Written in Semey, 23/8/2002
Kazakstan travels
After all the dramas of a dud Uzbek visa we entered Kazakstan without a fuss even though Dimitys visa was only became valid on the 31st August. No-one at the border had noticed this (including Dimity!) and it was only picked up (and corrected) when we went to register in Almaty 5 days later!
Once in Kazakstan we first headed to Turkistan to check out a beautiful (but incomplete) 13th century mausoleum. The place was amazing as the steppe all around is filled with the ruins of fortresses/cities. Our thoughts however, was mostly preoccupied by trying to register our visas. The local police didn't know if they had the authority to give us the stamp, so the beurocrat sent his underling on a quest to drive a 600km round trip to Shymkent to ask. Whatever happened to telephones!? Anyway the next day we got the answer (no!) so that meant a 3 hour bus and 16 hour train trip for us to go to Almaty! But we can't complain about the service!
Almaty is a pretty city with really beautiful mountains that rise about the flat plain about 20km from the centre of the city. We spent a couple of days (and a night) walking around them accompanied by a stray dog/wolf who adopted us. Dimity has unfortunately a good memory (at times) and in particular I repeatedly heard my initial observations (ie "this is perfect hiking country") quoted all the way down the slipperly and very steep 2800m ridge we climbed. All I've got to say is that the soviet mapmakers would never get a job setting rogains in Australia for the inaccurate location of tracks!
We semi-celebrated Dimitys 29th birthday on the 8th with a rare pizza and water dinner at a posh resuraunt the night before (all we could afford) and for the big birthday dinner we had a more mundane meal at a resuraunt called "FART".
Part of our plan had been to try to visit the remote NE Altay mountains. This area is a famous source of Central Asian Legends (the site of the future paradise Shambala), but due to its political location (next to the China/Russia/Kazak/Mongolia borders) it requires a special visa. Äfter waiting around Almaty for about 8 days trying to get the visa, and being told by our travel agent "maybe tommorrow" we discovered that the entire department was on holidays! In my sadness, I went to the archeological museum and met up with the director who I heard would be in. I wanted to hear about how geophysics was being used to assist Archeologists but on hearing of my interest, he invited us to accompany him on his dig inspection in 10 days. And to my amazement, it was in the middle of Shambalal! He said he would arrange the permits no worries and he did!
While we waited, we had enough time for a 6 day hike in a different part of the Altay mountains near the Russian border at Leninogorsk. Together with a British backpacker we met in Almaty (Ben), we hopped on the train and travelled about 1400km to northern Kazakstan across the steppe. We organised a guide (russian speaking only) through a local hiking agency, and set off for our hike. I kind of expected the trip would be a bit different when our first night was spent in a train carriage at the station being shunted back and forth (we knew it was not due to leave until about 7am which gave us time to leave at 6am).
The next moring we caught a local bus our to the starting point near the Russian border. It is a really beautiful area and a lot of the region is still covered by forests. I hoped to see a bear and our guide told us that this year there were many around. All seemed to be going well up until the second day when we finally reached what we were told was going to be an unclassified (ie easy) mountain pass. We were instead presented with a very precarious 400m wall of very finely balanced rock scree. For every metre we went up, D got more and more angry, and wanted to know, if this was an easy one, what a hard pass was!! Anyway, after an hour or more, we all made it alive to the top, and the views were great (although D was not convinced!). At this point I must say that I was letting our guide do his job, and even though the landscape did not match with the 1:200000 map I had, our guide seemed confident enough. We headed down to the treeline for the night, and had another good meal before a storm all sent us to bed early. In the morning, after finally getting our guide up at about 10am, we set off and made a great effort of hiking down the valley to make up for lost time. An hour later, we came across a small log hut in a forested area, and found living inside it an old Russian woodsman. Didn't have many teeth left, and (D says) hadn't washed for ages, but he seemed happy to see us, and we were soon to be even happier to see him cos he told us that we were not where we thought we were, and had gone over the wrong pass and down the wrong valley! Our pass was actually the most difficult rating (ie "climbing equipment necessary"). We agreed with Bens very British comment, "how extraordinary!". Playing cards.
We looked to our now very much discredited guide for options. The one he came up with was to do a hard slog walk for 70km over the next two days over the mountains! 1.5 days, and a couple of woodsman later, a very weary guide and his three footsore followers came across a local bunch of russians on a berry-picking trip. They offered to give us a lift back in thier truck, so we ended up getting back to Leninogorsk on time.
We met the director and his entourage at the train station on the appointed time, and piled on to an old, hired bus to make the trip to the far NE Altay. The trip took a night and a full day after many stops to investigate 2000 year old petrogylphs. The next two days were spent checking out the area, observing the archeological processes and wandering over 2000 year old ancient burial mounds to check the feasibility of geophysics to assist in the work. Previously they had uncovered the frozen remains of a nobleman and his wife, who had been buried with 12 horses.
We retured to the local state capital, Usk Kamenogorsk, two days ago, and spent today travelling to Semey, where Dostoyevsky spend some time in exile. Tommorrow we head into Russia (without a guidebook) and know nothing about the city we are heading to (we found it on an internet map two hours ago!). I'm sure the time will be interesting........
