Late on a Friday afternoon they finished the car and David brought it back to the hostel. Next morning it was once again packed and prepared for departure.
This time we did get out of Bishkek though not as early as originally hoped. David wanted to give it a bit of a test run before leaving Kyrgyzstan so we set off towards Izzykol, the big lake in the east of the country at the foot of the Tein Shein Mountains.
The snow from the previous weekend still lingered on the mountains though it had melted on the flater, lower land around the lake. The lake is at an altitude of around 1200m. This was checked by my lot using the sat-nav, but as usually the exact altitude wasn’t noted and neither of my lot can remember, typical!!
After no obvious problem presented itself we then headed across the border to Kazakhstan. This is a relatively easy, and quite busy border crossing. Soon we were on our way to Almaty, a fairly straight forward trip except that for reasons best know only to the Kazakhs they keep altering the speed limit.
Understandably enough, the limit is lowered when passing through villages, often to as low as 30kph. Out in the open countryside, and for most of the way that’s what we passed through, we expected it to be about 90kph and it was in places. But! for a very short distance like about 100m, then there would be a 70kph sign, and often another 100m further on a 50k sign. With the result that the trip took much longer than it really should have done, speeding isn’t an option because you often come across radar posts, and we really didn’t feel like subsidising the Kazakh economy any more than we had too. We soon noticed that the price of diesel and petrol had risen by as much as 40% since the early July. There was also a shortage of diesel for some unknown reason and we could only get about 30lt at any service station. Many had no diesel at all. This was a bit worrying seeing that we would have to travel right across the country and in a limited time span. Didn’t want to be stuck without fuel for days anywhere along the way.
After being caught up in the afternoon traffic chaos that surrounds Almaty we finally arrived at the hostel L had chosen for our stay.
There we had a nice double room with en-suite for little more than a dorm room would cost. The only problem was the internet, nothing seemed to stay connected for more than a few seconds at a time, so things like updating my blog just weren’t possible. Re-doing the visa forms for the Russian transit visa became a nightmare but somehow it got done.
Next day we headed off to the Russian consulate to apply for the transit visas, a major hick-up was encountered, the forms L had printed out at the hostel had been in the wrong format, goodness knows why, so we had to charge around the area of the consulate and find a place that would reprint them for us. We had only 2 hours before the consulate closed. We soon found one place that said they could do this, so we waited in a queue because the lady was very busy. About an hour later after having another look at what we wanted she decides she can’t do it. She phoned another place, then got someone to guide us there, but again there was a queue of people in front of us, all the time the clock is relentlessly ticking on towards 12 noon. Leaving D and I at the print/computer shop, L then went charging around the area looking for an ATM that would let her withdraw a large sum of cash; these visas came at the cost of $200 US each, payable in local Tenget. Bloody Hell!!! In London my lot had got 30 day Russian tourist visas for less than half that. These were transit visas, 10 days if the fellow is kind to us, but we did want them express, in 3 days not the regular 7, at half the cost. L never did find an ATM that would oblige but she did find a bank where she could change cash, and fortunately she still had enough cash left to be able to do that.
Well, yes, we did get the forms printed, and made it back to the consulate before closing time, just! Even got the 10 days time span instead of the 4 the fellow initially told us he issued for this particular trip. L had asked him, in her best pleading voice, if we could have longer as David is 71 and doesn’t feel he can drive so far each day. The visas would be ready Friday afternoon. They are date specific, and my lot had given themselves a full week to get across Kazakhstan so we would leave Saturday.
With a couple of days to fill in and the weather being quite pleasant and warmer than Bishkek we did some walking around the city revisiting sights we’d seen some years ago when we were last here.
Almaty centre is fairly easy to negotiate being laid out in a grid pattern and gently sloping uphill from north to south and west to east. Plenty of parks and shady avenues with places to sit and take a rest and we did plenty of that as most sights were uphill from the hostel, coming back was easy, downhill all the way.
There is the pretty orthodox cathedral set in large parklands and rose gardens. The roses were blooming well and presented a lovely picture but it is pruning season too apparently and now and again we would pass a garden where all the lovely blooms were being lopped off and tossed aside, surely they could leave the pruning for another week or too, until the flowers have died.
Not far from the cathedral, on the other side of the main market is a huge white mosque that we didn’t venture into, it being prayer time when we came upon it.
We found the city hall and it too has large areas of lawns and rose gardens and faces a very busy 6 lane road. Beneath that road and right plum in front of the town hall there is an underground shopping mall. The only way to cross this road is via this shopping mall. It seems to have all the major brand shops but lacks customers. This is not a part of the city where the average or even above average shopper would normally venture unless it is to roar across, above, on the road in their brand new upmarket vehicles.
One evening while sitting in our room battling with the internet many sirens were heard roaring along our street, all going in the same direction. On peeking out it was observed that there were police cars, fire engines and ambulances causing this commotion. Upon venturing out to reception to comment on this we found we were joining a crowd of others observing a huge fire shooting flames high into the evening sky not all that far away. Every now and again something would explode, we think, sending out an even larger burst of flame.
