Kazakhstan

Mention Kazakhstan to anyone and they are likely to reference Borat. Apart from a book on Kazakhstan that the kids took out of the library (one that went on a lot about uranium mining and oil reserves), the main thing we also knew about Kazakhstan was also Borat. But this is decidedly unfair, and Sacha Baron Cohen has really done the country a disservice. We now realise that anyone who has been to Central Asia knows that a) nobody looks like Borat and b) the country referenced in the movie bears no resemblance to Kazakhstan whatsoever.

To get there we took a budget Kazakh airline (I know what you are thinking…) from Baku in Azerbaijan to Almaty. Because Kazakhstan is such an enormous country (largest landlocked country in the world, spanning two time zones), the plane had a stopover in Aktau in the far west of the country, just a short hop over the Caspian Sea from Baku.  Although we initially thought it an inconvenience, we are glad we got to see this part of the country and to learn what a Central Asian ‘steppe’ actually is and why the original peoples of the region were nomadic. A steppe is defined as “a large area of land with grass but few trees”, and this is exactly what we saw. Coming in to land, the scene was amazing. As far as we could see from the plane – all the way to the curved horizon – absolutely dead flat desert-like yellow grasslands with not a single tree.  Dirt tracks crisscrossed the landscape with the only discernable shapes being a few dwellings and a whole bunch of camels. The vastness looked totally inhospitable.

The Aktau airport was a small, provincial affair, but we still had to clear passport control, collect our luggage and check in to the next flight. As soon as we landed, it was clear we were now in a different region and Central Asia was a whole new kettle of fish. Firstly, the people look very different to the general European/Turkic/Caucasian demographic spectrum that we had been travelling through up to this point, with almost universally strongly Asian features, blended with Slavic Russian. Secondly, serving pot noodles on the plane was a first, but something we are probably going to see more and more of as we head east. Thirdly, decorum in queueing went out the window as we had to fend off grannies elbowing their way into the scrum for the boarding gate. Asia, here we come!

We arrived in Almaty with the usual unfamiliar airport jitters. Travel bloggers had advised using Russian taxi app, Yandex, to get a taxi, but we soon found out that this was not possible without a functional sim card, which we didn’t have. As it was late at night, we took the next best option, which was an official airport taxi and just sucked up the inflated rate. The officious lady took us to a sleeping Russian taxi driver in his electric Nissan Leaf – our first all-electric taxi of the trip. After a 30 minute trip in the rain we arrived at our large, Soviet-style apartment block and the guy promptly demanded double the inflated rate we were given by the ‘official’ lady at the airport. I was tired and in no mood for his nonsense, so flatly refused. A standoff (mediated by Google Translate) ensued, only to be broken by a young good Samaritan who spoke English and could see exactly what was going on. He said something to the driver in Russian and the guy capitulated. Airport taxi drivers are the worst. (I think we might have said this before.) Fortunately we were met by the warm, friendly smiles of our hostess, Benur, and her husband who had especially driven to the apartment at 11:30pm to meet us. She showed us around her homely flat, before departing with a wave.

We then did make it across the road to the Central Park. One of the main attractions, the paddle boats on the lake, were not operational because the lake was frozen solid. It was a very pleasant 15 degrees, but the solid ice was evidence that Almaty had been extremely frigid before we arrived. As a consolation we picked up a common local snack of mielie kernels in a cup, topped with butter, salt and garlic mayonnaise – yum! A fair amount of time was spent in one of the many playgrounds in the park, the kids having a blast while we watched the amusing antics of Tufty the Squirrel. 

Strolling through central Almaty we were so impressed with the public spaces – lovely neat, clean, landscaped spaces filled with people. We assume these many urban parks are a Soviet legacy, with our assumption backed up by an enormous Soviet war memorial erected on one side of the second park we visited. We were all taken aback by the scale and the size of the aggressive sculpture, depicting Kazakh soldiers storming forward into war – a very vivid example of brutalist art.  Just adjacent to this monument is a stunning Russian Orthodox church, constructed entirely out of wood, and using only joints, no nails. It is the second largest structure of its kind in the world and has survived an earthquake in its time.  In front of the church there were families socializing, grandpas feeding pigeons, kids zooming around in electric cars and vendors selling candy floss and balloons. 

The hungle monsters were rearing their ugly heads, so we started scanning the streets for a lunch spot. We were still getting our heads around the currency and hadn’t even started to engage with the language. After some disagreement, we went into a fruit stall to pick up a fruit snack to tide us over. The bill for our assorted fruit came to R800! We ditched most of the fruit and left with 4 naartjies for R100, feeling deflated and ripped off. When the complaints from the hungry crew continued, I just snapped and broke down on the pavement – right then and there, my first of the trip. It just felt so hard, the language, the uncertainty, the budget, the decisions – all just too much.

