24.10.2007: that snow,
burning sensation ...

Please tell me if I'm wrong about this, but leaving aside affairs of the heart and the wallet, I count six different ways in which a person can be burned. There's actual flame, from its various sources; heat conducted by a substance (water, metal etc.); chemicals; electrical charge; UV rays from sunlight; and lastly, there's the glare from snow.

This probably seems a tiny bit random (even for me), so let me tell you why I'm bringing it up. It's because, while I doubt there are many people who'd choose one of the first four as their favourite kind of burning, I know there are plenty who'd vote for number five. I'm going to tell you why they're wrong, and I can do it in less than 40 words.

Ready? Okay. To get sunburned, all you have to do is go somewhere sunny and stay there for a while. To get snowburned, all you have to do is go somewhere snowy and stay there for a while.

So you see, number six is clearly the winner.

For this and other reasons, last Sunday was one of my best days in Almaty so far, and only slightly more dangerous than average. I went to Bol'shaya Almatinskaya Ozero (Big Almaty Lake), which lies about 2000m above sea level in the Zailiysky Alatau mountain range south of the city. And I only had to ride in one taxi and use three or four pedestrian crossings to do it. Hence the relatively low danger.

I did say relatively, though.

See, when you go chasing the sights in a country like Kazakhstan, you begin to notice a few contrasts between sightseeing activities here and similar pursuits in super-tourist-friendly Western countries. In a place like, say, Switzerland, you can usually get yourself to the top of a mountain in more or less total comfort, and without risking your welfare to any great extent. Here it's a little different.

Of course, I'd forgotten about this until forcibly reminded on the day of our Big Excursion. When I turned up outside Central Stadium at 8:30am on Sunday morning, I naïvely expected some kind of slick modern touring coach to be waiting for us, perhaps even fitted with snow tyres &/or other funky gadgetry. Instead, I was led along the road with some other teachers and staff to a carpark, where we approached a runtish and wobbly-looking bus of unknown vintage. A few minutes after we'd boarded, our friendly guide Olga made a somewhat disturbing announcement: she told us that we'd chosen "the tour which is not one-hundred-percent safe", and that there'd be some formalities to deal with before we set off. With that, Olga produced a waiver which (so far as I could tell) absolved her company of all responsibility should their driver steer us over the edge of a cliff, sending us plummeting to an untimely death. All passengers were required to sign.

At this point, I decided to ask a question: "Is your driver good?"

I was quite impressed by the way Olga fielded this enquiry: either she wasn't offended at all, or she did a masterful job of hiding it. Still, her attempt at a re-assuring reply fell a little short: "Yes, he's very good. Our company employs some of the best drivers in Almaty". (See my comments elsewhere about Kazakh drivers for some context on this remark.) Then, to further enhance my sense of comfort and security, she added: "I would not be mistaken if I said that, on such a day as today, our driver could be our saviour". And one last thing, in case I still wasn't 100% convinced: "Fortunately this is Russian bus, so it is good for our conditions".

Alrighty then, you've won me over. Let's go!

The first part of our journey from Central Stadium to Bol'shaya Almatinskaya Ozero was pretty uneventful. It was only once we got to the foothills of the National Park that things began to get interesting. As the bus started climbing towards the cloud-covered peaks far above us, a dusting of recent snow began to appear on the ground. At the same time, the road became a lot less ... well, less like a normal road, really, and more like an adventure trail for four-wheel driving enthusiasts. Then the gradient began to increase. We had a long ascent ahead of us, and you could tell it was going to be a series of cookie-tossing lurches to the top.

As the ride got rougher, I noticed that it wasn't just the soft-like-marshmallow Western folk who were looking white-faced and white-knuckled; the locals were getting worried, too. Their nervous jokes were being met with brittle laughter, always coming a little too soon to be 'natural'. We were about a third of the way up the mountain, the driver picking his way along narrow, snow-covered roads, and you could look out the window and stare straight down the precipitous rocky slopes immediately to our left (and then, a minute later, to our right ... then back to the left again and so on). Things were undeniably becoming tense.

Then, as I was staring into the viewfinder of my camera and trying not to panic, a plastic cup suddenly came into my field of view. To calm us all down a bit, our boss had decided to break out the vodka. So there we were: four foreign teachers, four Russians, four Kazakhs and an Uzbeki/Korean guy, being flung around like trainee pilots in a g-force simulator, laughing in the face of death ('cause we didn't really know what else to do) and downing white spirit to keep us from freaking out.

