Kazakhstan - Turgen to Almaty

Picking up from my last post where we crossed the Assy Plateau, we fell into bed, which was incredibly comfy. You never know what noises you’re going to hear during the night though. We kept getting woken by wild apples falling with a huge bang onto the tin roof! Wild apples are everywhere in this area. They’re small and green and not very tempting at all, lol.

We had a wonderful breakfast then went for a walk to nearby Bear Waterfall. There were some rickety bridges en route.

We were early enough to have it to ourselves - except for a fibreglass bear at the base of the waterfall! That’s so ridiculously tacky. This is a national park, not an amusement park.

The owner of our next accommodation at Turgen, the place we booked in a hurry the previous night when the national parks double-booked us, kindly let us check in very early. The owner was lovely. He was one of the few English speakers we had met since we left Almaty. The apartment was brand new and spacious but it lacked a few key things, like furniture! The big thing missing though was aircon. It was advertised as having it. It was hot there and we wouldn't have booked it if we knew it didn't have aircon. He promised he would being us an air cooler and we waited for at least half an hour. When he arrived the cooler was in a brand new box. He had gone to the shops and bought one!

The room was ok and the guy was helpful, but he was a bit of a ‘gunner’ – he was gunna do lots of things and didn’t actually do them.

One thing he did do though was tell us about a great local place to eat. The place made samsa, meat and onion baked in a bread dough, in huge tandyr ovens. We watched in amazement as two men took turns bending down into the hot ovens to stick the bits of dough-wrapped meat on its inside. It took them as long to load the oven up as it did for us to eat our meal. We were sweating just eating in the warm place – they were half inside the oven!

The huge, round bread was also baked in the tandyr ovens. I have no idea how they get those patterns on them!

But best of all, the place sold plov, a traditional dish very much like pilaf, which we hadn’t tried yet. It's cooked in huge wok-like dishes and is a specialty of the 'stans. It was delicious!

We ate here the two days we were in town. It was fantastic!

We drove all the way back down the Turgen Gorge the next morning to do a big walk to Kairak Waterfall. This walk was one of the main reasons we had come here. On the way we saw these horses being trucked in. They were saddled up, ready to go.

When we got to the trailhead, there was a sign blocking the track with a picture clearly saying you can’t walk there! We learned that a landslide had knocked out seven of the nine bridges on the track. Arrgghh! We trundled back to the visitor centre, where we had spent the first night, to get info there. No staff there spoke English but a helpful young guide did. He told us about a great walk nearby but we might have to bribe the guards as the track was somehow restricted. (We still don’t know what that meant.) We found the spot and, sure enough, a ranger of some sort stopped us. He didn’t speak a word of English but made it quite clear we couldn’t enter. We tried everything, to no avail.

We backed out and resorted to Plan C. There was a lovely lake about half an hour’s drive away. I found a walk there on one of my apps, although it was much easier than the one we had originally intended to do that day. It was a Saturday, and this was local tourist territory, so we headed there quickly to beat the crowds. We pulled up in the car park and immediately saw a tall observation tower of some sort. People were climbing it, so up we went. The steps were really steep but the scary bits were the platforms between the flights of steps as there were no handrails on them, even at the highest levels!

The views from the top were amazing.

In a twist on the practice of locking a padlock on somewhere special to show your love for someone, here people tied bits of ribbon, hair ties and socks onto the railings instead! 

At the top were three young men who spoke a bit of English and we chatted for a bit. As we all moved around the top of the tower, it moved. We could feel it swaying under our feet. We didn’t hang around.

Autumn was approaching in these higher altitudes.

Issyk Lake (not to be confused with the more famous Issyk-Kul lake in Kyrgyzstan) was lovely.

The walk turned out to be surprisingly nice. We wandered past the lake and up into the forest behind it. It was beautiful.

Golf carts ran tourists along the sealed road from the car park to the lake. Just as we passed this sign, one of the golf carts drove passed with loud doof-doof music blaring....

Just as we got back to our car, people started pouring in. Good timing!

We spotted this on the drive back to Turgen. Some town names were unpronounceable to us but this one was a classic.

It was even worse in the Cyrillic script!

We explored the town of Turgen a bit, trying to get a feel for it. Most houses were quite run down. Many looked like they had never been finished, even though they were older. Many had high fences around them, in various states of disrepair.

The entrance to an apartment block.

The render and paint on a long, high wall, perhaps surrounding an abandoned factory, had peeled off, revealing old bricks underneath in various states of decay.

Gas pipes ran overhead along the streets. We’ve seen this before in Georgia. They’re always painted yellow and they’re really unattractive. They pass in front of houses and lift up over the roads. They’re a real eyesore, especially when they're in front of such spectacular mountains!

One of the strange things about this town is that it’s clearly a wedding destination. Bizarrely, not one, but two enormous stretch limos stood proudly advertising themselves on the side of the dusty main road. Three or four huge reception venues lined the main street. I have no idea why people want to come here for a wedding. On the Saturday, there were heaps of cars outside all of them.

