Actau to Zhetybey; 01-02 May

After a few extra days in Actau, needed to recover from a heavy cold, I was well and truly ready to get going.

Leaving Actau the traffic was fairly heavy but not too bad. It thinned out after about 30 km.

at around the 45 km mark we stopped at the first road side cafe. Mainly used by truckers as a rest stop, the owner had clearly seen the likes of us before as he asking us if we were heading to Pakistan or Afghanistan.. when we said we were going to Almaty he seem a bit puzzled, probably because the most direct route would largely be desert.

He asked us how long we’d been cycling for, and when we said this was the first day he burst out laughing, as did the few other customers. I guess not many cyclists start their trip in Actau!

When I went to pay, he refused to accept the money. After few rounds of me insisting and him denying, I gave in and just thanked him for his generosity. I wanted to tell him it would be hard to get half a pint with this in the UK, and it goes a lot further here, so just take it but this would exceed my mastery of Russian quite significantly as I’ve only just now got to grips with thank you, after 9 days here.

Despite being in the desert, the rest of the route was pretty interesting. Maybe it’s the novelty of desert riding. See captioned photos below.

Unfortunately MayLyn’s knee flared up towards the end of the ride. By the time we arrived in Zhetybay, it was about 7pm, and we were pretty spent. It may be a bit of a spanner in the works as for the next 900km is desert with few rest stops in between (although a decent number of chaikhanas (food stops)).

The hotel we hoped to stay in mentioned in Hugh’s blog was closed which was unfortunate. I asked a group of older guys if there was another hotel in the town, and after determining that the place we hoped to stay at was definitely closed, one of the guys directed us towards the mosque. On walking in, before barely having said word, the guy in charge was directed us to a room for us to stay and place to store our bikes. Pretty amazing hospitality, just like the guy earlier in the afternoon. I’m guessing he understood our situation just by looking at our salt encrusted t shirts and the tiredness in our eyes.

Just as we settled down to sleep two police officers came a knocking. They just wanted to see our passports. After a brief chat using Google translate they wished us good night.

We did some reasearch for this route, and I wanted to mention some great accounts of the it. The rest of these journals are also fantastic:

Hugh’s blog: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=3d2&doc_id=24377&v=46
a guy named Tim who rode from London to Oz: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=3d2&page_id=324791&v=7Z
a Brit who did UK to Krygistan: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=3d2&page_id=421926&v=2a

The mosque we stayed in. We slept in the prayer room I think. Very clean and comfortable.

Every 20 or so KMs there are stops with outdoor toilets. Some of them include this ramp which can be used to inspect and service your car (like the this guy was doing)

A chaikhana (road side stop for drinks and cooked food (generally involve horse meat, dumplings, some pastries)

Leaving Aqtau this was on the side of a chaikhana

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