To say that I was 'revelling in the moment' at this point would be an understatement. It was scary, a tad demented, possibly fatal ... but above all, it was just ridiculously cool and funny.

Next thing I knew, our bus had rounded a blind corner and was approaching a bridge that spanned a rocky mountain stream ahead of us. The road approached parallel to the stream, turned 90 degrees onto the bridge, then another 90 at the far end. It looked just about wide enough for a small car. I blinked at it a few times, thinking "No frikkin' way!", but our driver was undaunted. Across the tiny bridge we went, plastic cups in hand, hearts in throats ... and somehow didn't die. (Seriously, I really don't know how we did it - perhaps Russian buses are fitted with Improbability Drives.) A few seconds later, though, an even more unsettling thing happened: the bus ceased going forward and began sliding sideways toward the precipice. The driver braked as hard as he could, and we slid a bit more then stopped. Announcing in Russian that the road had become too icy to continue, Olga then herded us out into the snow and told us we'd have to continue the tour on foot. I asked how far it was to the lake. "Three kilometres", one of the Kazakhs told me. "Or maybe ten."

As we began our hike-of-unknown-length to the top, I fell in with Olga and we started chatting. Her English was very good, and she told me she was really glad of the opportunity to talk to a native speaker. A few minutes later, she asked me a question that went something like: "Do you know what is the word for the illness when a man cannot breathe in high places?"

"Altitude sickness?", I suggested.

"Yes, of course, you are right. Altitude."

Once again, as nice as Olga was, these were not the re-assuring words I wanted to hear from an experienced mountain guide.

During the ascent I walked sometimes with Olga and sometimes with a cute and charming Kazakh woman called Aliya from our accounts department. (Note: Kazakh women are required by law to be cute and charming. Anyone unable to fulfil this requirement is sentenced by the state to a lifetime of low-end retail jobs.) Olga turned out to be amazingly knowledgeable, not just about the ecology of the Zailiysky Alatau but about the history of Kazakhstan in general. She filled in a lot of blanks for me in terms of the ethnic make-up of the Kazakh people. I'd previously assumed that they'd migrated here from the Mongolian steppe, but apparently the reality is a fair bit more complex than that. The original settlers actually came from the Iranian plateau, and weren't joined by Mongols, Huns, Turks etc. until many centuries later. Then there were lots of Silk Road traders who settled here and, much later, forced re-locations from as far away as Vladivostok (on roughly the same longitudinal line as Auckland) and re-settlement of Japanese P.O.W.s after World War Two. Which explained a lot, really, in terms of the huge variety of faces I see around me every day.

I also heard about how, when Kazakhstan achieved independence in 1991, the reaction was almost the precise opposite of what happened in Europe when the Soviets withdrew. Many people here regarded the Russians' retreat as "the end of all life" (Olga's phrase), and tried to flee the country. Large numbers starved to death in the years that followed. Meanwhile, all were worried that a militant leadership might decree that Russian was no longer the lingua franca, installing Kazakh as the official language. This would've been the bell that tolled for millions, since the Soviets had latently discouraged the Kazakh language and most Kazakhstanis couldn't speak it at all. Hence no employment prospects, no livelihood, no future ... basically widespread financial and social catastrophe. Which - unless I'm remembering it wrong - doesn't quite tally with what we were told in the West. I mean, don't you remember the big propagananza in the early 90s, about how the withdrawal of the Evil Soviets had ushered in a new era of freedom around the world, blah blah winkety-wank? Yeah, me too. Interesting what you learn once you step outside the mediasphere and into the Real World.

Another one of Olga's fascinating little factoids - at least for a Word Nerd like me - concerns the Kazakh language. Apparently it's undergoing quite a renaissance at the moment. (If you think you won't be fascinated by this, I completely understand - feel free to skip to the next bit.) We've all heard that 'killer languages' like English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Russian etc. have wiped out many others in the past few hundred years, and the rate of language death is increasing. So it's quite common around the world to find languages that are in the process of going extinct, and the classic sign is that older people still use the Mother Tongue but younger folk don't know it. Here, though, the situation is reversed. Under Soviet rule, all education, commerce and governance were apparently conducted in Russian, and while people were entirely free to learn Kazakh at school, they had to stay back after hours to do so. Since independence, Kazakh has been integrated back into the education system (though not in a way that has squeezed Russian out of the picture, as people feared).

