Blogs from Kazakhstan, Asia - page 14

Its been a long time coming.So many kilometres out in the mountains of Yunnan and crossing the endless expanse of the Gobi desert has put us on the threshold.The wait is almost over. Yet it seems like only yesterday me and my mate Berni were at the last world cup in Germany.China has been showing adverts for months expressing full ,non stop coverage of the tournament which has had me sweating over Kazak interest in the worlds biggest sporting event. After a ridiculous bandit border crossing involving having to take the bus and pay twice to each the chinese and kazak guards because were ''not allowed'' to cycle the one kilometre of no mans land I got to asking football questions to the Kazak cops in their massive gay hats.All seems well as one reeled off ... read more

The other day I was Couch Surfing and met this lady who could read palms, she told me that I was a very lucky person that got through life by continued support of my guardian angels, which personally I think is sweet, and probably means I'm invincible. After this I started thinking about recent events and how true this actually might me. Coldness Luck The weather here is getting colder, when I was in Uzbekistan I met a guy heading to Spain, who swapped me my summer converse for hardy walking boots, continuing on to Almaty in Kazakhstan it started snowing and lo before me stood a leather jacket. A little patchwork later and it took me all the way to the harsher North of the country. I make a passing comment that I have no ... read more

Most people who think of Kazakhstan, think of Borat. Most people who have been to Kazakhstan might think of Almaty its former capital, and then there are some who decide to discover what the rest of the country might be like. I decided to go up north, and to keep me company along the way I went with an English man who went by the name of Tim, whom I had met in a rather decrepit dormitory in Almaty. Before long we were on a train riding up the steppes of Kazakhstan and I learned my first lesson on this country. Most of it is steppe! Flat, dry, and in winter cold, with a shade of white. Second lesson, the capital was moved from Almaty to Astana, which wasn't called Astana at the time. Astana means ... read more

Atyrau, 7. September 2009 Nach zwei Wochen verlasse ich Almaty mit einem Zug nach Turkistan, wo ich das Mausoleum von Khoja Ahmad Yasavi besuche, das bei weitem architektonisch bedeutendste Monument Kasachstans. Ich unternehme auch einen Ausflug zum Fluss Syrdarja, der im kleinen Aralsee muendet. Junge Kasachen ueberreden mich zu einem erfrischendem Bad. Dies ist einer der raren Schwimmerlebnisse dieses Sommers, da meine Reise mich in erster Linie durch trockene Gegenden fuehrt. Es bleiben mir aber Zweifel was die Sauberkeit des Wassers anbelangt. Die Sowjets benutzten frueher das giftige Pestizid "Agent Orange" in der Region, um die Baumwollplantagen zu entlauben. Reste dieses Gifts koennen immernoch im Boden, im Wasser und in der Nahrung der Menschen in der Region nachgewiesen werden. Die Kindersterblichkeitsrate und die Zahl der Krebserkrankungen sind rund um den Aralsee einiges ho... read more

We are ashamed to say that prior to visiting, the sum total of our knowledge of Kazakhstan was based on having seen Borat. This being an especially poor showing given that it is the seventh largest country in the world. We always had a suspicion that Borat wasn’t a documentary, but we didn’t fully appreciate how inaccurate a picture of the country it painted. Admittedly we saw only small percentage of the country, but it appeared to be an extremely westernised place. Having made the frustrating, but necessary, detour from Tashkent in order to get to a border crossing that was open to foreigners, we eventually arrived in Shymkent, in Southern Kazakhstan. We found Shymkent to be a very leafy, clean and pleasant city. If Uzbekistan left us felling as though we were back in Africa, ... read more