’s been some time since that glorious deed took place. The sure thing is that I’m looking at that break and, contrary to what I’ve expected from me, I’m kinda burst into laughter. I know a scheme of fixing this trouble temporarily, until we find a welding machine. I have a wrench I’ve found in Mongolia (I found many things in that country), some rope, some wire and pincers. Look, some sample of carpatho-danube-ponthical craftsmanship in Kazakhstan!

I see the young man that checked me in, Vania, and I ask him if we can do something with this. He says yes. He says we solve it tomorrow.

Tomorrow I wake up with a strange feeling, installed inside me before waking up. I slept in the sleeping bag, as it was cold outside at the time I went to bed and it was even colder inside. I was saying I was feeling funny in the morning. It’s one of those mornings when I wake up and my mind is full of shitty thoughts. That I have a long way to go until home, that I don’t know if Doyle can make it, that I don’t know when and how the day I have no money left is gonna be, as they are kind of running out. All these completed by a feeling of dor for Romania and the ones I love that’s beyond words. So I’m not in a mood for anything in this morning. I’m alternating the outmost of feelings, on plus, on minus, with great skill. I’m packing. I have about six hundred kilometers to Almaty and I’m thinking of making them in two days. Maybe I stop today on the shore of this lake again. I don’t know, I’ll see. I finish packing and Vania wakes up. He seems to have had a veeery long night, judging after his eyes. We’re going to the welding machine. He walks with a friend of his and tells me to go straight ahead and wait for him two hundred meters away, at the crossroad. Until he comes, I realize, to my genuine surprise this time, that… my radiator is broken again. Again in that area it broke three times before. The entire sky is falling over me. I’ve fixed it one thousand kilometers ago. This is not allowed to happen again. Not now. I don’t get to see anything good in what I’m doing, all my thoughts are black. We get to the welding and a grandpa is solving the problem in five minutes. I’m weighing the situation. Vania, I’m not leaving today. I’m staying one more night at your place. I’ll glue the radiator without taking it off, in the place where I guess the hole might be and that’s it. If it’s not working, I hope at least it lasts until Almaty, where I can start it all over. It’s hard to explain you the plyth I’m in. I’m sick, sick. Where the fuck has all the beauty from one day ago vanished? I’m again under the shed, where I’m taking Doyle to pieces and put the patch on the radiator. I ask Vania if I can eat something, somewhere around here, as it doesn’t seem to be anywhere some place to eat, as deserted as everything is. He says yes, asks me what day is today, just to make sure. Yes, we’re eating today.

He comes to me later and asks me if I want to eat now. Is it far? No, as we’re going by car. The little house with three tables where I’m going to eat is few hundred kilometers away, but I’m having a hell of a ride. Vania has a green Lada, few thousand years old, hit on all the sides, with no windows, no headlights, with doors that don’t close. And that he starts with two wires. We go and he shows me it has no steering or brakes, by pulling the steering wheel and pressing the pedal repeatedly. Great! We get there, I eat, drink a cup of coffee. Vania is waiting for me. He asks me if I know how to drive a car. Yes, I have driving license. Ok, do you want to drive my car back home? It’s the first sunshine today, of course I want to. Ignition and, indeed, it has no direction, no brakes. To take a turn, you have to pull the steering wheel until you get sick. Turning the wheel hardly changes direction. My door opens three times while I’m driving, but I’m ok. We get in front of the courtyard and I don’t manage to get along with the green splendor. I ride on open field, until it stops by itself in the bushes and Vania and I laugh like crazy. He takes the wheel and parks it by the book.

That would be all. I sit and look to the horizon, in this empty space with colorful little houses. There’s absolutely no one here, but me and my Doyle. And the time stubborns to pass, so that we leave this place, on our still long way home.

I realize few tens of kilometers away that well, no, we’re ok, on schedule and all. My biggest concern at this very moment is that I haven’t seen any place to sleep since we crossed the border. And I’m afraid chances are scarce, given the surrounding landscape and the way the map is looking like from now on. The sun is very low, but very well, as it makes all things on Earth beautiful, and we don’t know where we’re going to rest after today. As minutes go by and the light gets lower, it’s getting obvious. I don’t want to, but it’s going to happen.

Left turn, on some road. I make sure no one sees me, I find a river bed and I follow it few hundred meters until I see no trace of the civilized world. That’s it, I’ll sleep here, near these two small trees, whether I like it or not. I follow the advice Lisa and Simon gave me: when you get in a place where you want to put up your tent, don’t put it up right away. Whistle, pee, eat something and start building when it gets dark. I do so. While I’m doing all these things except for the eating part, I meet the Kazakhstani mosquito, which is a very close relative of the Siberian mosquito. At the first look. And the second look also. And the third. And then I stopped. I put my hat on, some sort of a scarf around my neck and over my nose and mouth and put my hands in my pockets. I keep looking around and encouraging myself to raise the tent. In the middle of this silence and desert I’m in, if I run into the very one person that doesn’t want me or has something against me, the one I’ve heard about at the news, well, then I’m screwed. I don’t wanna think about it. Aaach… And it has got cold. Steady, go. I unwrap the tent but I stop quickly, as the moon is rising above us and it’s so beautiful. I put up the tent. What am I gonna do? I’m feeling like wrapping it back and running away. Courage, Mihai. Look at Doyle, he’s so fine. Easy to say.

