Kazakhstan
After our late arrival the night before, we were given a midday departure for our mystery tour. I managed to get details of the mysterious plan and I wasn’t keen. Spending a day with a family at their house with a sizeable bus ride, there and back. It was my idea of torture. A benevolent hostage situation. I opted to do my own thing.
I chose to go walking in the general direction of the Almaty Central Mosque. It took a while before I found it and when I did it was immediately relegated to bottom spot for all time mosque visits. As I left my shoes outside (I’m a begrudging adherent to mosque etiquette), I wondered whether “shoe theft” is a thing in Muslim circles. One could wear a scruffy pair of stinky sneakers, and feel relatively confident that they will be untouched and awaiting the return of your feet. Or you could arrive in a pair of new swanky Balenciaga’s and have a highly anxious mosque visit. The absence of a “shoe monitor” certainly opens the way for opportunistic footwear pilfering. Anyway, it wasn’t a mosque of note.
My wayward meandering on the way back to the hotel took me by a market and I immediately found myself in the haberdashery section. I don’t think I’ve used the word “haberdashery” in any of my blogs to date. I persevered in search of a magnet and I found several.
Kazakh people certainly have a look. Far more Mongolian than the other stans. Almaty was the capital of Kazakhstan until 1997 when it switched to Astana, further north. Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world and with just over 20 million people it is one of the least populated countries per square kilometre. It is twice as large as the other four “stans” put together. Almaty means “grandfather of apples”. I bet you didn’t know that. Protests are not allowed in Kazakhstan. It is also the least Muslim stan with only around 70% – the others are all over 90%.
On Wednesday, Natalia took us on a walking tour of her home city. One particular monument was of interest. Two women, from WWII, had been celebrated, and one of them, Aliya Moldagulova was a Soviet sniper who killed over 30 Nazi soldiers. Sadly, she died at the age of 18 of injuries she had sustained.
We hopped on the metro which has one line with just 11 stations. Every time we’ve used rail or underground in the stans, we’ve been required to go through x-ray machines.
Next was a Russian Orthodox Church which had no benches. Churchgoers have to stand (to be closer to God), and some services can last five hours. The church was completed in 1907 and survived an earthquake in 1911. The engineer responsible for building the church ran round it three times in celebration.
Then we visited a nearby WWII memorial which had far too many people milling about for my liking. Adjacent was a museum of Kazakh musical instruments. You can no doubt sense how excited I was about that. I abandoned the group at that point and headed back to hotel.
Thursday was my 60th birthday, and when I arrived in reception I was greeted by my fellow travellers with birthday wishes. Artistic Bonnie had created a card from paper procured at the paper factory. And a bottle of Georgian Sauvignon Blanc, which I believe doubles as paint stripper.
We had a long day of travel ahead and our first destination was Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan’s number one tourist attraction, dubbed by locals as the little brother of the Grand Canyon. What it lacked in colour, width, depth, awe, etc. it made up for in accessibility. We were able to walk down to the bottom of the canyon and follow it until we reached a river.
We arrived at our accommodation, another guesthouse – and the others went to see a second lake transported in a Soviet vehicle equipped for shit roads and crossing water. I stayed behind – I’d had enough “bus time”.
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The lake I didn’t visitMy birthday celebrations continued at dinner and the team had arranged for a rather tasty cake and Natalia had managed to get a picture of the group and framed it. They were all very sweet indeed.
We left our sparse guesthouse and headed for Lake Kolsay 30 minutes away. It was a national holiday called Victory Day, similar to VE Day when Nazi Germany was defeated – just a day later. It meant that there were lots of people also visiting the lake. Too many people for my sensibilities. The lake was okay. I’ve seen better.
We passed back via the guesthouse on the way to the border with Kyrgystan. Once again the scenery was breathtaking dampened slightly by the relatively cramped conditions on the minibus. We’d been spoiled with full sized coaches.
The scenery was splendid as we drove to the border. The roads, not so much. The border crossing was extremely efficient and we were done in about 20 minutes. We had four nights in Kazakhstan and it was sufficiently enjoyable. Uzbekistan is still my favourite.
Just a little about wedding traditions in Kazakhstan. One particular tradition stated that the women couldn’t be more than 8 years older than the man, and the man couldn’t be more than 25 years older than the woman. There used to be an official matchmaker who would approach the father of the bride and suggest a union. If the father accepted the proposal, the matchmaker would give the father a horse. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Also, it wasn’t unknown for a marriage to be arranged before the bride and groom were even born. There were a number of other traditions that deserve their own blog. I thought I’d give you some highlights.
Next stop, Kyrgyzstan.
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