Kazakhstan

Is vinete yani polmeyo po Ruski

(I’m sorry I don’t speak Russian)

By Janet Baldey 

‘You’re going where?’

         It was the standard response, accompanied by a puzzled look. Ever since we decided to forgo the fleshpots and have a real adventure in the wilds of Kazakhstan, we had become increasingly enthusiastic. The trouble was, nobody seemed to have heard of the place (this was before Borat came on the scene).   When we explained that we were bored with beach holidays and wanted to experience life in the raw, their looks turned from puzzlement to incredulity.

        

         Both interested in natural history, my daughter, who has a degree in zoology and I, decided to go on a wildlife watching trip.  We sent away for various brochures but were particularly taken with Greentours Natural History Hollidays, run by Ian Green and his partner, Fiona Dunbar. It seemed a friendly, family-run outfit, small enough to take a personal interest in their clients.  It was purely a matter of chance that we chose Kazakhstan - the time of the 16 day trip happened to fit in with Melissa’s exam schedule.

        

         The months leading up to the trip were spent poring over maps and previous trip reports.  Soon the streets of Watford were worn smooth as we searched for lightweight clothing to accommodate a variety of weathers and a seemingly endless list of medical necessities.  We would, after all, be travelling into the interior of a huge country, where few tourists venture, hundreds of miles away from medical advice.  We were going where the far eastern tip of Kazakhstan meets the borders of Mongolia, China and Russian Siberia.  In the middle of the Golden Mountains, it is known as The Altai.   It is a true wilderness, with high mountains and vast forests, steppes and deserts and is almost devoid of people.  We were told to expect amazingly beautiful mountain flowers, flocks of exotic birds such Siberian Rubythroats, Great Rosefinches, Black Larks, White-tailed Eagles, and masses of butterflies.   The list of previous trip sightings was impressive.  We couldn’t wait.

        

         Inevitably, there were setbacks and one loomed large.   To run the tour the minimum group size needed was five.  A month before we were due to leave, Greentours phoned; we were the only people booked onto the trip.  We were sure it would be cancelled.   But, even though there were no more bookings, the trip went ahead and we had the sole services of a driver, cook and tour guide.  Super-rich excluded, we were privileged.  

        

         Then we were told that a river, swollen by winter rain, had washed away a vital bridge and we would probably have to make a detour of 100 miles and miss some of the trip.   Again our hearts sank, but again we were saved, this time by the resourcefulness of our driver who braved the turbulent water and made it to the other side while his passengers scrambled over the remains of the bridge.

        

         Our leader was Vladimir, of Russian descent, born and raised in Kazakhstan.  A zoologist he divides his time between working as a research scientist and acting as tour guide.  His knowledge of the wildlife of the area is formidable.   Not only that but he is an all-round nice guy who went to extraordinary lengths to make sure we enjoyed ourselves. He is a big fan of early seventies rock and roll and seemed to be on a mission to drink the country dry of vodka. Then there was Andrei, who did most of the driving.   Andrei runs his own tour guide company in the area and is a big motorcycle fan. His dream is to visit Mongoly (his name for Mongolia) on motorcycle.  He was also the only one of our party whom the mosquitoes refused to bite.  Our cook was Oksana, an 18 year old university student.  My daughter is a vegan and when I am with her, so am I.  Kazakhstan is not big on vegan cookery and I am sure Oksana’s heart must have dropped but she rose to the occasion magnificently.  Her cooking was superb, and performed under the most primitive of conditions.  

 

The tour started and finished in Almaty, the principal city in Kazakhstan, formerly its capital but which has now been replaced by Astana, largely because Astana is less prone to earthquakes.  It didn’t help our peace of mind to be told

that Almaty lay on a fault line and an earthquake devastated the city in 1927, the only building left standing being the cathedral.   Almaty is pleasant and tree-lined and the view from the plane as it descends into Almaty airport is breathtaking, with the snow-topped mountains of the Cimbaluk range rearing above us as we circled the city.

        

         The city of Almaty, in common with the rest of Kazakhstan, comprises a mixture of nationalities, mainly Kazakhs and Russians, with a smattering of Ukrainians, Germans, Uzbeks, Byelorussians and Azerbaijani’s who all seemed to live together quite happily under the apparently benign dictatorship of their president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.  It was here that we were due to make contact with Vladimir.   But first, we had to survive what my daughter has dubbed ‘Immigration Hell’.

        

         All in all, we had been traveling for 10 hours when we began the descent into Almaty Airport. The plane landed smoothly and we rose and stretched.  There was a brief announcement in Russian and everybody, except we who were  blissfully ignorant of the language, groaned and sat down again.  After a while, there was another announcement, this time, surprisingly, in English.

        

         ‘The ordered wheelchair is now ready for collection at Terminal 1’.

        

         This had to have been some sort of code, because immediately all the other passengers stood and filed out of the aircraft with us tagging along behind.  

 

         The arrivals lounge was chaotic. There were long, static queues from the end of which we could just see the check-in booths, all unmanned. We waited, and waited, and waited but the queue didn’t move.  From time to time, an official would stroll up to a booth, look at it incuriously and go away again.  Meanwhile more people from another flight joined our queue. It was strangely surreal.  In England people would grow restive, there would be muttering and discontented faces and eventual near mutiny but not here. People stood impassively, not speaking, not shuffling;  we began to think it was against the law.  As time passed, Melissa and I worried.  What if Vladimir gave up and went away and we were stranded in a strange country. The long hours of traveling caught up with us and we felt like crying.  I looked around for someone with a friendly face but in vain. In response to our tentative smiles not a muscle in any face moved.   Later when I mentioned this to Vladimir, he wasn’t surprised.

