Day 54 Kokpek- Almathy 201/13.385 km

It was a slow relaxed drive (good asphalt road) at 70 km/hr to the city. Slow because the tyre pressure is around 2/3 of the normal pressure so we have less issues going over the washboard roads. Almathy is a large modern city. The streets in general are wide and shade by all the large trees. Jamaliah excelled in navigating us without mistakes through the city to the registration office. There a friendly Kazakh helped us through the procedures and we were out with stamp in 20 min. The next 2 hrs were spent in a luxury coffee shop with WiFi. It feels strange coming down from the mountains where the main activity is looking after the herds to a city with all the modern enmities. We also found a KFC and unfortunately overdid it with a bucket of chicken. Rudy’s stomach was hurting. After several attempts we found a Mercedes workplace who is open over the weekend and willing to see if they can move the gas tank filling point to another place at the side of the camper. Now it is the lowest point underneath the car and regularly gets knock by stones. By the way the passenger area heat exchanger was also broken along the way. I don’t think it can be used anymore. Hopefully we can make some form of protection over it tomorrow at the garage.
Till late in the afternoon/evening we were chasing camping coordinates. In the end we found the ladies at a Cash and Carry shopping mall parking lot on the outskirts of the city. It is a 24 hr shop so we will have to see how the sleeping goes.