Blogs from Shymkent , Southern Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, Asia

Our original idea was to take a night train from Almaty to Astana, but just before we left NZ we read more about Turkistan and changed our plans. From the 16th to 18th centuries Turkistan was the capital of the Kazakh khans. It is home to the mausoleum of Turkic Muslim holy man, Kozha Akhmed Yasaui, and was built by Timur in the late 14th century. It is Kazakhstan’s greatest architectural monument and most important pilgrimage site. The guidebook claims that it rivals Timor's creations in Uzbekistan such as the Registran in Samarkand, and says it has no rivals in Kazakhstan for man-made beauty. We figured that it would likely be the last chance (and only time on this trip) that we get to see the stunning blue tile work so quintessentially Central Asia. At only ... read more

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

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. ... read more

When you look at the map it feels like we're just riding straight through Kazakhstan to get to Uzbekistan – almost like we wouldn't be going there if we didn't have to. But that's so not true – there are some really exciting places to see, well they're exciting to me! There's a brief stop to register our visas in Aktobe, a big city with a modern, clean, European feel to it – partly due to the influx of Europeans to service the extensive oil & mining industries. Then its onto the 1st exciting stop – Aralsk, though exciting is not quite the right word. Once a booming town, with a prosperous fishing industry, on the shores of the Aral Sea. Now its a desolate, dusty, little village with abandoned fishing boats lying in what used ... read more