Richard writes:
We were very excited about our trip to central and southern Kazakhstan. In Almaty we had arranged to leave our large backpacks at our hostel and only take a smaller bag for our five days away visiting the cities of Aralsk and Turkestan. We have settled into our nomadic lifestyle so much, that it now feels completely normal. As a result, the packing of smaller bags, felt like a holiday, a trip away from our "everyday life".
Casey has already covered the joys of Kazakh summer train travel, but suffice to say, the trains were ridiculously hot. The pressure was therefore on Aralsk and Turkestan to make up for the pain endured . . . They didn't disappoint.
Our Kazakh experience so far has been one of modern large cities that are not dramatically different to cities in Australia and the UK. So much so, we both agree Almaty is a city that we could easily live in. This familiarity was dealt a mortal blow as we ventured into provincial Kazakhstan, where it is clear that life is very different.
Central Kazakhstan is sandy, very sandy. There is desert everywhere. The only interruption to this monotony is the odd herds of horses and camels. After being collected from Aralsk train station by our arranged tour guide and eating breakfast at our homestay, we were driven into this sandy abyss. Our destination was the environmental disaster that is the Aral Sea. Up until the 1960s, this sea was an enormous expanse of water straddling the Kazakh and Uzbek border, with fishing sustaining the economies of the villages that surrounded it. It even flowed as far as the city of Aralsk where we were staying, but the drive to the shoreline is now several hours. The rivers that flowed into the Aral Sea were rerouted to support Soviet designed irrigation systems and it eventually subsided to almost nothing. In Kazakhstan, projects supported by the World Bank and local NGOs have built dams amongst other strategies to restore the sea, and there has been some success with the sea increasing in size, but it is still a fraction of its original size. Fishing is again a major part of the local economies with new freshwater fish species introduced as the size increases and its salinity decreases. Sadly in Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea is beyond help and has almost completely disappeared.
The subsiding of the Aral Sea has however created a bizarre spectacle, that both Casey and I were keen to see, thus motivationg the several thousand kilometre round trip to Aralsk. This spectacle is the ship graveyard in the desert. A drive over the former seabed from the village of Zhalanash took us to three rusting ships, surrounded by nothing more than sand and camels. It is a truly eerie sight, that is confusing to the senses. It makes for some spectacular photographs however. The ships were left, when the sea subsided. The hulks wedged in the sand and they have stayed put ever since. We were told there used to be twelve ships, but there are now only three. The other nine have been broken up by scrap metal scavengers, so we were pleased to see the ships we saw, before these fall victim to the same fate.
From here, we travelled onwards to the actual Aral Sea. An extremely bumpy drive of over an hour in what was now excruciating heat. The heat was not just causing ourselves distress. As we drove, I pointed out to Casey two goats chasing each other in the midday sun. They frolicked without a care in the world, until one, with no warning, just collapsed, and made no attempt to raise himself from the ground. The poor thing's heart had presumably given out, attempting such exertions in temperatures that must have been at least 40 degrees celsius. The look on the goat that had been being chased was hilarious, even if it pulled at the heart stings a little. A look of total confusion as to where his buddy and playmate was.
The perfect tonic to cool us down was a swim. We changed into bathers and gingerly approached the sea. The water was warm, but it provided some relief from the relentless heat. We didn't venture far from the shore, but we enjoyed the experience immensely.
Our evening involved a walk around the city of Aralsk. It didn't take long. The people were friendly, but there was very little to see. The receding of the Aral Sea has seen this city's size reduce, due to its economy being devastated by the decline in the fishing industry. The city is also blighted by vicious sand and salt storms that get blown in by strong winds. Life is simple, and people didn't seem to go without, but it was clear that this was a very different world to the big cities of Astana and Almaty.
We ate traditional Kazakh food in the evening at our homestay. This included plov (horse meat and vegetables in rice) and a soup dish with boiled peppers stuffed with rice and meat. Our entertainment revolved around the four children who lived at the house. The only English they knew was 'hello', but they never grew tired of saying the word repeatedly and waiting for us to say it back. Casey left me to entertain them whilst she showered, only to return from the shower to find them using our bed as a trampoline and practising their art skills on our white board.
The next morning we caught the train to Turkestan, where we were to arrive that evening. This train was exactly the same style as the trains we had caught previously that had been saunas, with one crucial difference; the windows in our booth didn't open. The reason for this, was completely deliberate and had something to do with the emergency stop alarm handles being situated in the booth. The extremities of temperature led us to developing some innovative coping strategies. We again used the wet towel strategy around our neck, but also had a constant flow of iced water and Coca-Cola on the go. If we kept our insides cold this seemed to keep us cool enough to at least survive. Every station the train stopped at, we leapt into action to replenish our stocks. Here are a few pictures of the train, to give an insight of the workings of Kazakh trains!
