Blogs from Kazakhstan, Asia - page 3

Au passage de la frontière sino-kazakh, une page s'est de nouveau tournée. Finis le désert et les champs d'éoliennes, place aux steppes infinies et aux princes de ces terres chevauchant leurs pur sang. Au carrefour entre l'Europe, la Chine, la Russie et le Moyen Orient, nous découvrons les marques du passé à travers une population qui nous transporte depuis Alexandre le Grand jusqu'à Joseph Staline en passant par Tamerlan et Gengis Kan. Nous retrouvons nos amis Maëlys et Adrien pour un mois, avec un objectif: rejoindre la mer d'Aral en Ouzbekistan, en partant de Almaty au Kazakhstan. Nous avons suivi la route de la soie en traversant les montagnes puis les déserts, puis les déserts, et enfin les déserts! Impressionnant, il y a plus de 2000ans, des caravanes entières traversaient ces contrées, été comme hiver... Après ... read more

August 2 - Oh man, it was a long day. I started the long(er than expected) trek to Almaty, Kazakhstan. I woke up at 4:30am because I had to pee, but decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. No luck - I really had to go. I managed to wait until 5am but that only prolonged the torture. I could see dawn was starting, so I brought my camera, as it was another trek to the outhouse (the last one of the trip!). I got a couple of pictures of the morning light and headed back to bed, but there was no sleep to be had. My alarm was set for 6:30am and I knew it was close and I just couldn't sleep anymore. At 6:30 I got up to pack and get ready, ... read more

Early morning rise at the Sky hostel in Almaty, our guides Temirlan and Vladimir were to pick us up to start our journey to the base camp of the trek. They said at 6:00am, they were knocking on our doors at 5:30am! We hurriedly picked our stuff and left some things in the hostel locker that we don't need for the trek, including some food packs since the guys already bought our food supply for the next 6 days in the wild, so we brought as an add on mainly snacks. The day before, the boys met us with maps and written itinerary explaining our planned trek, not set in stone Temirlan says, depends on the weather and situation but we will try to follow the plan as best as we can, Vladimir seems to be ... read more

Day 113 Tuesday 10th May 2016 – Almaty to Aktau We are off to the city of Aktau on the other side of Kazakhstan today and we had the option of 70 hours on a train or 3 hours in a plane, with odds like that the train option really didn’t have a chance of winning. Aktau will unfortunately be our last city in Kazakhstan due to poor planning, long distances between destinations, a reduced visa stay, and a nightmare getting tickets for planes and trains. So the new capital Astana and the Soviet nuclear testing area of the Polygon were scratched. Spoke to some ex-pats and they told us that Kazakhstan has some incredible landscapes but as a tourist it is hard to explore independently, especially if you only have 15 days. Flight ... read more

Greetings from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Fall is in the air here and the trees are starting to change colors. We are getting into a routine now and adjusting to the new experiences that we are given. The hardest thing for me has been the language barrier, but usually someone is nearby willing to help, whether it be in a stranger in a store or a passer by on the street. The most fun is trying to buy something in a store. The salespeople all have calculators and that's how they tell us the price seeing we havent learned our numbers yet. They are big on security in the stores here both shoplifting and personal. Just inside most stores are lockers to put your big bags in when you go into a store. Also in some stores you ... read more