After our Bishkek trauma, we hopped on a bus (again) and rode it all the way into the next country- Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan ist known to be the wealthiest of the “Stans” and it’s the 9th largest country on earth when it comes to pure size. Its capital, Astana (or Nur-Sultan, as it is still sometimes called), is in the far North of the country, and we didn’t make it there.
Its arguably most popular city however, lies very close to the Kyrgyz border and is called Almaty, and that is where we were headed.
Almaty is a beautiful city, circled by mountains, still lush with greenery and quite warm. We spent several relaxing days strolling up and down the boulevards. Almaty is swanky, it has an almost mediteranean flair and invites you to stop inside one of the many cafes along the avenues. To us, the biggest attraction was probably the BJJ gym with excellent athletes who graciously invited us to join their training. It was a lot of fun! Almaty is a city with an almost European flair- there’s E-scooters and bikes for rent via app everywhere, and you can get a cab easily and very cheaply by an Uber-like application called Yandex Go.
And of course, there is a famous bazar. It’s called the green bazar after its green roof and had lots of food, up to and including cows tongues and beshbarmak- horse sausage. Horse is quite the common meat here and the national dish a horse meat stew named after the horse sausage, beshbarmak. There were also a lot of clothes and Fred got himself a pair of pants.
Soon, however, we left Almaty and headed West. Halfway to our destination we stopped in a city called Taraz a middle sized city on our route. We did some sight seeing and looked at mausoleums, archeological sights and the pretty plaza at the city center. Turns out there was a city festival happening. We got to watch a televised event and listen to Kazakh pop music- not all of which was very good. We also witnessed a slapfight between two women in the crowd. All in all, a memorable experience.
Going even further to the West, we ended up in Shymkent. After a day of travelling and some issues with getting in booked flat we decided to go to the nearest restaurant for dinner. Turns out, this was probably the fanciest restaurant in town and we were seriously underdressed in aour sweaty and dusty travel outfit compared to elegant evening dresses. It was the type of place with fish tanks with huge sturgeons, mussels and clams. We got pizza.
We spent a day in Shymkent- again, not much to see, except for the BJJ gym. We met a local geography teacher named Dina in a restaurant who was eager to practice her English with us. We talked a lot about her six kids, school and life in Kazakhstan. As her English was extremely good, we could ask more detailed questions about living in Kazakhstan. She told us that she earned about 1000 USD per month, as did her husband. Turns out, childcare is subsidized by the state in Kazakhstan, so she and her husband pay 50 USD per child for childcare or school, respectively. This way, both she and her husband continued to work full-time. She said that having many kids was popular in Kazakhstan. All in all, it was a very interesting and pleasant conversation.
However, Shymkent was but a stop on our way to Turkestan, which housed a whole plethora of ancient monuments. Some of these were built bei Amir Timur himself. And we saw our first camels! All in all, a sucessful trip. Enjoy the photos!
