After a sweaty, but interesting 30 hour train ride. We arrived in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, with nowhere to stay!
BUT! All was not lost, for Couchsurfing was on hand to help us out, in the form of Aigerim, a riduculously fun and interesting girl who allowed all of us to sleep in her living room at short notice! Sweet!
Independence Square
You could definitely sense a increase in wealth when comparing Tashkent with Almaty. Huge 4x4s, sports cars, expensive restaurants.... You could instantly tell that earnings from resource rich Kazakhstan were being spent well here. The Tein Shan mountains looming over the city created an epic backdrop and it felt significantly milder than Tashkent, which was just unbelievably hot!
'Kazakhstan' in Russian Cyrillic.
We did a bunch of walking and sightseeing on our first day, seeing a nice mixture of old school Soviet architecture and monuments as well as more modern a futuristic buildings. The city haad a good vibe, and it felt that we really had taken one step closer to Asia proper.
Oil boom architecture
Awesome night out
That night, in true Kazakh fashion, we went out with some of Aigerim's friends to sample Almaty's nightlife. One too many vodka bottles later (and a free Jack Daniels t-shirt I won at a bar raffle!) we were stumbling around the dancefloor, somewhere, having an incredible time (as far as I can remember) and practising our (very) limited Kazakh and Russian on various tables of curious locals.
You can buy beer by the 3L bottle in supermarkets! AMAZING.
An interesting tradition here was that a lot of the time you apparently go and eat dinner at the club! After a hearty meal of Lagman or Plov, over a lot of vodka, it is only natural to get up from the table and start dancing to some Russian electro!
Early the next morning (we were still quite intoxicated), Aigerim took us with her friends into the mountains for ECOFEST, a music festival sporting various performers from Kazakhstan, Russia and the Ukraine.
ECOFEST
It was refreshingly cooler in the mountains and after sleeping in the warm sun and swiming in the icy cold river for a bit to nurse our hangovers, we were back in the game, despite being offered (politely forced) to drink more vodka by locals. As I tried to explain to a local Russian what I meant by the word ''hungover'', I was continually cut off by her asking: ''But why not?''
We also got interviewed by 2 magazines, a lot of people there were quite perplexed as to why any foreigners like us where here. A man asked Sam: ''ISRAEL?! ISRAEL?!'' To which Sam replied: ''No, I'm english! Why?''
''You look rich and smart!''
The next day Natasha (finally) arrived after missing her original flight to Almaty (it wasn't actually her fault!) and that day we had lunch with the infamous David from Stantours. This was the company who helped us out with our VISAS and our guide in Turkmenistan. For the record, if you ever feel like hanging out in Central Asia, THIS is your man!
Road to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
With our trip coming to an end in a couple of weeks, we decided to head off to Kyrgyzstan, before our flight back home from Almaty.
After another hot and dusty car ride and an innumerable number of taxi drivers trying to rip us off, we arrived in Kniva.
Exploring
This town was particularly famous during the 'Great Game'; an imperialist struggle between the empires of Britain and Russia over control of western Asia during the 1800s. Charlie constantly made sure we were well aware of all the important details, after having read 'The Great Game', by Peter Hopkirk.
Although many of the old buildings had been seriously renovated, parts of them are said to be as old as 800 years.
What we quickly learned that despite some of the now famous Silk Road towns being almost 3000 years old, little remains of their ancient architecture. This was due to the Mongol hordes during the 1200s (Chinggis Khan quite enjoyed destroying cities), but also due to many earthquakes, some of them pretty big apparently!
Back in the day
Kniva is known as the 'Museum City' and it did not take long for us to see why. The old city had been entirely renovated, which, to some, might have taken away some of the historical charm. But for us, it was great, you could really feel what things might have been like back then hundreds of years ago. Well, minus all of the tourist souvenir vendors, the Uzbek restaurants, and the legions of French tourists. Yes! Tourists! We hadn't seen them for a while but (for whatever reason) there were SO many Frenchies hanging around in large tourist groups being shepherded around by a guide. After days in the desert, it all seemed a bit surreal.
Chilling in the shade with a view.
This was where slaves were held, bought and sold.
Taking in the atmosphere
Hanging out around the old city walls at sunset.
Road Trip!
After a couple of days relaxing within the walls of the old city, and trying to fight back some of the stomach bugs we had been experiencing, we continued on to our first Silk Road city: Bukhara.
One of many police checkpoints.
Here there were even more tourists, I was so surprised by how many there were. I guess Uzbekistan does have some form of thriving tourist industry after all! Quite ironic considering how much bureaucracy there is when applying for a VISA! Again, Bukhara has a fantastic, long and illustrious history (It was here where al-Khwārizmī invented Algebra!), but we could see that mass tourism had been taking its toll. Many areas of the old city had been renovated with little care, almost too much you could say, whilst others were almost completely ignored.
