Kazakhstan, IS nice

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We had a lovely albeit brief stay in Kazakhstan, a week of travel and errands, complemented by a bit of sightseeing and hospitable locals.
Our stay here began with the multiple border checkpoints between Russia and Kazakhstan. The train crosses the border at about 9pm, with the rigmarole of the Russian and Kazakh border guards prodding and poking every nook and cranny of our compartment, what they were looking, drugs?, guns?, their hat they'd forgotten last time?, who knows, but they didn't find it and after a while stamped our passports and let the train on its way.
Next thing I know I wake up to another Russian checkpoint gaurd and bizarrely the Russian man in the bed next to me had grown a moustache, changed his clothes and now looked distinctly Kazakh!
Of course what had happened is we had crossed the Kazakh border to Uralsk hence the change in personel and then as the train lines have not changed since Soviet times looped back into Russia as I had peacefully slept and now we were now leaving Russia again. Cue yet more prodding and poking but eventually we carried on through the Kazakh desert, with the odd crumbling building or wild camels breaking up the scenery (naturally viewed from the comfort of the bar).
Almaty, the commercial capital of Kazakhstan is probably not the greatest of tourist destinations, but it served its purpose to get our Uzbek Visa! We saw most of the city on the first morning hiking around with an Irish Veteran Traveller trying seven different hotels before finally finding a room(the Kazakh golf open was in town, you know?) As well as our timely trip to the chaos of the Uzbek embassy we visted the cities park with its chilling war memorial, commerating the Almaty lives lost in the seiges of Moscow, Kiev, Minsk and Stalingrad respectively. We also took an evening trip up the cities Cable car, to see stunning views of this cosmopolitan city as well as the overpriced food, funfairs and souvenir sellers!

We then travelled overnight to Shymkent a city not far from the Uzbek border that is locally famous for its Shymkent beer and a bustling bazaar. Unfortunately the market was not on and the bars all shut really early but we had a nice time around the parks on a saturday afternoon and a gorgeous shashlyk kebab!

Kazakhstan seemed really nice from what we saw of it, we'd liked to have had longer but unfortunately had to head onto Uzbekistan to rather ironically obtain our Kazakh transit visa for when we head to china, but hey c'est la vie

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Photos

Kazakh Mountains
On the way to Shymkent

Shymkent Beer
probably the best beer we've had since lithuania, probably to be bought out by carlsberg soon!

Comments

[Matti]

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