Despite the dusty streets, the ramshackle buildings and the dilapidated shops, progress was making its way here too. I reckon this new petrol station will at least 20 times larger than any other station in town when it's finished.

Our accommodation overlooked a wide, rocky riverbed. On our last morning we walked along the riverbed and discovered that our apartment stood about four metres from the edge of a steep drop off that didn’t look very stable. If we were the owner, we’d be getting a lot of trees planted asap!

Part of the roof you can see is ours.

Again we were confused about the way that all wooden power poles are attached to separate concrete base poles. Finally, I googled it. Apparently, it's a hangover from former soviet times. Wooden poles rot easily in this soil but concrete is expensive, so they came up with this hybrid design to protect the wood and save costs.

We had to return our rental car washed, which is pretty common in this part of the world. The car washes worked a little differently. They love to soap up!

Despite all the negatives, Turgen was a good experience for us. We felt like it was our first stay in a 'real' town. It was good to see how local people lived. 

We drove carefully back to Almaty on our last day with the car. We saw this car with a large sheet of iron tied to the roof!

Again, we passed many speed cameras. Sometimes they were only 300 metres apart, which is fine except that the speed limits are very unclear! We returned the car and to our relief found that we had no tickets so far. We still have to wait two weeks to see if any more come in before they give us our fines security deposit back.

The car people booked a kind of Uber for us to go to our apartment and told us where to wait, which was a bit back off the road. The car came – and went straight past without seeing us. The car rental lady ordered another one. He turned up but wouldn't take us because we didn’t have the details on our phone. So we gave up and used an app I had downloaded previously. I asked someone to help and he did. We got into the car. After a while, the driver turned the wrong way. For 10 minutes we stood on the side of the road trying to work out what the problem was, with my translation app coming up with all sorts of nonsense for what he was saying. Finally, he told me to try Russian instead of Kazakh. It worked perfectly. I later worked out that the man who helped me had accepted the wrong address!

Finally, we got another car, this time with the help of a young girl in a pharmacy. This guy was great and took us to the right place. Hooray! 

Our apartment was great! We were on the top floor of a large complex. We had to enter all sorts of security codes to get in. It was one of the most comfortable places we've stayed in for our entire trip. The best thing though is that we had an amazing view of the mountains behind Almaty.

Three apartment blocks, one of which was ours, formed the sides of a large open space which had a small soccer court and lots of playground equipment. It was a boon for families living in the apartments as the gates were closed so the kids could run around safely, which they often did until late at night.

We saw a classic overprotective mum here. It rained one evening and the mum was holding an umbrella over her young son while he rode a scooter around. She had to run to keep up with him. Oh for goodness sake!

We were too full for dinner but felt we needed a drink after a stressful day. We bought some local Vodka and come coconut and pineapple sparkling water and had homemade cocktails in our room watching the moon rise over the lit city with the huge Tian Shan mountains looming behind. Can’t complain really!

After a great sleep, we spent the next day just getting things organised. We would be heading to Kyrgyzstan next and there’s always a lot to do and to remember when we switch to a new and challenging country. The best part was that we finally found a programme of the World Nomad Games and could buy tickets! I’ll come back with more about that when we’re there.

The hot day turned cloudy and in the late afternoon it started to rain. It was wonderful! The temperature dropped significantly and as I write this, the rain is thrumming down.

We loved our time in Kazakhstan. Some places were far more interesting than others, but that's how it is. It's a huge country and we only saw one small corner of it. There's lots more to explore!

Heather and John

Kazakhstan - Crossing the Assy Plateau

I had read somewhere that there was a fantastic back road to our next destination, Turgen Gorge. It seemed like a very adventurous route, climbing through mountains and across the Assy Plateau, something that immediately appealed to us. We asked a few people about it trying to work out if it was doable. It turned out that our host’s husband had driven it a month ago, so he gave us great info. It was about five hours’ drive; two hours on good sealed roads then three hours on remote, four-wheel-drive roads. It was the three-hour leg that was the interesting part. We decided to do it and left at 10am, allowing plenty of time.

For those of you who follow with a map (I’m thinking of you, Don and Bee!) the tricky road starts at Kokpek and finishes at Batan.

First, we backtracked past Charyn Gorge along the long, straight roads that run through the plains, dodging the occasional rain shower.

We turned off near Kokpek towards Bartogay Reservoir (google maps calls it a lake). We played dodgems with the potholes on this stretch of road.

The reservoir was a stunning light blue.

It was a scenic spot to pull up and eat leftovers for lunch.

Layla, our host at our previous accommodation, said she felt the lake was mysterious, like Loch Ness. I can’t say we felt that but there was mist rising off it occasionally.

From here the road got rougher. To our amazement, just as we started dealing with the first of the difficult ascents and descents, a cyclist appeared coming from the other direction! What a feat it was to cycle this road!

Soon we hit really rough patches, particularly in gullies. Steep, rocky tracks curved down the sides of hills. Sometimes I had to get out and guide John as the huge bonnet of the Chinese tank obscured some of the view of the road. Sometimes I stayed in the car and hung on for dear life. The highest speed we reached for a couple of hours was 20km/hr.

