KAZAKHSTAN TO UZBEKISTAN

After leaving Kyrgyzstan, our train spent the night working its way west along the Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan border. At 5:20 AM our German train master came over the intercom with a jolly "Good morning!" wake-up call. Two minutes later he came back on, apologizing profusely because although he had stressed to us to set our clocks back one hour because of a time zone change, he himself had neglected to do so. "Please, sleep another hour," he pleaded.

Yeah, right. We both had been awake prior to his too-early wake-up call. In fact, Bob was in the shower during that 5:20 announcement. Sleeping on a train is not easy.

Notes from my journal written that morning:  The view out the window as the sun rises is of the endless steppe covered in short yellow grass and occasionally punctuated by cattle, a road, or a barely livable dwelling. Power lines run incongruously parallel to our track, and sometimes a dirt road comes up alongside or traverses the track. Every now and then we pass through a small town. The houses we see through our window have livestock in the yard. Sometimes there is a small mosque. Just now we passed a dainty white one with a deep blue onion dome and four minarets, one on each corner. Every now and then we see a small knot of men staring at the train, standing silently with their hands in their pockets.  Last night there were women and children watching us pass by, the children exuberantly friendly, calling out and waving. It is as hard for me to comprehend their life as it is for them to comprehend mine.

We came to the border crossing where we would leave Kazakhstan at 8:00 AM. Again the agents clothed in military uniforms or camouflage boarded the train and took our passports. Again a German shepherd drug-sniffing dog came through. We were through in record time, just 30 minutes, but we had to wait another 45 minutes until we could pull out of the station. I guess everyone has to wait their turn, even the American tourists.

BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN: A MEAL AND A WALKING TOUR OF THE CITY

After our drive into the mountains, we came back to Bishkek, the capital and largest city of Kyrgyzstan and once a rest stop on the Silk Road. 

Like travellers of old, our caravan also visited a caravansary in Bishkek for refueling. 

They made us very comfortable . . . 

. . . and then started bringing out dish after dish of delicious-looking food. By the way, see the tissue box at the bottom of the picture below? Those are napkins. They are just about the same weight and strength as what we think of as cheap tissues. They weren't super effective.

We had eaten a meal similar to this in Almaty, where we had filled up on the many dishes initially placed on the table, not realizing that they were but appetizers.

BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN: A MUSLIM CEMETERY

We made a rather unconventional stop as we returned from a drive in the mountains--a cemetery.  I really enjoy visiting cemeteries. They say a lot about a country's culture, and each one is unique. We've seen some pretty interesting cemeteries over the years. (See here, here, here, and here for a few.)

This one was in the middle of nowhere:

. . . and in the distance we could see another cemetery, even more in the middle of nowhere:

Engraved on one of the crosspieces of the dome in the photo above are the dates 1947-2014.

My dad died when I was young, and I grew up visiting the cemetery, wandering (rather happily, actually) among the graves and wondering who the people were and what they were like when they were alive. Some of the same emotions I had as a child flood my heart every time I visit a cemetery, including this one outside Bishkek. If anything, this cemetery triggered those feelings on a grander than usual scale because of the style of the memorials.

KYRGYZSTAN: ALA-TOO MOUNTAIN DRIVE (TIAN SHAN MOUNTAIN RANGE)

Like several of the countries on this trip, if you had asked me what I knew about Kyrgyzstan six months ago, I would have said, "Kyrgyz . . . what?" (Or in writing, "Keerguz . . . huh?" One great accomplishment of this trip was learning to spell K-y-r-g-y-z-s-t-a-n.)

Here it is, nestled between China on the east, Kazakhstan on the north, Tajikistan on the south, and Uzbekistan on the west:

Map from here

Yeah, the one of those countries I could have placed before this trip is China.

Interesting facts about Kyrgyzstan:

• With 77,202 square miles, it is about the same size as Nebraska but has three times the population (6 million), which isn't saying much since Nebraska is mostly corn fields. Kyrgyzstan has a population density comparable to Minnesota.

• There are 20 million cattle, sheep, and goats in the country.

• Russian forces took over the area that is now Kyrgyzstan in 1876. 

• In 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from the Soviet Union and adopted its current name.

• The capital is Bishkek, which is the largest city by far in Kyrgyzstan and is 139 years old. (Covered in a future post.)

• Most of the people are Muslim, and while they are generally not very observant, there are still 2,000 mosques in the country.

• The economy has tripled in the last three years, but the average salary is about $200/month and the average pension is about $100/month.

• We saw cars with steering wheels on the left, like American cars, and cars with steering wheels on the right, like British cars. They drive on the right like we do in the United States.

(Note: Some of these facts were given to us by our guide Valentina, whose mother is a doctor and father is a retired military officer.)

BORDER CROSSING NIGHTMARE:

At 4:10 AM the Kazakh border control entered the train and went from cabin to cabin checking our passports and (horror of horrors), sitting on the end of our beds to take our pictures. We were in pajamas and had been asleep (more or less--it was our first night on the clackety, careening train). The stop at the Kazakhstan exit point took about 1.5 hours, and then we had the Kyrgyzstan entrance. They also boarded the train and, not to be outdone by their neighbors in Kazakhstan, came through every cabin twice. The first person checked our passports, comparing them first to our face and then to a list, and then asked to see our suitcases. I think they wanted to make sure we were actually long-term travelers. A second person came through about 30 minutes later, stamped our passports, and took our pictures.

