Goodbye Uzbekistan, Back to Kazakhstan — From One Million-City to Another

This morning I got up earlier than I had originally planned. But I felt fresh and rested. It showed me that I can trust my body more instead of counting sleeping hours — sometimes I simply need more sleep, and sometimes less. I ate some of my own supplies in the room and then got ready to leave. When I saw the guesthouse owner, he told me that my breakfast was ready. That’s when I realized I had obviously misunderstood something yesterday: he had deducted a breakfast from my room price, and I thought it was because they didn’t really have vegan options. In fact, it was because I had accidentally booked for two people. The deduction was for the second person’s breakfast. So I ended up eating a second breakfast — after all, they had specially prepared something for me, so why not.

At 9:10, I finally set off. It was already 29 degrees Celsius during breakfast, but I actually sweated more while eating than later on the bike with the wind in my face — mainly because of the hot tea I had been drinking.

After a bit more than an hour, I reached the border with Kazakhstan — it was only around 15 kilometers away. Today, compared to earlier border crossings, I was surprisingly calm about it all. What could possibly go wrong? And indeed, nothing went wrong. After what felt like showing my passport 27 times, I was already back in Kazakhstan. Then I quickly exchanged some money — one woman practically surrounded me, though she offered a good rate, so I agreed — and continued onward.

From there on, cycling became truly enjoyable: I felt fantastic, rode comfortably in my own rhythm, and the roads were in good condition almost everywhere. Only a few trucks overtook me extremely closely, but by now I’m already quite used to that as well.

I haven’t taken a full rest day in quite a while now — not since Kungrad. But I’m completely in the flow, fully in my zone, and I don’t even want to pause. And those days of cycling in the morning and taking city tours in the afternoon were exactly my kind of thing. Besides the physical activity, they also gave my brain something to feed on, even if I couldn’t remember every name and date. But even more important to me was the wonderful conversation I had yesterday evening. That exchange completely recharged my social batteries, which may also explain why I felt so good today. Honestly, I felt so content and happy that I could have hugged the whole world.

After about one third of the route, I found a small shop in a village where I bought water and fruit juice and took a short rest. Barely a kilometer later, a young man waved at me energetically, wanting me to stop. Sherhan absolutely insisted on inviting me for a drink and even gave me some chips. What he really wanted, though, was for me to drink his Czech beer — I must have refused five or six times. But it was definitely a grand “Welcome to Kazakhstan” — thank you very much for that.

Soon afterward came the uncertain moment of switching onto the toll road — basically a motorway. Am I really allowed to cycle here? But very soon I saw a three-wheeled cargo bicycle coming toward me, and then it became clear: this was completely fine. And apart from the noise of fast cars rushing past, it was actually more pleasant here than on the previous road because there was much more space. Trucks could overtake me with 1.5 to 2 meters of distance without even leaving their lane.

The road climbed toward a mountain pass, and since the pass was over 800 meters above sea level, the temperature remained pleasant. I had originally planned to take another break after about two thirds of the distance, around 90 kilometers, but the pass came at kilometer 92, and descending afterward already felt like enough of a break — even though there were still a few short uphill sections along the way.

From quite a distance away, I could already see the high-rise buildings of Shymkent. Later I learned that it is not only Kazakhstan’s third-largest city but also a city of over a million inhabitants. There are many hotels here. I also found a large supermarket with products I hadn’t seen in a long time — for example Alpro drinks. Naturally, I ended up doing a big shopping trip.

But before that, I still had to check into the hotel, and that became quite a story in itself. I had found a cheap offer on a booking platform but hadn’t booked it because there still seemed to be plenty of rooms available. I thought that sometimes you can get a better price directly on site, and even if not, the hotel could at least save the booking platform fee. But when I asked at the hotel, they only offered me a room for more than triple the online price — almost 44 Swiss francs instead of 13.50! I showed the two receptionists the price on my phone and thought they would give in, but I was wrong. They claimed that category of room was no longer available. I refreshed the page, and the offer was still there. At one point they even told me I should simply go somewhere else. After some back and forth, I decided to book the room online, and a few minutes later I was finally able to check in. But the story still wasn’t over. One of the receptionists handed me the card terminal, and the amount displayed was again higher than the price in my booking, although not by very much. At that point, however, it had become a matter of principle for me, so I refused to pay it. She explained that there was an extra fee for card payment, so I simply paid in cash instead. Since I didn’t know that my room was actually in the neighboring building, I rolled my bicycle straight into the hotel lobby — to the horror of the two receptionists. “This is absolutely not allowed!” was roughly how I interpreted their nonverbal communication. At that moment, I had to make an effort to remain calm because I could already feel myself getting irritated inside. Still using Google Translate, I explained that I had never once left my bicycle outside since leaving Switzerland. Suddenly everything became fine, and they allowed me to take the bicycle into the room. Before that, however, I still had to fill in my own name and stay dates on a Russian hotel form, even though one of the women had already copied my passport. Fortunately, Google Translate also has a camera function that displayed the translation of the form directly on my screen, so I knew where to write what. Why she didn’t simply fill it out herself — considering she already had my passport — I honestly don’t quite understand. The other woman simply grabbed the correct key from the board — so yes, there clearly were still cheap rooms available. She was probably a bit annoyed as well, I suspect, as she led me to the neighboring building. But the funniest part of all was that at some point she suddenly started speaking Korean to me. Fortunately, I still remember a few words and could roughly understand what she meant. Why Korean remains a mystery to me, though, because she definitely wasn’t Korean herself, and she didn’t speak it fluently either. Maybe they regularly have Korean guests there.