        

         ‘Why should they smile at you?  They didn’t know you’.

 

With painful slowness, the queues eventually began to move.  At last, we were processed and to our relief, made contact with Vladimir who, wearing a Greentours shirt for identification purposes, was patiently waiting for us. Not many people would describe Vladimir as beautiful but, to us at that moment, he was.

         The first three days were to be spent by the shores of the beautiful Zaissan Lake in the midst of the desert.   But first we had to endure another flight, this time courtesy of Air Astana, to Ust-Kamenogorsk, a city about the size of Watford, where we were met by Andrei, Oksana and a Landrover.   We soon realised why the vehicle was so sturdy and why it needed every one of its four wheels, most of the roads in Kazakhstan are truly terrible.  The lake was as lovely as the brochure boasted but, apart from that, the landscape was bare. As the tents were unloaded and set up, I plucked up my courage and shyly enquired about the ‘facilities’.

        

         ‘I wondered when you would ask’ said Vladimir.   Pointing to the left of two clumps of trees, he said ‘that is for the ladies’.  I suppose we were lucky that there were two clumps of trees.  

        

         If this sounds bad, it gets worse.   We had to share the trees with  zillions of mosquitoes sheltering from the daytime heat.  Every time we went near, they rose up in great billowing clouds. The second of my new experiences in the wild was bathing and washing my hair in the lake whilst being nibbled by tiny fish. It was a surprisingly pleasant experience.

 

One of the most magical memory I have of the time spent by the lake was hunting for jerboas at night.  We found that they froze in the lights of the truck and were easily picked up. I was happily crooning over them as they nestled in my hands, until Melissa pointed out they were covered in fleas. Gently, and as fast as I could, they were released back into the wild. We were also taken to the Klin Kerish canyon where erosion had revealed layers of brilliant red, yellow and silvery-grey clays – a wonderfully photogenic place. 

 

Night comes swiftly in the desert and so do the mosquitoes. Most evenings found us taking supper while swaddled in towels and blankets to keep them at bay. Once Andrei shone his torch up into the sky and revealed a seething mass hovering like a giant umbrella above us. ‘We are lucky, they are not biting,’ he said.   

After leaving Lake Zaissan we headed for a nature reserve in the Siberian village of Markakol. The road to the village ran by the side of the Chinese border and we were able to take photographs of the vast sandy dunes of the Akkum Desert that stretches as far as the eye can see into China. After a whole day of travelling we eventually crested a pass and saw Markakol down below, glinting in the evening sunlight.   Markakol is set on the edge of a lake surrounded by mountains and Taiga forest.  It resembles a mini-Switzerland but is completely unspoiled.  Walking through the village was like stepping into the middle ages.   Old ladies sat on three legged stools to milk their cows and did their laundry in the lake. Young boys carried yokes on their shoulders while others herded sheep along the street. Everywhere, horses cropped the grass, cows wandered,  chickens pecked and goats investigated. Most blessed of all, there was not a Westerner to be seen (except for us, of course). 

 

The cottage we stayed in was typical of the local Siberian style, with very thick walls and enormous radiators, essential as the village is snowbound for six months of the year. Every house in the village had its own sauna and I got the impression that’s where the locals spent the winter. In September every year, the cattle that graze in the mountains, sense the onset of winter and make their way back into  Markakol, the herd filling the empty street – it’s called ‘rush hour’ in Markakol.   It is a magical place, we spent five days exploring the area and never wanted to leave.

 

To reach our next destination we drove along what was jokingly called the Austrian ‘Road’. This alleged ‘road’ was built by Austrian prisoners of war and it was obvious their hearts had not been in it.  As our Landrover lurched along deeply rutted tracks embedded with huge rocks and traversed gullies over logs of rotting wood, it was never far from my mind that we were many miles away from medical treatment.

 

Mosquitoes like me. We had travelled endless miles to reach an idyllic spot in the woods near the hot springs at Rachmanovskie Klyuchi but unfortunately the mosquitoes had got there first. They turned my back into a map of the moon. In spite of Valery, our stand-in-driver, producing delicious wild strawberries from his own garden, the mozzies made my evening a misery and the next morning I insisted (I’m Queen!) in pressing on to our next destination.

  

 Maymir is a working farm and hunting lodge where we slept in traditional Kazakh yourtas, large felt tents that smelled suspiciously of goat. The area around Maymir is green and lush with many streams. It is typical ‘tick’ country. Ticks are tiny spider-like insects whose bite can cause encephalitis or Lyme disease. They drop from the surrounding vegetation and like to burrow into the soft, most intimate areas of one’s body. They were the cause of many episodes of tick paranoia in my daughter.

 

Maymir was our last destination and it was here that we performed our last ‘check list’.  This was a solemn ceremony, carried out every evening without fail, when we recorded all the birds, mammals, flowers and butterflies we had seen during the day.

I have so many memories of that holiday. Evenings spent drinking vodka and eating red caviar;  climbing a mountain in a thunderstorm and reaching the top just as the sun came out;  playing snowballs on a glacier; the evening when Vladimir decided to show us how to have a proper sauna (better than sex!).    One day, I mentioned I would like to try some fermented mares milk, Kazakhstan’s national drink.  Andrei disappeared for hours, apparently he had to scour the area for miles before locating some – what a star!  For those interested, it has a refreshing lemony taste, ideal for the hot weather.  

 

It is not a holiday for everyone, the only running water was in the rivers, the terrain was rugged, and the sanitary arrangements non-existent, but if you love wild places, the creatures that inhabit them and want to glimpse a way of life that will soon be gone, don’t hesitate.  You will never forget it.

 

Copyright Janet Baldey