Update Map
Kazakhstan Continues
Things have improved since our last update, as we have mainly been on a brand new road – yay!! Only one real diversion of 30km on sandy tracks with a load of artics chugging along at 15kph, while the construction trucks bombed about at 50kph weaving in and out of us, chucking up blinding dust! The new road has been fun as a lot of the fuel stations are not yet complete and most of the road signage is missing. This has meant a few trips into random towns searching out fuel, which has been nice as we’ve met more locals and seen how they live their daily lives. However, even the local roads aren’t immune from the incessant roadworks. We were leaving one town, following Caroline’s carefully drawn map back to the main road, only to find that the bridge we had used an hour earlier was now closed and no diversion signposted!
We did go to Aral but we didn’t get to the Ship Cemetery as the road was too rough and salty for Mario. Aral itself was very hot and dusty meaning we only had a quick look round the market, scrounged some water off the local carwash and moved on. We did want to visit Kyzylorda which was the previous, previous capital of Kazakhstan (the capital seems to change along with their President). However, this part of the main road was dual carriageway, only there was a contraflow in place with no obvious means of getting off – and again no road signs.
Sunday was a fantastic day as we actually managed to find 2 separate places we wanted to visit – we felt like proper tourists rather than two idiots bumbling their way through random towns! Our first stop was Fortress Sauran, the remains of14th century Silk Road city, which was very interesting although the lack of any visitor information meant we weren’t quite sure what we were looking at. Our second stop was the Yasaui Mausoleum in Turkistan, described as the country’s greatest architectural monument and most important pilgrimage site. This had beautiful mosaics on the rear outside but the front has remained unfinished since 1405 when the bloke who was building it died. It’s still got scaffolding poles sticking out the front. Inside there were a series of small rooms, a lot of which were just bare white tiles. However, one room was used as a mosque where we stopped to listen to a boy of about 8 singing his prayers, which was quite enthralling.
Sunday was also great as it was the first day in Kazakhstan where we haven’t been stopped by the police, we filled up our water using a farmer’s massive pump, we bought a huge melon at the roadside only yards from where it had grown and after many days of looking we finally managed to buy some glue for Mario’s drooping lino! In Kazakhstan they call glue ‘clay’, who knew?!
Monday the police got their revenge. We were overtaking along with all the other traffic, but only we were stopped and told to pay US$433 at a bank to get our driving licence back, or US$200 on the spot. Unfortunately for them, we couldn’t get into our safe due to the door jamming, so managed to pay them off with US$50 and 50Euros notes which Caroline’s Mum had sewn into a curtain hem for emergencies! Thanks Mum!
Monday did bring some nicer surprises – mountains, proper size trees, cooler temperatures and less dust! We managed to find a campsite we’d read about, right next to the Aksu-Zhabagly Nature Reserve. In fact last night there was evidence of a big bear passing right by Mario (thankfully we weren’t in a tent) and wolves could be heard too. The road to the camp was a bit tricky, but well worth it. We’ve now been here for 5 nights and planning on moving on tomorrow towards Taraz. We’ve mainly been relaxing, reading and the odd walk to the village for supplies. We did take the opportunity to sort a few jobs on Mario, including emptying the “garage” to get rid of all the dust and improve the door seals – much to the amusement / bemusement of the campsite owner, Ruslan. Caroline has spent 2 days abusing the onsite washing machine.
Ruslan and his extended family are lovely and have looked after us very well. All the other guests have been great including a lovely Kazak couple who were just leaving and gave us two beers, 3 French lads with whom we shared our own beers and 2 Kazak families who flash mobbed us one evening and were most entertaining! One of the mothers, Zarina, spoke excellent English and even wrote us a good luck and best wishes note which will make it home to one of Caroline’s scrapbooks!
It’s been great just relaxing after a tough couple of weeks on the road – we were both so relieved to find such a beautiful place to stay for a week, we had a little blub! It’s amazing what a change of scenery and some clean sheets can do! We’ve recharged our batteries and are now looking forward to hitting the road again. Soon we will be in Kyrgyzstan where hopefully we will also have some downtime before what will be a manic month crossing China.
TTFN