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In the early grey morning Karen and I crossed town by bus to Kosmonotov where a tour bus was filling for Charyn Canyon. We were the only non Russian speakers and got seated right in front. It was a four hour ride to the southeastern corner of the country. Tour guide Viktor spoke into a microphone the entire time, even singing a folk song.
Along the highway were fruit stands and motor oil stands tended by bored babushkas. We passed a busy livestock market. At a toilet stop there was time to buy a plastic cup of coffee and white balls of hard dried cheese, sour and delicious. Here and there were grave sites along the way, and one annoying police checkpoint. We spotted a pair of bicycle tourists where the land became desert and the highway a straight line splitting the world to the horizon. Always there were snowy peaks on the right hand. The landscape was like Nevada. And the sky went blue and sunny.
Rolling along a final dirt road a Shymkent man leaned over us and smiled, saying he had been volunteered to translate into English for us. We asked only for instructions on when to return to the bus. He told us I should say this canyon was "better than the American Grand Canyon" and that my Scottish lady must "melt with joy". We agreed to the ruse.
Charyn Canyon actually is very beautiful, though indeed it could be swallowed by any minor side canyon of our giant Grand. It has eroded features reminiscent of Bryce Canyon, with a backdrop of snowy blue mountains out toward the Chinese border. A lazy one hour descent takes you down a few hundred meters to the swift brown Charyn River where some car campers were enjoying a portable shashlyk grill. A yurt stood nearby. We found a picnic spot under shady trees.
Viktor led us back up a steeper route, admonishing the Amerikanski to hurry up, taking photos of a pair of hefty Russian ladies who nervously posed for him on precarious perches. He was a funny character, Viktor, and we warmed to him. Thankfully he stayed off the microphone on the four hour ride back home. We drove into the glaring sun.
The bus dropped the two of us in Almaty close to Talant's and as I exited a woman asked me, "so, whose canyon is really better?"
"Yours," I said, "but don't tell anyone I said that." It was a great outing.
Talant showed up at his place and fetched Japar and his wife and another friend Eldar, the Kyrgyz crew of Almaty. They broke out some manti dumplings and some kind of meat pancake and carved a melon, laid out on the floor for us all to sit around cross legged and drink shots of vodka.
I pulled out the guitar and the song book and we had us a singalong. I did not know the requested Metallica or Lionel Ritchie tunes but "Wish You Were Here" was quite a hit. |
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Back to the bureocratic rat race. Talant dropped us at the Russian consulate on his way to work. We waited at the familiar iron gate in a drizzle. A kind young man helped us to get noticed and let in: moments later we had the hard earned visas stuck in our passports and we were done with this nightmare.
The rain increased and we ducked into a basement internet shop. It became a downpour, flooding the streets, as we ran about on trivial errands to kill time before Talant was free. He met us for a convivial lunch at the downstairs fixed menu place. When we emerged, we could hardly believe that the sky had gone totally blue.
This put us in a mind to try to hike to see the Big Lake. A slow tram got us to a slow chugging bus that took us up a valley toward bright peaks wearing new snow. At the GES-2 power station we found a water spring where cars were parked for filling jugs to take home, but few were driving further. As it was already late afternoon we abandoned the Big Lake plan.
We crossed the city by bus, past the shiny skyscrapers half finished and waiting out the economic downturn, to ride the cable car up to Kok Tobe for a view. It was the flattest cable car ride ever: the hill is not high. And to our disappointment it mostly had views of the smoggy city and few of the glorious panorama of snowy peaks. Apparently you had to sit in the Grill to get that. It was closed. I stepped out onto some grass to photograph the only vista. A bored guard yelled at me to get off of it. There was a pretty cool small zoo of brightly colored birds and some goats, but mostly the hilltop was in off season mode. The cool shisha smoking platform had all its pillow furniture in a pile. A few people posed next to a bizarre brass sculpture of The Beatles. Bored carnies entreated us to shoot at balloons or throw a basketball through a hoop. We looked for a trail down: none. You had to walk down the road. But it was not busy, and at one corner we finally got the view of mountains above the city that we had come for.
At the bottom - surprise! - our favorite bus 95 was sitting. We hopped in and got a lift to the Staut brewery where we got a couple of mugs and waited for Talant to come by. He brought Japar, and it was a lively discussion of "how do you guys afford to travel like this?" We explained how we don't spend money on things most people buy, like furniture and homes and cars, and that we accept pretty rustic accomodation on the road. I think they were looking for something else, though, like a treasure map to a secret pot of gold.