These days a lot of young people actually enjoy being able to speak their ancestral tongue, and draw some pride and identity from it. So younger Kazakhs - at least from what Olga told me - are generally more fluent in their language than their parents. Karoche: Kazakh is staging a comeback! I must say that I'm quite excited to be here while this is happening; I've never witnessed a language revival before.

Mind you, I've got my hands full with Russian at the moment, and aside from Salom! for "Hello" the only Kazakh words I've learned are the ones which appear on shop signs alongside their Russian equivalents. So at this point I can say "Salom, derikhana" ("Hello pharmacy!"), "Salom, shashtaraz" ("Hello hairdressing salon!"), and that's about it. Still, shashtaraz is a pretty cool word, don't you think? Sounds to me like something spicy and delicious, maybe on a stick with some grilled lamb and vegies. "You'll have to come over and try my mum's shashtaraz some time - the recipe's been in our family for generations ..."

*ahem*

Apologies for the lengthy digression there. Let's get back to the story.

Feet being the efficient little people-movers they are, my altitude was steadily increasing as I listened to Olga's mobile history lessons. And the mountain scenery was getting noticeably more rugged and majestic as we went. We'd been walking uphill for a bit over two hours (with only mild hints of altitude sickness to slow us down) when, around lunch time, we finally reached Bol'shaya Almatinskaya Ozero. So it must've only been three kilometres after all. Just as well, really.

As for the lake itself, it's partly natural and partly man-made. The northern edge (which was the first bit we saw) is an unengagingly uniform concrete shoreline - not something you'd ordinarily walk for hours to see. But a little further around, nature takes the reins again and the scenery resumes its breathtaking quality. This part was definitely worth the trek.

Having reached a nice lookout spot about 20 metres above the eastern shoreline, we decided we'd come far enough. The locals then looked around for a suitable rock, scraped about three inches of snow off the top, and began to make use of it. And by "use" I mean that they unpacked their bags and spread out a thoroughly decadent picnic hamper on the rock's surface, covering it entirely with food and drink. All except my boss Vitaly, that is: he was too busy disrobing to the waist and enjoying a self-administered snow bath.

In typical Russkiy style, our meal on the rock was punctuated by several enthusiastic toasts. In fact the food and vodka were circulating so efficiently that having enough free hands to do all the requisite passing, holding and arm-raising became quite a challenge. This led to an interesting discovery: namely that, once you've pressed it into shape the first time, a patch of deep snow makes the ideal cup-holder. Just be careful if the cup you're drinking from happens to be white; you can easily lose sight of it and, seconds later, find yourself crushing a fresh nip of vodka into the Earth with your boot >:-[

After lunch we milled around a bit and then began the journey back down the mountain. It was another two-hour hike, made quite hazardous by the icy paths. Most of us slipped over at least once, and I had a couple of nasty "Oh no, have I just put my back out?" moments. However, the snow had become a lot heavier since we'd begun our ascent, giving the mountain a brand new white covering. This change in the landscape made backtracking seem not-at-all boring, and also gave us something a bit less slippery to walk in. Plus, on the way down I got to spend some quality time with four of my female colleagues, including three Kazakh women who fulfilled all the legal requirements. So, y'know, one can't complain too much about that ;-)

We broke up the downhill trek a couple of times by stopping on the roadside and breaking out the plastic cups yet again. This time it was cognac with an orange juice chaser; definitely just what you need to get you through a snow storm on a mountainside. I was vaguely reminded of my week in St. Pete's during last year's winter, when walking the entire length of the Nevsky Prospekt required at least one or two cafe stops to warm up with a nip of cognac before defying death at -20C for another few minutes.

Finally we rejoined our driver and began heading toward Almaty. Thinking back on it, I was a bit of a wreck at that point: face glowing red like the ears of a Tasmanian Devil (that'd be the snowburn), jeans and coat lining completely sodden, bladder protesting every time we forced our way through a canyon-sized pothole (a dilemma not helped by the strong drink being passed around the bus). Still, inside my head things were actually pretty damn good: I was happily exhausted, and the fresh air had afforded me some much-needed clarity. It was my day on the mountain that ultimately answered the "Do I really want to stay here for nine months?" question that had been floating around in my brain since I arrived. And the conclusion: "Yeah, why not? Seems like a pretty cool place to me".

So there you go. That's all I have to report about my first sojourn into Almaty's picturesque surrounds. Hope you enjoyed the pics and the tangents; I'll be adding more Kazakhstan-related palaver to Ranting Manor as soon as my exams are over. Till then, take care and Don't Panic :-)

Bye!

* One for the Douglas fans.