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Published: December 31st 2013
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Kazakhstan..Lovely Kazakhstan...
FIRST and foremost..The blogs I have read and maybe you as well if you planned to go to Uzbekistan were not my experience at all...it was quite pleasant actually. There were no babushkas shoving and throwing elbows at all leaving Uzbekistan. The immigration process at the border is pretty straight forward as you must fill out the immigration paper again ( the one you arrived with) and stand in line where a drug sniffing cocker spaniel will lay down and want to play lol. Then you get to 2 gentleman on computers you give them you documents and they look through your stamps, fascinated almost and they give you your passport then go around the barrier and put your bags, jacket etc etc on a scanner and walk through getting wanded in the process. Afterwards we got a bit of questioning from the military as to what we were doing in Uzbekistan who we worked for etc etc and after 10 minutes of questioning you go to the booth where you wait another 5 or 10 minutes for the gentleman to stamp you out and then make the walk to the Kazak immigration where the biggest headache was
Packed!the wait...Much more pleasant and A LOT more smiles! Simple as that. I wanted to post this procedure as an updated version, as many I have read were making it sound like you will be stuck in lines for 6 hours....3 hours after we left the house we were in Kazakhstan!
Instantly I liked Kazakhstan more thank "the other stan" as I got a VERY different vibe even dealing with immigration, People were polite and always greeted you with a smile, the only thing that was a bit annoying was coming through the one lane gate you are absolutely mobbed by taxi drivers, I mean mauled grabbed and shoved in every direction lol. I haven't seen this kind of ferocity since I got off the barco in Iquitos,Peru! Anyway they all had a similar price, but we knew what we SHOULD be paying which is around 500-1000 KZT for the ride to Shymkent from the border which is a little over an hour or so. As we finally were about to agree to the 1000 KZT each a minivan pulled up with 3 people and the driver yelled "500" and 2 spots in the back left! Woohoo! We agreed
The walk to Uzbek Immigrationand jumped in..."SCORE"! We exchanged a little money at a shack there on the right side which gave us a good rate ( 152 KZT for $1) and we made our way to Shymkent!!
Arriving in Shymkent it was freezing and snowing!! and the taxi dropped us on the complete opposite side of town from where the train station and buses are located. We just decided to walk around looking for the "Mig" statue where the train and bus terminals would be. We got lost of course and after 30 minutes or so we stopped and asked a young kid, maybe 16 or 17 if he could point us in the direction of where we would need to go. He actually didn't know where the train station was located lol, but he quickly gathered his "clan" of friends and with the little bit of English they spoke ( which was actually not that bad) pointed us in a direction so we began to walk after saying thank you to the guy and his friend. After about 15 minutes of walking I could hear footsteps running and turned to look and it was 2 of the guys who
A few steps from freedom!were helping us with directions. They said they were on holiday from school and were bored and wanted an adventure! We walked and talked with them about their country and it's people as well as historical sights. They were extremely nice and it was a great feeling to know as a foreigner that there are people out there that are just genuine and would like to help and not ask for anything in return. Anyway, we ended up at an independence park where we took pictures with them and they walked us down to the end and pointed where the train station was so we thanked them for all of their hospitality and kindness and said our goodbyes as we literally walked over 5 miles I would venture to guess.
We made it down to the train station and got inside to get our tickets hoping they were not sold out because of the holiday now, we were greeted with kindness again by a local who apparently "works" there and offered to help us with getting our tickets to Almaty. It costs 3,500 Tenge for the 13 hour overnight train in Platzkart and with tickets in hand
I can see Kazakhstan!!we headed to a little cafe/restaurant we has seen across from the train station since we had a few hours to burn and ordered a few local beers. After a few beers at the bar, a local guy came up to us and said he would like for us to join him and his 3 friends at their table for a couple of drinks and chatting in English. So we grabbed our bags and went over to sit with them, turns out the guy who came to invite us works for the Kazak embassy in Afghanistan which was pretty cool. He was catching his train to Almaty before us so after 30 minutes or so we exchanged thank you's and he gave us his embassy business card so we could keep in touch. We headed to the train station 30 minutes early.
The train pulls up, and we find which car we are in and find our bunks among the locals which got a kick out of us foreigners on the train lol. We get settled and chat with the locals for about 15 minutes before Steve wanted to go to the dining cart..well to drink which
Welcome to Kazakhstan!ended up not being a good thing because after his 5th beer they were kicking him out of the car because he was becoming too loud the guy said. So after he chugged the last little bit in the mug, ( more like ran down the sides of his face) we headed to the bunks which were fun to find in the darkness. Steve was awesome enough to loan me $100 for my "Argo 2" escape from Uzbekistan plan so I would have something when I got there at least since all of my money is tied up in visas and plane tickets. So I put the $100 in my front pocket before leaving the dining car, somehow someway in the night I think the $100 fell out of my jeans pocket and I could not find it at all! I felt like shit seriously plus I had a crushing headache all night long( probably from sniffing the moldy train windows or the shashlik coal smell all night lol ) either way we arrived in Almaty to some grumpy taxi drivers in the blowing snow.....
More to come..Happy travels everyone!
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