Talant took us back home and we cracked open a bottle of awful Baltika 9 beer and wished we hadn't bought the other two. |
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Goodbye, friend Talant, off to your banking, while we plod off with unwieldy packs, watched suspiciously while passing through underpass shops, finally comfortably seated some four final hours at our favorite cyber cafe. Then a light lunch at expensive Coffeedelia mainly to sync the Android phone on their free wifi. On the northbound street we lumber aboard the bus for faraway Almaty 1 station, where the train from Astana is late by half an hour.
Clacking along in a roomy train we watch the golden steppe pass by again, and finally pour boiling water from the samovar at the end of the carriage into paper bowls of instant noodles, peel hardboiled eggs bought trackside from grannies pushing bread in ancient baby strollers, crumble the eggs into the fragrant soup, and wash dinner down with Shimkentskoya lager. This small amount of beer had nothing to do with my mattress nearly sliding off the upper bunk in the night: I blame the lurching carriage and the smooth plastic seat cover. |
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In the morning sunlight a toothless granny bent her head over her early teapot. The dry landscape slowed its passing and became the Muslim town of Turkestan, famed for spreading the religion to Buddhists in Silk Road times. We barged through the usual wall of taxi offers and picked a marshrutka heading for town.
A man in a worn suit and thick glasses welcomed us and asked our destination. Helping us to find our hotel, he walked with us, saying he had come from Afghanistan in the 80's. He asked locals for directions and it was a short stroll to Hotel Sabina where he wished us well and departed, as we were shown our clean little room, with apologies that there was no water until six p.m. We settled in for a nap.
A few doors down was a makeshift internet shop with sticky keyboards and virus laden machines that also gladly accepted my StealthSend program and a whole heap of photos. Those were happily uploading while we went to check out nearby Yasaui Mausoleum, which locals say can be visited three times as replacement for one visit to Mecca. A guide approached us.
We let A. Bek, a Kazakh Mongolian who disliked the Chinese, show us the place. Starting with tall wooden doors with His and Hers door knockers (so those inside knew whether to hide or not) we then saw a giant cast metal water pot, various tombs before which pilgrims said prayers, inscriptions in flowery Arabic script, puzzle piece tiles, and cooing pidgeons pooping on all of it. The big surprise was that at the end, walking out at sunset, our Mr A. Bek asked not for a cent for his efforts.
A typical Russian dinner: hard to tell if the place was a restaurant or a bar or if it was open, reluctant waitress, most things on the thick menu unavailable. We went back to the room for a nap "for digestion". And overslept the Hour for Shower: I ended up washing myself with six liter jugs of water stacked in the common bathroom. |
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We returned to the Mausoleum for morning light pictures. A. Bek was showing someone else around.
In the internet shop we did some writing and the trusty StealthSend was still uploading photos.
On the street a pesky kid asked us for money. We sat on a bench watching the light change on the face of a large statue. Life was slow and relaxing today.
Karen had met an odd fellow who followed her to the internet cafe and sat down next to her to watch her type her blog entries. She called me her "husband" but that didn't put the guy off. She finally got rid of him by directly shooing him away. People are a bit weird in this town.
In the hotel there was a muddy mountain bike leaning on the wall. We soon met the owner, a German kid named Christian, who had ridden it here from Berlin. He was on his way to China. We took him to dinner to discuss this.
Nearby was another restaurant we wanted to try, which had smoking shashlik, and at night was a loud disco. But even before nightfall the music was too loud, the lopsided tables buzzing with flies, and a gold toothed Uzbek waiter hung around us after delivering mugs of beer and, grinning, offered us to smoke hashish in a dingy underground bar. He ignored our repeated "no", so we skipped the shashlik and rushed out.
Problem was, where else to go? Back to the Russian joint. But it was entirely filled with a big joyous party: a Ramadan feast. We were shunted into a back room and served plates of their leftovers, but without charge.
So we hit a friendly shop, proprietors speaking good English and interested in our stories, and got some beers to take back to the hotel. Christian pulled out a laptop and showed us photos of his flat, flat ride across unending flat lands. Dusty endless flat roads, stealth camping away from driver's eyes, rough drunken truck drivers. This was our direction. It would be an adventure if we couldn't get train tickets! But he also showed photos of the Buddhist area of Russia that the Mongol Rally guys had mentioned, and a change of route entered our imaginations.