It was in Bukhara where we started to meet more and more cyclists. All of whom had incredible stories about their trans-asian adventures. There was even a French couple who were RETURNING to France after having tandemed to Vietnam! Incredible.
Bukhara
Epic
Walking around the palace walls in Bukhara
Public transport in Bukhara
Our first glimpse of Samarkand
Our next stop was Samarkand, a city I in particular had romanticised about when I had planned this trip. After our two other interesting visits to the other historical towns in Uzbekistan, Samarkand still managed to reignite our interest in history, despite that fact that we were slowly becoming a little bit bored of the endless madrases and mosques we had seen.
Huge
It was also here we met another curious character, Daniel Sprague, who after quitting a banking job, bought a Toyota pick-up and just decided to drive it around Asia for 4 years. Why not! In addition to this, there were over 15 long distance cyclists staying at our guesthouse with us, this led to many late nights of interesting stories over tea. You could say I have already been inspired about where I want to travel to next!
Sam at the cemetery
Walking around the cemetery
On an evening stroll near our guesthouse.
One of many cyclists!
More incredible architecture.
Interesting monuments in Tashkent
Our last stop on what had become a 2 week visit to Uzbekistan was the capital, Tashkent. After a predictably confusing, disorganised, slow and hot train ride (on the 'express train'), we arrived.
This time, we finally managed to secure a host through Couchsurfing. Oybek was the perfect guy for showing us around the city and he was kind enough to let us stay for a whole 6 nights! He even let a fourth guy stay with him, Wouter, a Dutch guy who was on a small adventure of his own from the Netherlands to Singapore (I think...). Funnily enough he stayed in the same hostel as we did in Tbilisi, Georgia, only a few weeks before us! Small world!
State Museum: Hello propaganda!
Tashkent had a very functional feel about it. There were no extravagant buildings like in Ashgabat, many of the older Soviet built buildings remained. There were many long and wide boulevards, massive concrete hulks that served as government buildings, but with a population of almost 2.5 million, it felt much bigger then most of the other cities we had visited.
Important buildings (I guess)
Of course rampant corruption was visible everywhere. From police officers pulling over random cars for a 'fine', to gigantic bill boards lining the streets filled with propaganda about the country's and president's successes, to the main street being closed twice a day so that the president could drive to and from work traffic-less.
But there was certainly a more cosmopolitan feel about it, Oybek took us out to all of his favorite drinking and eating spots in town: Korean, Russian, Uzbek, Western and other Central Asian foods as well as a bikers rock bar!
Photo with a policeman, check.
Everything was pretty cheap considering it was a capital city, we took taxis everywhere (like in Turkmenistan, any car is a taxi here) and we never ate in once.
It was however RIDICULOUSLY hot. Pushing 40 degrees during the middle of the day and possibly more than that if you made the mistake to chill out in direct sunlight for too long. It was at times, unbearable, but we did indeed see everything there was to see during the week we spent there, and, to be honest, it would not have been nearly as fun as it was without Oybek and his mates!
But, like all things, good times need to come to an end at some point. Natasha was due to meet us in a few days and the 26 hour train to Almaty, Kazakhstan, only left Tashkent weekly, so we were set on leaving on another hot Wednesday afternoon. Typically we got stuck behind a couple in the queue for tickets who needed (for whatever reason) to buy six long distance train tickets. This cost 1.7 million Uzbek SOM. And they only had 100s and 200s. *sigh*. Well if something really did make Uzbekistan unique to all the other Central Asian countries it was its ridiculous and bizarre currency situation!
The radio tower
Russian rock music in Tashkent
Centre of Tashkent
Pimpin'
Bribe time.
Oybek and his buddies
Bazaar in Tashkent
Propaganda
Cheap
Plov, the national dish of Uzbekistan
Orthodox Christian church in Tashkent
Tiles painted by children from the USA and the USSR in 1988 to promote peace and an end to the arms race.
View from the radio tower over 'Tashkent Land', Uzbekistan's take on Disney world.
Saying goodbye to Oybek!
Buying train tickets, lots of money.
With Tashkent being a mere 10km from the Kazakh border, we didn't need to wait long for the train to screech to a halt, so that the painfully slow border crossing process could begin. Of course there was no ventilation, I think we were using a 3rd class carriage, and it seemed personal space wasn't very high on the list of design specifications when Soviet engineers were designing these carriages.
Oh yeah and forget about windows. I mean, who would want to have big windows to open when you could be stuck inside a 40 degree 'sun-cook-oven' (as Sam dubbed it)? After a very sweaty, but I suppose, a good period of introductions and friend making with our fellow Kazakh carriage passengers, we were off and away, the sun slowly setting over the epic, Kazakh steppe.