The scenery grew more and more spectacular.

We started coming across mobs of horses. There were sometimes hundreds in a mob. By then end of the day, we must have seen thousands of them!

Further on, we arrived at a series of water throughs, just as a mob of horses arrived.

The horses were always shaking their heads and swishing their tails. You can see why in this pic. I'm not sure if they were flies or bugs, but they sure annoyed the horses.

We soon passed shepherds on horseback with large flocks of sheep. We had to slowly move through them as they were all over the road. We always gave the shepherds a smile and a wave and we got some wonderful smiles back.

In one mob were a few goats and one lone young bull, dragging a rope from a halter.

There were so many animals! But sometimes, the plains were just empty and awe-inspiring.

The scenery became more spectacular as we climbed through the rugged hills. It was amazing! Every time we turned a bend, another stunning scene opened up. My camera was running hot from taking so many pics.

The sometimes steep, sometimes tricky roads continued to make sure we kept our wits about us.

 

Finally we descended to a river where there were actually trees growing along it. They were the only trees for miles. There were some gorgeous spots there.

The scenery kept changing – now there were craggy rock formations.

Out of the blue, we came across a house next to a boom gate across the road. We had no idea what it was for. To our amazement, a young boy appeared, undid the rope that held the boom gate down and lifted it up to let us through. We’re still none the wiser.

View after view unfolded and I had to keep remembering to look behind us too.

We found a bit of a lookout point on the edge of a cliff. Two Aussies in a foreign and beautiful land.

After some more treacherous roads, we climbed up to the Assy Plateau. The mountains we were driving through disappeared and long, flat green pastures stretched on forever. A river snaked and spread slowly across the plateau.

The Kazakh nomads spend the summers here in yurts, looking after their animals while they graze on the vast plains. Green pastures dotted with white yurts spread for mile after mile. Most of these nomads only spend the summer here and they winter in ‘real’ houses at lower altitudes.

Each yurt seemed to have some sort of shed, a large set of yards where the grass had been turned to mud from being trampled down and one or two horses fully saddled up and hobbled 100m or so from the yurt. It’s amazing how consistent these three things were.

I assume that the herds of animals were brought into the yards each night. Shepherds usually stayed with them out on the plains during the days.

There were huge flocks of sheep here, and again there were hundreds in a flock. They were fat-tailed sheep with large pads of fat each side of their bums that wobbled hilariously as they walked or ran. There were also a few goats and a good number of cows.

Only the poor horses got hobbled, although most in the large herds ran free. The horses were generally gorgeous. How cute is this little fella?

The road, like the river, branched out into numerous tracks across the grassy plateau. The tracks were much smoother here and we sometimes sped along at 40km/hr! We crossed creeks multiple times.

At one stage the shallow river was the road.

 

It was truly amazing to see such an ancient lifestyle still happening today. There must have been a few hundred families living there. As there are no fences, and the yurts aren’t permanent, I don’t know how they work out who camps on which piece of ground. These were very genuine nomad camps We both felt privileged to have been able to witness this.

The grass was all eaten low but there was plenty of it. The animals were mostly in good condition.

It wasn’t all traditional of course. Some yurts had 4x4s parked outside and one lone renegade rounded up his sheep on a motorbike. But he was definitely the exception. Horses still reigned supreme here.

Some yurts were set in spectacular locations!

The trip was supposed to take nearly five hours. Five hours came and went, and we were still passing yurt camps on the plateau. The plateau and yurts went on for hours at our slow speed. As excited as we were with everything, the day was getting long and we were getting tired. It was difficult driving and poor John did it all. Six hours came and went, and we were still passing yurts on the plateau. Finally, we started to descend. I kept expecting the road to improve but it didn’t. We descended right into Turgen Gorge, our destination, on really rough roads.

Seven hours after we started, we drove into the small village we had planned to stay in. I had the exact co-ordinates of our accommodation from a link they sent me. The link took us out of the village, however when we arrived there was nothing but a river and a few scrubby trees. We drove back to the village and found the visitor centre, which is where our national park accommodation was supposed to be. It was closed. We asked a number of people about it but nobody spoke English. I couldn’t call the National Parks head office as there was no phone signal or wifi. Finally, I found a lady who spoke a bit of English and she showed me where I could pick up wifi. I called the parks office and learned that not only was the link they sent me wrong, but so was the address. Our accommodation was in the next village! Finally, 8.5 hours after we left Saty, we found it.

I found a man standing behind a desk in the dark. He spoke no English but by showing him my booking on my phone he could work out which room was ours. In the dark we couldn’t see much of what would be our home for the next three days. We put our gear in our room and went straight to dinner. I then received another message from the parks head office. They had double booked and we had to leave the next morning! We now had to find accommodation for the weekend at the last minute, and we were close to Almaty, where everything books out on weekends. We finally booked something. To be honest, it’s the only place available in the whole area so we hope it’s ok!

We need a shower and bed. Goodnight! 

Heather and John