I get inside the tent, inside the sleeping bag. It’s very chilly and in the flashlight I see the vapors I’m breathing out. I put off the light and I hear all kinds of noises outside. Have they arrived so soon? No, there are just some rustling leaves. There’s a truck on the main road. It turns left on the same little road I did not long ago. Damn it, is this dude going to come along the river bed too? No, the engine noise fades out. Oh my God, Doyle, how lonely we are. Even the mosquitoes have left to that gastinitsa I didn’t manage to find. It’s just the moon left and it makes the night glowing like the day. It’s quite. How much do you think I have left until home? That much? And how much till morning? Aaach, how nice falling asleep would be…

I’ve set the alarm clock at seven o’clock so that I can beat it from here, in case I get to that hour unharmed, until some morning fisherman in the mood for whatever shows up. I’ve heard the alarm, I’ve stopped the phone and gone back to sleep. The sun light has given me some confidence in a way. Everything was looking so beautiful through the tent that nothing bad could happen to me. I’ve opened my eyes again at half past nine. Good morning, Kazakhstan! I’ve made it! The sky is clear, but it’s chilly. I pack everything up and here I am on the road again, in the morning light and chill. Everything is deserted, on the left, on the right, ahead. Not behind. I was there and I left some stories behind. The road goes beside the road as, fuck it, they’re working on the roads in this country too. I’m riding off the road for about fifty kilometers, through a red dust, and these kilometers are enough to make my Doyle cry with his left fork oil seal. Well, this off-road riding is not quite the best thing to do, so I decide to put into action the scheme I’ve learnt in Mongolia. I’m looking for a path to climb the road up again and I find it. Eeeh, different story. The asphalt is great. Brand-new, very straight, no hole in it. Then the road is blocked again, I ride beside it, then I climb up, the tank gage light is on and so on until I see a gas station and a halting place on the left.

I get there and I stop. The gas station is an illusion, as it’s surrounded by some cord, as a sign there’s nothing running through those hoses. It’s not so bad, as I have five liters of gas in one of the canisters and I have been carrying them from Mongolia. I give Doyle something to drink and I get myself a coffee. In a minute I’m surrounded by few truck drivers and road workers. Paris-Dakar? I’m asked. No, F650GS Dakar. I give all the explanations and, when I’m getting back after taking the empty cup of coffee inside, I find Doyle as a mega-star, in the middle of a shooting session. I invite the people to climb on the bike, they put the helmet on, it’s great. Then one of them comes to me and hands me a marker and tells me in English: “This is a small present from our company”. Before I put it in my pocket, I have to give an autograph on the inside of the man’s waist coat. I’m feeling great with the Kazaks again. These people are walking wonders.

Nothing special has happened until Karaghanda, except for a stop in a parking lot where a man who was fixing something at a car, after asking me again if Paris-Dakar, asked if I have some solution for his exhaust that sort of blew away at the exit from the cylinder. Well, this it something I don’t have. Don’t bother, we’re happy anyway.

Karaghanda. I enter the city and look for one of the two cheap hotels the guide is saying about. I walk from one side of the city to the other and back. Two times. People say I have one kilometer left, or fifteen, no chance to get it right. I eventually run into some more determined character that tells me to go in a certain direction, a lot. I get to what I thought, as I’ve got here twice before, it’s the end of the city. Well, it isn’t. If I ride for two more kilometers I’m in the middle of a super-cosmopolitan settlement. I think there were the outskirts or some adjacent town in those places I’ve been riding through before. I ask again but I get some vague direction. I build some guts and stop near a police car. They make it clear. Five traffic lights away from here and I’ll see it on the right. I’m there. I ask someone else in front of the hotel and that someone else tells me to ride few more kilometers ahead, but our conversation is interrupted by other someone else that comforts me saying this big one here is the hotel I’m looking for.

I see a reception desk inside. Do we have rooms? We don’t. Great. I get out and until I realize what’s going on, I see the other hotel across the street. I get to it and… yes. They show me a list of prices per room and I pick the one at the bottom of the page. No TV?!? I’m asked with an obvious astonishment. Yeah, imagine this, although I’m not getting anything from the Russian spoken at all the channels, no, I don’t want a television set. Third floor, with balcony, for the first time. The view is wonderful, I have a construction site underneath, where trucks and cranes and tractors are making a riot.

I’m unpacking myself, I splash some water over me; I have no shower but I’m handling with the sink. I find on this occasion the bandana I’ve been looking for all morning. It was at my neck. I get down and the lady at the reception desk tells me she can help me with the visa registration, this ordeal I’m not at all in the mood for. Perfect, but not today. Maybe tomorrow, as I’m thinking of staying for two days.

I’m lingering on the city streets. I have nothing to say against it. It is Europe. You have anything you want here, from beggars to mega-luxury stores, expensive cars, young people in fashion, everything. Night life, with bars, clubs and discos. I find a fast-food with wireless in my way and I sit at a table, with the laptop in front of me. The time runs fast when I’m connected to the world back home, so I’m still here when the sun is setting. I realize I have to go when I already make the third order, for a cola, and they don’t bring it to me. I make a tour on the streets, to the City Mall, when the light starts to fade out completely, leaving room for the flashy commercials all over the place. I return to my room, where I realize, while enjoying a beer, that I’m more than tired, that my head hurts and I feel my body very heavy. I’m in bed at ten, but I can’t fall asleep, although I don’t understand a thing from what’s going on around me. I’m fussing on each side and I don’t get to fall asleep. I think that only in two hours I get to knock at the gate to the dream land. And I find it empty, as I didn’t dream anything. Or I don’t remember, at least.