Episode 9

Phew! Have I had a busy couple of days: There is so much to write about that my arms will be warn up to my elbows, I think I need to employ a secretary, um! That sounds nice to me, what's a secretary, and would a secretary give me a cuddle? I like cuddles!

D had decided that the car needed an oil change so as we were driving into the outskirts of Astana I was charged with the job of looking out for a place selling oil, my eyesight being at least on a par with L’s: There were trucks everywhere all trying to turn or move in a direction that was blocked by another truck doing just the same thing. Whizzing around, in between, underneath or over the top (if that were possible) were crazy Kazakh car drivers with no respect for anything; such confusion:

Duly spotting a small shop with a variety of oils stacked up outside we pulled in and D and I went and negotiated a deal for 9 litre of synthetic, I’m sure it was my charm that did the trick and a deal was struck. With some sort of vague instruction that there was a place just along the road where we could now get the oil changed I was again charged with being on the lookout, not that I have a clue what I was looking for but nor did anyone else really.

After checking out several possible places and a bit of 4wd driving that makes the gibber (stones) of the Simpson desert look like peas, we eventually found the place and in a short space of time (barely enough for me to recover my balance after that ride over the gibbers) the job was done and we drove on into the city of Astana. According to L Astana is the capital city of Kazakhstan, it has been so only since 1997 or 8 depending on which literature you read, prior to that it was a small provincial city.

Near the centre we found a large shopping centre and parked there in the sun, it was damn hot I can tell you, enough to make a stuffed toy wilt. We went for a walk around some of the area and I got my photo taken near a concrete elephant, L says she has seen enough concrete animals of all different sorts in this country to start a zoo of concrete animals, and add the concrete cows from Milton Keynes too.

There certainly are some striking buildings in this city, many finished and still more under construction with even more in the planning stage only. It was too hot to walk for too long, then the storm came up fast as we were heading back and we didn’t quite make it. Fortunately for all of us we found shelter under the entrance to some apartments just as the rain began. The wind blew and the thunder crashed, and the rain tipped down, then with a loud roar pea sized hail fell too. It was so heavy that for 10 minutes that we couldn’t see the buildings only a couple of hundred metres away. It only lasted 15mins then we walked back to the car to find that in parts the car park was two feet (600mm) deep in water. The roads were awash too so we took the computer and adjourned to the food court area of the shopping centre and used the internet well into the evening. By that time much of the storm water had drained away and the traffic calmed down a bit. The sun was shinning brightly once more.

The following morning saw us back in the same carpark. I was once more put in the backpack and off we set again. Sadly, I couldn’t look around the museum, I had to stay in the cloakroom with the backpack and coats (it was dam cold outside today) while D and L had a look around.

D and L had mainly come to see the "golden man" an artefact that had been found in a burial tomb in the 1960’s. It is only a replica that is on display here. This museum is on 5 floors with a different theme on each floor. Some things were quite interesting while others weren’t of much interest to them. There was a lot of modern stuff: It was on the 1st floor where they saw the 'golden man’. Made of solid gold it was like a tunic top along with other adornments. The man must have been quite a large person too. It dates from the 3rd or 4th cent BC. The gold is extremely high quality. There is a 2nd gold man, found much more recently in the same area but of a slightly later period, 1st cent BC. The quality of gold in this costume is not nearly as good.

There is quite a lot of other gold and silver items on display here too, all replicas I expect. Other items include an array of pottery, the usual stuff found in archaeological digs. A mummified horse has been found too, and apparently the mummification was so good that meat from it fed to dogs produced no adverse effects.

Another building I was taken to see looks like a tall but lopsided tent, maybe it was that storm yesterday. This structure proved to be another shopping centre. From a model we could see that it will be the centre point with a large unit development, several tower blocks, artistically placed all around it. Only two of those have been built so far.

The centre has 5 floors with a partial 6th floor on either side that is supposed to contain swimming pools but it was all closed off. The central section is a 5 story void with a small monorail running around the edge of the 5th floor hanging out over the void. I really would have liked to go on that but all I got was my photo taken underneath it; life’s a *****: Two or three floors are shopping floors, then there is a food court floor with an amusement floor above that.

The exterior covering of this building is supposed to keep it comfortably warm in the -30c winters they get here, it was uncomfortably hot on this coolish summer day. Would not have liked to have been here yesterday, my stuffing might have melted.

Everywhere we looked there are new apartment buildings. A large cluster of them to the south of the city, more around that shopping centre and heaps more all about, then there are the satellite towns outside that consist of hundreds of look alike small houses. Where are all the people coming from to live in them?

We all had seen enough of Astana by this so we left: Travelling across the open steppe with hardly a tree to be seen and on one of the roughest sealed roads imaginable we came to the small town of Korgalshyn where there is a fairly new visitors centre for the nearby nature reserve.

This reserve is a wetland habitat for a vast number of migratory water birds and many species of birds and animals that are not migratory. Because of its importance and uniqueness it is a ‘world Heritage’ site.

The reserve is unique partly because it sits on the open steppe and is only a very shallow depression in which a number of lakes exist. There are several fresh water lakes fed by the Nura River and also some salt lakes. The salt lakes are replenished each year by melting snow in the spring but last winter there was very little snow so that this summer the lakes are very low. The end result being that there is nowhere near the usual number of water birds here and almost no flamingos at all. They are usually here in their thousands, on the salt lakes.

L and D had hoped to visit the reserve however, after talking to a lady at the visitors centre who spoke a little English it was decided that they wouldn’t really see anything more in the reserve than what can be seen on a few of the lakes outside the reserve for which no guide and therefore no charge is made.

Fortunately it was a cool cloudy day so that sitting in the car on the open steppe was not an issue. When we got near one of the lakes the files and midges got quite bad. They didn’t worry me at all but they tended to annoy my humans. L wants Helen to know that she found a fly spray that didn’t drive her from the car faster than it did the flies, a situation Helen is familiar with, but then again it never did seem to have much effect on the flies. She bought it in Aus too:

With the air of binoculars there were many pairs of white swans, didn’t see any cygnets and we should have done at this time of year. Grey and white herons, many ducks, some geese, and numerous different waders: On shore we got quite close to an eagle, perhaps a golden eagle from its colouring, and a smaller bird of prey, a small hawk or maybe an owl can’t be sure. Some very pleasant hours were passed watching the birds.

As for the visitors centre I think it’s likely we were the only visitors that day, possibly that week. In the spring there are bird watching groups that come when the birds first arrive and when the wild flowers are at their best. Yellow wild tulips among many other species: A few small scientific groups come to study the birds:

© Lynette Regan 3rd August 2012