Almaty Part 2 - Let Me Tell You A Story

Casey writes:

Have you heard the story about the two tourists, the dumb driver, the arrogant husband, and the most ridiculously self-obsessed ignorant woman in the world?

Well sit back and let me tell you...

My mind still boggles as I try to comprehend the events that took place yesterday, the day we booked a private tour from Almaty to the Tamgaly Petroglyphs. Upon paying a significant booking fee last week to a tour company, we were promised excellent service for our day trip to this World Heritage Listed site. We were promised that we would leave Almaty at 9:00am and arrive back at our hostel at 5:00pm, giving us two hours to prepare and make our way to the Opera Theatre for which we had previously purchased tickets. We were promised a competent English speaking guide. And we were promised a reliable car and driver for the 2.5 hour journey each way.

Nope, we got none of this.

Ok, yes it was a hot day. A forecast of 47 degrees according to our guide. So when the car overheated one hour into our journey, we groaned, but accepted the frustrations of travelling in Kazakhstan in the middle of summer. Now, I've owned a car for 14 years. I know how to read a temperature gauge, and I know that the only solution once the engine overheats, is to wait for it to cool down, to add coolant, or similar passive strategy. But not our driver. He believed that the more aggressively he forced the ignition and the more he revved the living daylights out of the accelerator, the more likely it would be that the car would suddenly leap into action. The horrific noises - akin to a dying camel - coming from the engine intensified, but this seemed to motivate him even more in his key turning and foot pumping frenzy. Politely, Richard and I exchanged glances, but said nothing. Afterall, we were the guests at the mercy of these so called professionals.

After two similar instances of overheating, adding thirty minutes to our hot 2.5 hour drive, we finally arrived at the Petroglyphs at midday. The sun was scorching, and after a three hour drive without air conditioning, we were relieved to step out into the fresh air. There was a wind blowing, but it reminded me more of a hairdryer on its highest setting rather than anything that could provide relief.

Enter self-obsessed English speaking guide:

Lyubov was a middle aged woman, who spoke English reasonably well, but lacked the crucial other skills required of a guide. Listening, for example. She couldn't do it. She wasn't interested in our questions, she wasn't interested in our opinions, and she didn't give us time to finish asking before talking over the top of us, usually on a completely different tangent. She was incredibly irritating and we conceded that we were in for a long day. In addition, her knowledge of her home city was limited to,:

'Almaty has big mountains; they are cold.'
'Almaty is a big city; it is hot.'

Ok, I knew this already, thank you Lyubov.

The rest of her ramblings involved herself. We heard about her life, her husband (who had come along for a free day out at the expense of the two paying tourists), her invalid son, her lazy son, her hard working daughter, her holiday house, her physical ailments, her disdain for hot weather, and the rest.

Please let me side step for a moment. Despite Lyubov's non-sensical mutterings and the driver's incompetence, the Petroglyphs themselves were brilliant. Here we were, in an arid canyon near Karabastau village but a million miles from anywhere else, seeing for ourselves these ancient carvings into rock faces: over 4000 pictures of animals, hunting scenes, tribal warriors, sun-headed gods, rituals and more. Some of these pictures dated back to the 13th century BC, the Bronze Age. They were created by the nomadic tribes at the time.  We were thoroughly impressed and amazed at how well they had been preserved. Walking around for two hours in the 47 degree heat was tough, and we shielded ourselves from the sun with umbrellas. The local man who showed us around was very sweet, and despite speaking no English, his passion for helping to preserve the ancient site was obvious.

Back to the story. 

Enter arrogant husband:

I don't know his name but it's no loss. His part in this story is limited to two main things:

1. Always being miles away from the car each time the driver managed to finally get the engine to kick over. So time and time again, by the time he meandered back to his seat, the idling car had again conked out. This was funny once. Actually no, it wasn't even funny the first time, it was too hot to find any humour in it. By the twelfth time I wanted to clobber him.

