The last few weeks I have been doing the raw work in travelling. Unlike what most people picture travelling to be like, it is not all laying on a beach, under a swaying palm tree, sipping fancy cocktails. Mostly it is arranging cheap accommodation, finding an inexpensive place to eat, finding out how the public transport works (backpackers can not afford taxis), trying to figure out train and bus timetables to get to the next destination, in short all the mundane stuff that never gets mentioned. And when one is travelling a country as vast as Kazakhstan, with a visa that is only valid for a month and with precious little in the way of budget prices, there is a lot of figuring out to be done. To travel it cheaply I decided to couch surf,
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