The girl at reception told us that it was an apartment block, poor b*****s, and that it had already been arranged that 10 people from this apartment block would be coming to the hostel to stay overnight. It must have been quite late when they came in, my lot had long since retired.
Next morning L encountered an elderly couple whom she managed to find out came from the apartment block, they had been given a meal and appeared to be in a state of shock; totally understandable: Apart from giving the elderly lady a big hug there wasn’t much else we could do. These were the only fire victims we met, and they disappeared a short time later never to be seen again. We couldn’t find out anything more about them as we had a different girl on reception who either didn’t know or didn’t want to know anything about this whole event. We, being the like normal rubber necking spectators went looking for the site of the fire, but despite covering a large area we never did find it.
On the evening following the fire, and after a lovely warm day meandering about the city, we looked out to see that it was raining. Next morning upon looking out we see that everything is covered in about 3cm of snow. What a change from yesterday. Later, when we went to collect our Russian visas and the snow was melting it presented a real ‘Christmas Card’ scene.
So, we began the long haul back to the UK: Along the way we did encounter problems getting diesel in some places, but fortunately found enough to keep us going. Winter was setting in and we had sub zero temperatures right from the beginning.
We stopping in Shymkent for a few hours, mainly to see the huge mosque that L had glimpsed when we’d passed through back in June. However, after finally getting hold of a map and finding it’s location we still found ourselves in the midst of traffic chaos that seems to permanently surround this mosque and we couldn’t find anywhere to park, so we never did get to have a closer, more civilised look.
Had more luck in Turkestan where there is plenty of parking, and went for a look at the old mausoleums. The small one is a replica that replaces the original that was torn down and used as building material in Tzarist times, it is 15th century and was built for Temur’s great granddaughter, Rabiga-Sultan Begum. The other is huge and covers the tomb of Yasaui, some Islamic poet from Temur’s time. L had read in the guide book that this one is amongst the best decorated to be found outside Uzbekistan. Well, it is decorated, but it doesn’t come anywhere near the class of Shar-i-Zinder in Samarkand. It also is very large with a huge dome 18m in diameter atop the central room. Underneath that dome sits a 2000kg (2 tonne) cauldron, used for holy water.
There are numerous other rooms all around the large central chamber with the cauldron and the Yasaui tomb is actually in one of these smaller rooms viewed through an iron grille. This room is actually topped by another smaller but fluted dome. There is also a small mosque for quiet prayer and contemplation.
We travelled on to Kyzylorda. There we paid a short visit to the mechanic and his family where David had done some work on the car back in June. Although the mechanic doesn’t speak English, his wife Roxy, speaks good English and works as a translator for an oil company with offices in the city. Then we continued on our way.
it was drizzling and very cold when we left Kyzylorda, but we ran out of the drizzle late in the day as we headed more into the desert. The frost was thick the next morning and there is a brisk and very bitter wind and much cloud still around. Temperature about -2. The day didn’t warm up as one expects after quite a frost.
It just got colder, or seemed to. around mid day we came to Aralsk, a dry dusty town that once upon a time was a fishing village on the shores of the Aral sea. Now it’s just a very dry, dusty, dispirited looking place, goodness knows what people do for a living here as there doesn’t appear to be anything for people to do. The desert can only support a few camels, horses, goats and sheep. There was still thick frost on the roofs, you could see where it was beginning to melt when the feeble sunlight happened upon it.
Here, we had problems getting diesel and had to go into the town and try a couple of places before finding one where we could fill up. Most of the trucks seemed to be camped at the service station outside and were apparently content to wait there until further supplies turned up. There were enough trucks there to empty a fleet of tankers.
When it came to cooking up a meal L had to move the tiny camping stove into the front of the car, the wind and by now -1C temp was just too much for the bigger camping stove she normally used. Just as we were leaving here it began to snow, but then snow isn’t quite the right word to describe the very tiny frozen particles that were falling. It wasn’t sleet either. These tiny icy crystals didn’t even mark the windscreen, no need to use the wipers. They could barely be seen, yet after an hour or so we could see a fine film of them settling on the roadside. By nightfall there was a slightly thicker white haze across the desert.
It was at this point, the following morning, with a thicker layer of those icy particles outside and a temp of -8C that the car decided it had a flat battery. Well, I suppose it was one of the few things that hadn’t played up this trip and it had to have it’s moment of glory so to speak. D had to stop a passing motorist and get a jump start and later in the day we got a new battery in Aktobe.
Aktobe it another oil town and is quite modern with wide streets, smart shopping centres and heaps of new apartment blocks. It has a fine Orthodox cathedral set in large gardens, and on the opposite side of the road is a huge mosque, both are fairly new.
When David was looking for the new battery he met a lovely young woman in whose company we spent a pleasant hour. She told us that it was the best time of year, the temperature was just lovely. it was around 3C outside. A month before it had been 45C and higher and in another few weeks it would be -10C and lower. It does hover around -30C for a while in mid winter and when it gets below -35 the schools are closed. Not a place to hang around in at any time of year.