It took a Starbucks coffee and cookie to cheer me up and regenerate energy to move on. For the evening we had decided to check out one of the main activities in Almaty – open-air ice skating at the Medeu Ice Rink. The rink is located up in the mountains just outside Almaty. It consists of 10,500 square metres of ice and is the world's largest high-mountain skating rink - it is enormous! The rink has three sessions a day and we had to wait until 7pm for the late session to open. We had been enjoying the warmer weather and were not dressed for hanging around on the ice in the dark, so were bracing ourselves for some serious cold.  We paid our entrance and managed to hand signal our way to renting skates. They also rent out clever little PVC pipe ‘zimmer’ frames that hold up the beginner skaters. The Mom opted for the frame and the rest of us opted to slip, side and fall our way up to competence.  Out on the massive rink there was a blend of American and Kazakh pop music, a slight breeze and a great vibe. All the teenage boys were out showing off for the giggling girls – just the same as all ice rinks in the world. We had such a blast that we didn’t even notice the cold! It was a lot of fun and a real travel high moment for the whole family. We celebrated the day with burgers at a restaurant outside the rink and then caught the bus back home.

The other major attraction we wanted to see in Almaty was the Big Almaty Lake, located in the mountains 15km south of the city. We were a bit uncertain as to how to organise transport because we needed a taxi to get us there, wait for an hour or two and then bring us back. This was a bit beyond the functionality of the Yandex app and our Russian was practically non-existent, but we decided to give it a go. We hailed a taxi and explained through Google Translate what we wanted to do. He seemed to be ok with it so we set off in the right direction. Then we got to a big toll gate-type structure with an official manning the boom. The taxi driver got out, spoke to the man, came back and tried to explain why we could not go through - something about a son going off to sleep before noon and growing dag-wa trees (?!). Hmm. About 10 minutes of Google Translate back and forth, in both Russian and Kazakh, and we were no clearer as to why we could not go through the boom. Eventually we gave up and turned around. On the way back the driver was much friendlier and we discovered that he was actually Uzbek. Ah, hence the breakdown in the 3-way Google translate conversation (he was double-translating the Russian or Kazakh into Uzbekhi, and then back again!). Anyway, we never did understand whether he just didn’t want to take us to the lake, or there was actually a reason we couldn’t go. Sometimes you just have to let go of expectations and roll with it.

Instead of the lake, we visited the Green Bazaar in central Almaty. This is a big food market, very clean and neatly organised – Soviet style. The sellers were very animated and keen for us to buy and we sampled some lovely dried fruit and some not so lovely salty dried cheese stuff. Daniel once again refused to even look at the butcher stalls and dry wretched half the way around the hall when we described the extensive horse meat offering (Kazakhs really do love their horse meat). Nicola could not resist the charms of the dried fruit seller and came away with a bucket load of various fruit goodies. Outside the market we picked up a Kazakh souvenir, some flags and some shoelaces.

We strolled back through the large central park we had been at the day before and noticed all the flowers being sold and women walking around with large bouquets. A bit of research revealed that it was International Women’s Day, which is a public holiday and a big deal in central Asia. In contrast to the day before there were many more families out enjoying the park, taking joy-rides in horse drawn Cinderella carriages and generally having a good time. 

We packed up and made our way to the Almaty bus station to try and find a ride over the border to Kyrgystan. The journey to Bishkek is only 235km by road, but there was conflicting advice on travel blogs about whether there was a bus or whether we would have to take a marshrutka. The bus station was old and tired, but fairly well organized. We found the window and managed to buy bus tickets pretty easily. During the wait for the bus to depart we spent our last Kazakh Tenge on a lunch of grilled chicken and manti, which are meat dumplings similar to Turkish manti, although these ones turned out to be filled with stinky fish and were super-gross. 

It was a relatively short and uneventful trip to the border. We enjoyed watching the rolling hills of the Kazakh steppe (looked a bit similar to the inland areas of the former Transkei) transitioning into high mountains as we reached the border with Kyrgyzstan. Our stay in Kazakhstan was short and limited, but we are glad we got to get some insight into the country and its people (beyond Borat). Kazakhstan is the highest-income country in the region of the stans, with a per capita GDP approximately double that of South Africa’s. They have used their significant natural resources to build a large, modern, sophisticated city, although it is incredibly badly planned, with freeways cutting areas off from each other, on-ramps in all the wrong places, and labyrinthine side streets that people use to get anywhere. The affiliation and alignment with big brother Russia is obvious, with a large population of Russians living and working in Kazakhstan. English is hardly spoken, but you can operate 100% if you speak Russian. It seemed to us that Kazakhstan looks inwards and north to Russia, and is not all that interested in the rest of the world, and its tourist infrastructure is poor to non-existent. This is both a pity and really refreshing - there is no facade for tourists, no prepackaged tour touts anywhere,  and a sum total of 4 'kind of' souvenir shops at the Green Market - it's just the city as it is, for itself, take it or leave it. It would be fascinating to explore into the wilder regions up north if one had more time, but we were so glad to get the glimpse we had in the limited time we had. It shattered a lot of our misconceptions and opened up awareness of how much more we didn't even know we didn't know.