We were tired but Christian was still so excited to be speaking to fellow foreigners that he went next door to knock where two German girls were staying. One answered the door and behind her I could see the other girl lying in bed with some guy. I wonder how all that turned out? |
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With sleepy eyes we flagged a marshrutka in front of the hotel and crammed in for a jostling ride to the train station. There was an announcement we didn't understand. A train was standing there but was not ours. Another train pulled in one track behind it. How could we get to it?
The standing train opened all its doors on both sides. People started crossing through in a flood we could not oppose. Luckily a few cars down was a door with people crossing the other way. We hopped up, across, and down to the second train which, indeed, was ours.
The long day of riding through unremarkable countryside began with passing the ruins of Sauran. I spent hours after that on my upper bunk typing travelog entries with two thumbs on my Google Phone's little keyboard. In the afternoon we passed the spur track leading to distant Baykonur Cosmodrome where USSR and Russia's cosmonauts have left the Earth since the very first man in space. Aside from a facility sporting several radio dish antennas, there was nothing visible from our train, though I did hope in vain to see the distant flame of a satellite launch.
Seated again in the restaurant car for a sunset dinner, as the sun dropped as a deep red orb into the infinite flat horizon, the boss of the diner (named Fatima) joined us to try her English and learn our stories. We complimented her fine rolling restaurant. Suddenly the provodnik from our carriage, five down the train, showed up to hurry us back to strip our beds and prepare to depart. How's that for service?
On the dark platform at Aralsk we were met by English-speaking Farida, who accompanied us in a taxi through dark streets a couple of kilometers out to a dark neighborhood, where a wooden gate was opened at the home of the director of the Aral Tenizi Society. Her society was fighting to resurrect the Aral Sea and its fisheries and we had made contact through phone numbers in our guidebook.
Passing through the yard quickly as a large ferocious sounding dog barked and growled on his short and hopefully sturdy chain, we were shown in to a carpeted living room with a low table. Seated there we were fed a surprise and tasty meal. The table was cleared and moved aside and mats and bedding laid down. All very simple, efficient, and pleasing. The only discomfort was, perhaps, having to pass near the ferocity of the dog on the way to the little wooden outhouse. |
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A man named Serik, speaking great English, picked us up at the homestay in his new bought UAZ jeep, the simple rock solid Russian 4x4 of a traveler's dreams. Our destination was the Aral Sea, whose shoreline used to abut this port city but due to water mismanagement had receded some forty kilometers away.
Our route crossed the former seabed, littered with white shells, and took us to what was left of the famous "ship cemetery". Many Soviet era fishing vessels had been abandoned and finally sat rusting on dry land. Now all but four had been removed, and those four were largely dismantled. Rusting superstructures and thick broken glasswork remained. A cow rested in the shade of one boat.
Further along we reached the shoreline just in time to watch several pink flamingos take flight. It was a wetland soggy and salty and populated with flocks of jabbering birds. Serik told us how a dyke had been built so part of the lake could refill and it was hoped to be back to its natural level in five years. Already several species of fish were back.
Back in town he helped us score train tickets to Atyrau in the far west of the country, a great relief as apparently the only alternative would have been to hitch a lift with the drunken truckers on the dusty dirt trails. Less adventure, though.
We walked around the former harbor in the hot dry afternoon. Now just lazy stray dogs lay in the shade of a few grounded boats, and a kid stretching to ride an adult bicycle around empty paint cans. Strangely there was a Korean restaurant. It was supposedly a result of Stalin's many forced migrations. They served mostly Russian food, though.
The rest of the afternoon went to sitting in a tiny internet shop with giggling schoolkids browsing photos of pop idols and shooing lazy flies. My StealthSend from Turkestan had apparently been discovered and terminated, so I started a new one from here.
The friendly shop owner gave us the true price for a taxi here (a third of what we paid last night - thanks a lot Farida) and found one for us. The driver only got lost once among the wide dusty roads of this high fence, barking dog town. The place reminded me of the remote outpost towns of Mongolia: bleak. Manhole covers had been stolen for their small value as raw metal, and the holes became deep trashcans. Kids played in the dust, and young men looked bored and menacing.
At the homestay Karen tossed uneaten bread to the snapping hound, who then ceased all barking whenever she passed and even, for a while, when I passed. For a time I sat indoors strumming the guitar and finally wondered where she was off to. She eventually came in, flustered: while squatting in the outhouse the outside latch had fallen shut and she had been trapped inside until she managed to tease it open with a match stick she luckily found on the floor. |