2. Trying to sweep a poisonous scorpion towards Richard and me. Now, if this was a harmless little beetle, I'd feign interest and play along with the game, but when only minutes earlier we had passed a warning sign, and with no first aid equipment, I thought his actions were incredibly stupid. Scorpions can run fast and I didn't want it running up my leg. Here is the sign:

ATTENTION
BE CAREFUL, POISONOUS INSECTS AND SNAKES, SUCH AS TARANTULA, BLACK WIDOW, SCORPION, STEPPE VIPER AND COPPERHEAD SNAKE LIVE ON THE TERRITORY OF THE SITE OF TAMGALY. MITES INHABIT BUSHES AND GRASSES, THE MOST DANGEROUS THEY ARE IN SPRING AND SUMMER BEGINNING.

I also wished that I had seen this sign before Lyubov had encouraged me to go to the toilet in the thigh high wild grass on the side of the road during one of our car breakdowns. Fortunately, I emerged unscathed.

At 2:00pm, after accepting and pretending to drink the filmy water presented to us from a dirty carton that may have once been a petrol container, Richard and I got in the car, preparing for the three hour drive home that would see us arrive back at our hostel in perfect time.

But no, we were told it was lunchtime. Fine, we'd live with this, but at 2:30pm, we made noises that it was definitely time to get going. Our guide was fully aware of our evening opera commitment and she had mentioned it a few times previously, so we settled back in the hot car, gasping for cool air, but content that all was on track.

Ahhh, but no. After one hour of driving.... kaput. One overheated engine. And one driver, who was unable to apply previous learning to the current situation, insisted on revving and thrashing the engine until it couldn't even utter a gasp. This time, the look exchanged between Richard and I was one of bewilderment.

'Is he really that stupid?' (whispered)
'Yep.' (head in hands)

I've taught funded students who have shown better critical thinking and processing skills.

An hour and a half later, at the exact time that we were supposed to be back at the hostel, we were stranded somewhere in the middle of the desolate Kazakhstan steppe, choking on the dust, swatting away the wasps and quickly running out of water.

We carried on for another forty minutes of engine-chugging, with Richard and I hanging on to the hope that at the rate we were going, we would have to be dropped directly at the Opera Theatre for the 7:00pm performance. We weren't sure if they'd let us in wearing dusty shorts and t-shirts and smelling of sunscreen and sweat, but it was our only option at that point. We conjoured up images of ladies in sequinned outfits and dressed up to the nines, shrieking in horror at the slovenly and uncouth foreigners in the seats next to them, as we tried to make light of the situation.

But the car finally gave up. Dead. Plenty more dilly-dallying ensued before the driver finally hailed down a passing motorist and sent Richard, me, Lyubov and her husband off with this random stranger. This was at 6:30pm, with 55 kilometres still to travel to Almaty, and our hopes of the opera now depending on the heaviness of the traffic. But oh, dear goodness, this new car had air conditioning! Life was good.

At 6:45pm, Lyubov asked me if I was ok. In a calm voice I explained that I was very disappointed that we were running so late for the opera, as we had paid a significant amount for the tickets and didn't want them to be wasted. She nodded and seemed to understand. But five minutes later, she called to our new driver to pull over to the side of the road. She and her husband had spotted an old village woman sitting under an umbrella, selling cherries out of a box. And they simply could not miss this opportunity for such a bargain. So there we sat on the side of the road, Richard and I like stunned mullets, watching the minutes tick over, and waiting while Lyubov and hubby tested the cherries, bartered the price, had a good old chat with the woman, and then slowly loaded the crate of 'bargain' goodness into the boot. They didn't appear to have even an inkling of an idea of why this might be a problem.

At 7:00pm, as I was imagining the curtain rising for the first scene, I asked Lyubov how far we still had to go. 

'Twenty minutes', she replied.

Well, we could live with that. We would miss twenty minutes of opera, but we'd still see the bulk of it. No point stressing about it, we thought. Richard especially was optimistic, with the following rationale floating around in his head: 'Casey would still get to see some opera. But Richard won't have to sit through all three hours of it.' A win-win situation in his eyes!