Our next stop was Uralsk near the Russian border on the road to Samara. It wasn’t warm but neither was it as cold as Aktobe or Aralsk. We spent a day here as we had time to fill in before our Russian visa started.
It was early one morning, just after daylight when we arrived at the border and quickly passed through the Kazakh side. Then onto the Russian side where we had to wait in a queue out in the bitter wind at 0C while someone in a nice warm cubicle contemplated passports, identity cards, and computers, taking as much time as they could with each one. Still we were through and into Russia within 1.5 hours, not bad for a Russian border.
Although we had been given a 10 day transit visa my lot still wanted to get across as quickly as they reasonably could. The wind seemed to die down, the icy snow we had left behind before reaching Aktobe but frost there was a plenty.
Overall we had quite a good run, cold frosty mornings, one of which L nearly got frost bite when her hand began to freeze after washing up the breakfast dishes, it was around -6C. We saw the cattle and sheep still outside grazing before being shut inside for the freezing winter months. Vast areas have been planted with winter wheat and barely and were looking lovely and green while other vast areas had been left fallow until spring. Big stacks of hay and silage ready for winter feeding and the occasional horse drawn cart with a load of sticks and small logs heading back to a village home from the forest.
We headed towards Moscow on the most direct route. Some of the way is 4 lane dual carriage way with some good ring roads around cities like Samara and Penza but other parts are like a narrow country road where the endless convey to trucks gets queued up for a great many k’s behind a slow moving one. That’s often a good time for us to pull up and have a coffee or meal break, but hey, there is a limit to the number of such breaks one can have in a day. Long stretches are under constructions. The Russians don’t do things in small measures, they do stretches of 50 to 100k’s at a time.
Around Moscow there are ring roads; the inner ring road, and outer ring road, and outer outer ring road, and there’s a sort of outer, outer, outer ring road. We took the outer, outer ring road. Last year we had taken this road too, and there had been a great deal of construction and it took us all day to get around it to Odonsovo. This year it was considerably less congested, a big flyover over one of the arterial roads and another over a busy rail crossing had gone some way to relieve matters.
As we were on the final leg heading for the Latvian border we ran into a snow storm just after we’d had our lunch stop in lovely sunshine. It wasn’t a particularly heavy storm but it did slow us and everything else. That evening we camped in a snow covered rest area and it continued to snow most of the night. The snow wasn’t much deeper next morning when we set off for the border in 0C. and the thermometer didn’t move off 0C all that day.
This time the border crossing took much, much longer, about 4 hours on the Russian side alone. Then a little more than an hour on the Latvian side. One of the reasons it was so slow was that a coach load of Serbian were just in front of us, and, for both the Russian and Latvian officials the luggage had to be unloaded searched and re-loaed, for around 50 people that takes quite a while.
It had taken us more than 4 days to drive across Russia, if we’d had to go it in that time, as originally stated by the visa person at the Russian Consulate, then it would have involved quite a bit of driving in darkness, something D tries to avoid now as he is a ‘senior citizen’.
Well into the afternoon we set off across Latvia. Later on we stopped for a cuppa near a heavily laden crab apple tree. So L grabs a bag to collect a few of the bigger one, she likes them. Out rushes a lady from a nearly farm house, empties the bag, drags L off into the barn, not to lock her up for nicking apples, but to fill her bag to the point of overflowing with delicious freshly picked apples from the orchard. L gave her the last of the little souvenir koalas we’d had with us, the poor woman nearly broke down and cried. Incidentally, the apples were crisp, juicy and full of flavour, and didn’t last long:
Oh, says L, how civilised it is to once again be able to deposit the used toilet paper into the toilet bowl and not into a bin beside. It really takes a great deal of effort to remember to do this, as even in bygone times when there was an outside ‘dunny” the paper went into the loo. Not that I know anything about loos really, being a stuffed toy; L says just as well:
As we headed southwest across Latvia, then Lithuania the temp climbed a bit and we started to see the wonderful autumn foliage of gold, tans and russets that makes this time of year L’s favourite. Back in Central Asia, the trees didn’t seem to colour much, it changes so quickly from very hot to very cold the leave just seem to turn brown and fall off in the space of a few days. Now we had a carpet of colourful leaves on the ground while the trees were still ablaze with colour.
So we meandered a bit, taking the lessor roads as is our habit and enjoyed the scenery. Eventually we arrived in Dunkerque and early the next morning took the ferry to Dover and arrived back in Arundel and at the home of our dear, long suffering friend Heather.
By this time of course it is well into November and now L has to look for an affordable airfare home and D is considering all the things that need to be done to the car. At least it has got us across Russia and Europe without anymore problems, thank goodness, though the 2nd hand turbo D had got in the UK and fitted in Bishkek was beginning to sound like a jumbo jet about to take off, every time it cut in. He has since fitted a new one he managed to get hold of for a reasonable price and it is running very quietly, or at least it did the only time we have used the car since he fitted it. Also he replace the sensor on the gearobx and that seems to be working OK at present.
© Lynette Regan 7th Novenber 2016