Global Village
Driving with Alikhan and his chauffeur we were crossing a Lord of the Rings-esk landscape. This feeling amplified by us coming from Gallandia, at least according to the Kazakh. We were driving away from urban life, the towns became ever smaller and sparser. In between we saw herds of sheep and cattle roaming the green landscape. Until the point where our cellphone lost coverage and the high quality tarmac road suddenly turned into a potholed gravel one. At this point we could see the end of the valley and the foothills of the Ugam mountains behind it. Here in a tiny farmers village we stopped at the house of Mills. Not hindered by any knowledge of English he bid us a hearty welcome to his house. He showed us the yurt that would become our residence for the coming two nights.
His farm and in fact the entire village had striking similarities with other farms and villages I’ve visited when I was younger. For me it was easy to recognize the different aspects of the farm and the purpose of the different tools. With the aid of his phonetic English phrasebook and our phonetic Russian phrasebook we managed to talk a bit about his farm while he showed us the farm and hinterland. After lunch he brought us on top of the hills on the other side of the valley. From here we had an unobstructed view of the nothingness that is the Kazakh steppe. Everywhere we could spot small and larger herds of sheep, cattle and horses, often unaccompanied by humans.
Horses in Tolkien-land
In the evening we went down the road to visit the other foreigners in town. They turned out to be 2 women and one man from New Zealand. They were traveling from Beijing to London by train. They told us about the very interesting twilight ritual that happened in the village. Apparently the sheep herding and the herding of the younger cows was a communal effort. A few herdsmen took all the sheep and the younger cattle to the pastures uphill. In the evening they would return over the main road and the animals would branch of to their respective stables. Also, at least as interesting, they told us that everyone leaving China is being searched for subversive pictures on Tibet. They also had met travelers who attempted the same trip as we originally had planned. They all were stopped and turned back before they could reach Tibet. This made our ‘loss’ of Tibet slightly more bearable.
The next day we set out for a 20 km hike to the mountains. According to our Kazakh guide it would involve some extreme climbing. We walked into a valley and at the point where it turned into a gorge with almost vertical sides our guide decided that this was a good point to do the ‘extreme’ climbing to the top. From there the mountains seemed to be no further then an hours walk. They did so for the rest of the trip. The valley and especially the gorge had a raw nature feeling to it. However on the highlands above it cattle and horses grazed. We past several herds of animals until the guide stopped at one and carefully counted them and send them to a different direction in the end. He explained us later that there were his horses.
Sierk having a ball with balance
We had lunch in the herdsmens hideout in the hills. One of the herdsmen we had met had taken our food and prepared a nice warm lunch. This surely was communitybased tourism. Once back home we had some quality time with our beds before dinner and discussed possible Dutch-Kazakh trading oppertunities with our guide and host before turning in.
Nachttrein naar Shymkent
We managed to get the correct ticket for the night train to Shymkent. My parents dropped us off at Almaty II and we immediately ran into a few locals who spoke English. They explained that they were three brothers, but only one was actually going, the others merely were there to say goodbye. We were more then an hour early so there was ample time to do so.
Our four bunk coupe got filled up with an elderly man and a young woman. The gentleman was very talkative but he had not yet mastered the English language, nor did we do so for either the Russian or the Kazakh language. Fortunately the young woman was learning English by herself so she functioned as an interpreter. The old guy told us a short history of nearly everything involving Kazakhstan, Russia and the former USSR.He was very firm in his believe that the fall of the USSR was a good thing. He called that era and everything related to it ‘blogga’ meaning something like bad or evil. Since he had to wake up at 5 to get off at Taraz he retired early and the three of us continued our conversation on the top bunks.
Our neatly made beds
The one-of-three-brothers and the the woman both offered their services to help us find our way in Shymkent. This was not necessary since our eco-tourism coordinator was supposed to waitt the station with a sign saying ‘Steven’. His sign ‘Steifan’ was close enough for us to recognise. He took us to a car and after overcoming the language barrier he understood that we had not yet had breakfast. We had bought breakfast, but left it in the fridge in Almaty. He then took us to a small restaurant in Sayram where we had Shashlyk for breakfast(!).
After breakfast the car went further into the endless steppe ever closer to the looming mountains.