Train toilet
Cooling strategy
Corridor view
After our sauna of a train ride we eventually arrived in Turkestan in the early evening. The ancient capital of the Kazakh territory before becoming part of the USSR. Our guide Meruert met us at the station before driving us to our hotel. On the drive from the train station, we had observed that the city was quite rundown with very few modern looking amenities, but we were looking forward to having a look around, before our day tour the following day. Before this walk, we checked into the hotel to discover the heaven that was our hotel room . . . it had air conditioning. The cool air was bliss, and we decided that things were very much on the up.
This optimism was to be destroyed only moments after leaving our hotel however. We walked towards the UNESCO world heritage listed Yasaui Mausoleum, which could almost be seen from our hotel entrance. Keen to get a better look, we braved the heat of the evening sun and followed a path in the general direction of Turkestan's main attraction. As we neared, a streetwise adolescent boy approached us, and spoke in Russian or Kazakh. We smiled and politely said we only spoke English. In the same way the children the night before did, he proceeded to repeat the only English word he seemed to know. Instead of this word being a giggly "hello" however, the word was "money". At this point neither of us were too concerned, we have both come across begging in our previous travels, if not on this trip, so we just said sorry and carried on walking. With no change in demeanour he stood in front of us and blocked our way, whilst continue to repeat "money . . . money . . . money". I was beginning to get irritated, but we both remained calm, until before we knew it the boy was diving for my zipped shorts' pocket. I am not quite sure what happened, but his attempt to extract my wallet, ended in an utter failure and he was left lying on the floor holding onto my leg, like his life depended upon it. The next second felt like an eternity, as the boy, lying on the ground, with his arms wrapped around my leg stared at me, and I stared back, neither of us knowing quite what to do next. I shook my leg, and he let go, without fuss. Somehow in the fracas, Casey managed to break a bracelet and rip some skin on her hand, but otherwise we were unscathed. Once he had let go, we hurriedly walked off. I struggled not to giggle as Casey used her strongest teacher voice to say "you leave us alone". It wasn't really the moment to laugh, but the surreal situation and Casey's classroom manner did make me smile.
We were relieved when we returned to the hotel grounds and reflected upon what had just happened, realising it could have been a lot worse. We weren't hurt, nothing was stolen, he didn't call his mates, he didn't have a weapon, etc. In truth it was an utterly pathetic attempt at a mugging, but it did shake us a little, and we have vowed to be a bit more careful as we probably had dropped our guard a little, as so far we have felt completely safe throughout the trip.
The evening was a delight. We watched the World Cup quarter final between Brazil and Chile whilst guzzling juice (we would have preferred beer, but it was Ramadan, so no beer could be served) and eating shashlik, before retiring to our air conditioned room.
The next day was brilliant and action packed. The tour was fantastic and the ever helpful and knowledgeable Meruert was on hand throughout. We visited the Ak Meshit (White Mosque) cave, a huge cave, eaten into the vast steppe. The temperature inside the cave was as cool as our air conditioned hotel room, despite the sweltering conditions outside. Later in the day we visited Otrar, a ruined village that Genghis Khan marauded through in the 13th century. Genghis savagely avenged the death of his merchant envoys in Otrar, by pouring molten silver into the eyes of the culprit; Otrar's governor. By the time we had reached Otrar, the heat was absolutely unbearable, but we with the help of our umbrellas for shade we enjoyed the visit to the ruins, especially as we had read so much about the site.
Ak Meshit Cave
Otrar
The two other main sites on our day tour were the mosques and mausoleums of Aristan-Bab (a descendant of Mohammed) and his pupil Kozha Akhmed Yasaui. The latter's is a beautiful site, that we had briefly seen the day before, only for our enjoyment to be cut short by the teenager with light fingers. Meruert works for the Yasaui mausoleum as a tour guide, and she knew everything there was to know. We saw the tomb, the mosque, the library and the burial site of the previous Khans of the region (all descendants of Genghis Khan).
Aristan-Bab Mausoleum
Yasuai Mausoleum
We saw some absolutely beautiful things in Turkestan, but I found the dusty, slightly menacing streets difficult to love. Our trip away from Almaty had been exhausting, but so worthwhile. Without spending the time to see small town Kazakhstan, we would have left the country with an extremely limited experience of just the main cities. One day, we would like to see more of this country, but with time limited, our thoughts turn to our next country; Kyrgyzstan, or at least they do after a few days in Almaty that we have to recover from this amazing experience in the heat of the Kazakh steppe.
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