Stage 118: From Santash to Kegen

Today, it should finally go to Kazakhstan. After all, it was only 25 kilometers to the border. This time, however, I was struggling with an extremely strong headwind, so I only reached the border crossing after three hours. It was even more deserted than I had imagined. There was no one to be seen for kilometers on both sides, one of the soldiers at the crossing had to lift a barrier by hand to let me through. I found all this very amusing, and on top of that, the extremely affectionate 'guard dog' Limbo rubbed against my legs like a cat when I paused stroking him. The soldiers didn't find that so funny and called him back, after all, he was supposed to look threatening. But Limbo didn't care at all, I would have liked to take him with me. Otherwise, there were many curious questions from the officials, unfortunately only few in English. There was also a scanner, but I was supposed to only put the bags in it that didn't contain any food (?) because of the radiation. I left them in their belief, that's how my knives and my gasoline weren't discovered. Another affectionate 'guard dog' was supposed to sniff my bags, but everything looked very uncoordinated and I'll eat a broom if this dog can actually identify drugs or explosives. Even I can smell the gasoline in my cooking bag. One of the soldiers also filled up my water bottle, of course there were no SIM cards here. During the 45 minutes, not a single person came by who also wanted to cross the border. There are probably few jobs more boring than guarding this crossing.

It only got windier and it took an eternity until I finally reached Kegen. My supplies were empty and the first small market was looted. In the third market, I even got lucky and could buy a SIM card. However, it turned out that even as a tourist, you still have to activate it in an official store. Very funny, the next store was only in Almaty, which was still 250 kilometers away! The wind just wouldn't let up and it started raining as well. Before I got soaked, I set up my tent on a meadow near the cemetery. It continued to rain for half the night.