Day 48 - That Beyneu cafe pull again...
Today's weather forecast: headwind getting progressively stronger, developing into borderline unrideable from early afternoon. So today's plan was get riding early , stop as little as possible, and try make it to Dossor (120km) before we start getting pushed backwards. Got on the bikes at 8, I'm layered up (as per usual) , Ben reluctantly puts his coat on, only because he knows that in 30 mins I'll be taking off all my 5 layers so he could take off his one. "Be bold start cold" he says, I'm there thinking "that saying sucks... Be bold start freezing and take forever to become warm enough to cycle functionally 🤣". Literally moments after leaving camp , it (to both our surprise) starts raining (we've had quite some days of cloud that looks like it could rain, but never does, so this caught up us quite off ). Anyway, I'm feeling smug that Ben's comment about not needing a coat and layers was incorrect, but also now we're immediately cold and wet... So, you know, pros and cons. Anyway, as expected, headwind; manageable but less than half yesterdays speed for more effort...no hard shoulder meant you were pretty close on the road and got pretty crazy blown around by the trucks, and a good deal of road spray. Ok, hoods up, audio book on, heads down, pedal. Brace for impact with every truck. Brace. Brace. Brace. Rain came and went, crossed 2 other world tourers coming the other way, (thoroughly enjoying their turn with the tail wind) their first question "how you getting on with that headwind!!??". chatted for a while, drilled them on questions about how they had managed their China and Russia visas....that confirmed our decision that it would have been impossibly difficult to jump through those hoops in the prep work for this trip.
Fighting the wind we finally made it to our town! And awesome point on the day, our altitude has gone between -24m and -10m, we've not been above sea level all day!
Start looking for somewhere to eat, someone very insistently flags us down and absolutely insists that we don't go up a particular road....we were hungry and tired and just wanted to get to what we'd seen on the map, but he absolutely maintained that we don't go that way, signaling danger and closed, and insisting we follow his van. I mean, the road looked perfectly normal, people were going up and down, but we decided to follow anyway....what's the worst that can happen following a random van in a strange town? 😅
Anyway, sure enough, the guy guides us to probably the best cafe we've had in Kazakhstan.... Tea sold in 1L, or 1.8L sizes, and more types than we knew what to do with. Thanks random van guy! Sat down , out of the wind, we order tea round 1, round 2, soups and tea round 3... It all arrives at once and Ben falls into a warm liquids coma.
As per the non-plan (but totally predictable), we stay there 4 hours drinking tea till it's dark. So we call that late lunch dinner, and decide to stay in the town for the night.
Down a small dirt road to what looks like the only hotel in town; the guy is shuffling around unsure what to do with these 2 random cyclists, but incredibly keen to help none the less. We get a room, he shuffles in a few minutes later with some sheets, then a few minutes later with a kettle, then a bit later with some cups, then comes in to gesture we can bring the bikes on the room, then again with information that there's a microwave available... Poor guy didn't seem to know what to do with himself, but we're happy, we've got more tea, a bed (4 beds to be exact 😅) and its not windy inside 🥳.
Food spend today: 22.58 euros