MONGOLIA

I’m on the road. I’ve managed to run from the shore of the lake that was trying to keep me prisoner with his broken radiators and torn tank-carrying frames.

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.