The walls of mordor
Saturday morning at 11.32 sharp we locked my house and left for the far east. Since Schiphol is in the wrong direction we decided to take the train to Frankfurt instead. This option provided us with a much nicer lunch setting; sitting comfortably in the bistro-wagon cruising the german countryside. We managed to beat the Air Astana airplane to the gate, to the apparent surprise of our crew-to-be, who did expect to see an airplane being emptied at that point. An hour later than planned we had lift off and the strong Russian accent of the staff and the overwhelming amount of non-latin characters gave us our first impression of the weeks to come.
The next morning, or evening depending on your timezone, we found our selfs on Almaty Airport. We left our plane and followed the herd with on one side beautiful mountains and suddenly on our left side free unrestricted access to Kazakhstan. This turned out to be an error by our herd and within seconds several officials with large caps and walkytalkies guided us in the correct direction. We had to pass a very serious looking official who stamped three times on our visa without moving anymore muscles then strictly necessary. Once this was done nothing real was between us and our freedom/holiday. We collected our bags and walked to my parents who were already waiting. Almaty is a reasonable big town and (un)fortunately the airport is at the diametrically opposite side of Almaty in respect to my parents apartment. An half hour drive showed us the beautiful townscape of Almaty *ahem*.
After refreshing ourselves (power nap FTW) we went for the sightseeing point of Kok-tobe. An old soviet cable car, with serious lack of lubricating oil, brings you a few hundred meters above the city. From here one can see the entire town of Almaty and the very stunning mountains that tower above it, weather permitting that is. Luckily it was reasonable clear so we could see the rain clouds rolling in from quite a distance.
The walls of mordor
Once the rain started we went down and head for the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. Here we stumbled into an Eastern service which included the head-honcho of the Kazakh division. The red carpet, which was rolled down all the way to the street, was strictly forbidden for everybody but the (presumably) arch-bishop of Kazakhstan. Once he had entered, the red carpet was removed and the people could flock in to attend the service. The service itself consisted mainly of singing. To be able to enter the orthodox clergy you apparently need to have strong vocal skills since the priest’s song, without aid of music or amplifiers, filled the entire Cathedral. The choir, which answered the songs of the priests, had spread themselves over the Cathedral to make their job slightly easier, though not less stunning. Since it was apparent custom to enter and leave the service at will we left before the end, once the priests disappeared into a secluded area of the Cathedral.
Evening was already approaching so we left for home. Since information of my parents told us that China is a no-go for backpackers we have given up on China and are now planning our new travel schedule. Hopefully this will include a few days track high in the mountains and sleeping in yurds. Tomorrow we will investigate our options at the Ecotourism agency here in Almaty.
Traveling light!?
Well, the light bit is yet to be determined by the airport. I’ve started packing for my holiday. This is most of the stuff I will bring along on my holiday and it all needs to fit in the blue backpack in the front. I now notice that the three fuel bottles and the 5 books are missing from this picture. But the books go into the hand lugage and the fuel bottles will be divided between Sierk’s and my backpack.
The power of compression bags: all this fits into one backpack (except the couch obviously) 
Holiday
As of 18.30 local time I’m on holiday. I’m going to visit my parents in Kazakhstan and friends in Nepal. I’ve created a very detailed travel schedule here. Which is mainly this detailed because we don’t know yet if we can enter China, which is exactly in between our starting point (Green) and our end point (Red).
I’m traveling with Sierk and we hope to update this blog and maybe even update our beautiful travel schedule. However, my house is rented to foreigners which might trip over my server and accidentally disconnect it from the internet. So if suddenly this blog ceases to exist, that’s probably what happened.
BTW the map is using the data from the OpenStreetMap project. As you can see it is slightly lacking, especially in China. Unfortunately I don’t have a GPS datalogger to fill this gap.