As we drove into the outskirts of Almaty, we could tell that we were heading in the wrong direction to our hostel. We seemed to drive past our area of the city, and into the far south. Eventually, the car stopped and Lyubov's husband got out. Apparently he was more important than us, and warranted a direct taxi service to his home, at the expense of us. Now very angry, I confronted Lyubov and demanded an explanation. She admitted it was still another twenty minutes of driving back to our hostel, across to the other side of the city. She got another mouthful from me, as I ranted about the expectations of paying customers on a private tour.

We pulled up at our hostel at 7:45pm. Lyubov, bless her, had the audacity to make the following comment:

'Oh, you are only five minutes late'.

What on earth! Now I was convinced she was delusional.

She got a final onslaught of choice words from me before I slammed the car door.

Richard and I threw on some half-decent clothes, and ran to the Opera Theatre, which was ten minutes away. We thought that if we could get there before interval ended, we may still be permitted entry.

We arrived, and the theatre was eerily quiet. Confused, we entered the foyer, noticing all the lights were turned off, and the doors to the auditorium were locked. 

Could things possibly get any worse?

We approached the lady in the ticket office (the same non-English speaking one who sold us the tickets in the first place). Without a word, she simply took our tickets and passed us a refund for the entire cost. Unable to communicate our questions, we walked outside, utterly bewildered. Then we saw the blank white backdrop where the advertisement for this 'night of nights' used to be, and it dawned on us... the performance had been cancelled!

So there were were, hot, out of breath, sweating, but with 6,000 tenge in our hands. We burst out laughing. What a fitting way to end a crazy day. Disappointed that there would be no opera at all, we walked to Hardee's (Richard's preference to the opera in the first place) to drown our sorrows with burgers, chips and post-mix pepsi.

After a hot night's sleep, tossing and turning in the stuffy hostel room, the next day we headed straight to the tour agency who had sold us the day tour. Max, the consultant we had dealt with, was a lovely sweet man, and we knew our bad experience wasn't his fault, but we felt he needed to know, and we planned to asked for a partial refund of our money.

With my previous history of filing complaints with vigour, Richard opted to sit outside on the steps instead of accompanying me in to see Max. I can't think why he didn't want to watch the performance. But, there was no performance. I didn't need to ask for a refund. Max was horrified at what I told him as soon as I started speaking. He was so apologetic, announcing that he would never employ the driver or guide through his agency again. He was mortified about the car issues, shocked Lyubov's behaviour, as well as her husband's free-riding at our expense. He jumped on to the phone immediately to report the issue. Without me uttering another word, he had refunded us 12,000 tenge, and was visibly devastated that this experience might have blighted our impression of Kazakhstan as a whole. We assured him that this wasn't the case, and we were incredibly grateful that he had acted in our interests so quickly.

So, with an extra 6,000 tenge from the opera, 12,000 from Max, and 2,000 that we had refrained from handing over in tips to the driver and guide, we suddenly realised our financial situation was a whole lot better than it appeared 24 hours ago!

We can laugh about it now, but at the time, we just wanted to hit our heads against a brick wall. Actually, I wanted to hit Lyubov's head against a brick wall, but I wasn't sure of Kazakhstan's law against such behaviour. So I refrained.

There are some lovely, caring, intelligent people in this world. Unfortunately, Lyubov and associates fit into another category altogether.

Thank goodness the Petroglyphs were so amazing! Despite so many things going wrong, we still have fantastic memories of our day in the Kazakhstan steppe.

We now say farewell to Kazakhstan as we bide our time before our train departs Almaty for Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Today we visited the famous Medeu Ice Rink, and given that it's summer, we whizzed around the rink on a tricycle instead of ice skates, admiring the blur of mountains that rushed by. Now, I am typing this blog post sitting in a 24 hour cafeteria near our hostel, it's almost midnight, and I am wondering how we will pass the next four hours until our train leaves at 4:44am. People watching has proven entertaining so far...

Kazakhstan: What a crazy, but lovable country! We'll be back one day.