Location: from Aktau to near Zhetibay, Kazakhstan
We woke up depressed and upset about the missing tentpoles just to notice that a thunderstorm was passing over Aktau followed by a torrential downpour. O my goodness. Things just keep getting better and better. We thought this was a desert! And we have no tent!
Morale plummetts even further!
An hour later the sky was clear again so we reluctantly got on the bikes and followed the narrow road out of town towards Zhetibay. We had a good tailwind but the cracked asphalt hindered progress. There was lots of traffic, mainly dump trucks, and almost every vehicle honked at us. Aaaaa so annoying.
For a while I was able to shed my frustration about the tent poles and just enjoy riding through the flat, gray landscape of western Kazakhstan which I had been looking forward to for months. The best part were all the freely roaming camels grazing on the little vegetation. They have such an aloof, confident and super relaxed air about them.
We stopped for a break outside of a lonely little roadside restaurant. A few young guys stopped there for lunch and one of them insisted on buying us lunch. We were not sure if the restaurant food could be trusted but eventually we accepted. He bought us a traditional Kazakh dish of boiled meat (probably camel or horse) with chopped onions. It was delicious and cheered us up a bit. Thank you.
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