When all the border guys finally got off the train, the night was over and it was time for breakfast in the dining car. We arrived in Bishkek, the capital, almost two hours behind schedule thanks to the double delay at the border. It was pretty darn annoying.

The train station felt like a walk back in time to the mid-20th century. It was quite lovely--so much nicer and more elegant than today's transportation hubs, and so much more welcoming than the border guards.

As time was short, we hopped on our waiting buses and began a 1.5-hour drive into the Ala-Too Mountains, part of the northern Tian Shan range. I was very tired from our truncated sleep and even less tolerant of winding roads than usual. I finally just went to sleep to avoid feeling so green.

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN: PANFILOV PARK WAR MEMORIAL AND THE SILK ROAD EXPRESS TRAIN

A large park surrounds the Ascension Eastern Orthodox Cathedral, and in that park is a war memorial that honors both the Bolshevik Revolution (1917-1920) and World War II (1941-1945).

The memorial is a long, stone-paved mall bordered by dense foliage and containing several interesting works of art.

This is the entrance on one end of the park. On the other side of this brick wall . . .

. . . is a giant relief of fifteen World War II soldiers (one for each Soviet republic) who seem to be bursting out of the wall. The inscription on the base translates to something like, "Great Russia will never turn back; Moscow is behind us!"

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN: THE ASCENSION CATHEDRAL (AKA ZENKOV CATHEDRAL)

Kazakhstan and Russia share 4,254 miles of border, so it is no wonder that there has been a strong Russian presence in Kazakhstan for centuries, long before what is called the "Soviet period" began in about 1920.

Although Kazakhstan was and is predominantly Muslim, Christianity spread throughout the country with the Russians who immigrated during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1907, a Russian Orthodox Church was built in Almaty, not the first such church in Kazakhstan, but perhaps the most unique and most beautiful.

Unfortunately for us, it was being renovated when we were there:

To understand its construction, it is important to know that because Almaty is located at the edge of the magnificent Tian Shan mountain range, it is prone to earthquakes. After a magnitude 7.3 earthquake brought down many of the buildings in Almaty in 1887, most of the new construction was wood instead of brick, including the new Russian Orthodox Ascension Cathedral, also known as the Zenkov Cathedral (Zenkov was the engineer), which was begun in 1904 and finished in 1907. It is built entirely of Tian Shan spruce and held together not with nails but with iron bolts (I'm not sure what the difference is). Wooden beams were fastened together with rolling brackets, giving it a unique kind of flexibility that miraculously saved it from almost any damage in the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that hit Almaty in 1911 and again destroyed most of the city.

With its 184-foot-tall spire, the Ascension Cathedral claims to be the second tallest all-wooden building in the world.

The fencing around the renovation areas shows pictures of the cathedral in the early 20th century and in the present day:

It looks a lot like the cathedrals of St. Petersburg, Russia:

Photo from here

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN: THE MEDEU SKATING RINK AND KOK TOBE HILL

1. MOUNTAINS AND MEDEU SKATING RINK

Our bus took us out of the city of Almaty, up a winding mountain road, and through some breathtaking scenery. It was October 5th, and the first snow of the season had already fallen the previous day. 

The buses parked in a lot next to the Medeu Skating Rink, the highest Olympic-sized skating rink in the world. It is situated at 5,548 feet above sea level, making it a great place for high-altitude training:

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN: THE ROYAL TULIP HOTEL AND REPUBLIC SQUARE

We flew from Urumqi to Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday, October 4, 2017. I was a little anxious about what we might find in the uncharted territory (for us) of the Stans. 

Almaty, located near the Kyrgyzstan border and not far from the China border, is the largest city in the country. There are 1.7 million people in Almaty, which is 9% of the entire country's population. Almaty also served as the capital during the time Kazakhstan was part of the USSR (1929-1997). The capital was moved north to Astana in December of 1997. Note that Kazakhstan's largest border is with Russia:

Map from here

And there I had a significant Aha! moment: The Stans were part of the USSR! I'm sure I knew that at one time--or did I? I couldn't have even placed them on the map prior to this trip, which is crazy considering that Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world, area wise. I could place every other country in the top ten list on a map before this trip, so why not Kazakhstan?

#1: Russia

#2: Canada

#3: United States of America

#4: China

#5: Brazil

#6: Australia

#7: India

#8: Argentina

#9: Kazakhstan

#10: Algeria

Maybe it's because although Kazakhstan is rich in natural resources, the US has never had access to those resources. Maybe it's because there has been almost no US tourism to this region until recently. Maybe it's because out of the ten countries on the above list, Kazakhstan has the smallest population (17.8 million). The United States is about four times larger than Kazakhstan, but has seventeen times the population, which gives you an idea of how sparsely populated Kazakhstan is. Why should we care about them, right?

Map from the CIA website

Anyway, Kazakhstan was the last of the Stans to sign the resolution to withdraw from the USSR. They were understandably concerned about economics. These days Kazakhstan appears to have good relations with other countries in the area. They have strong economic ties to the European Union, China, and Russia, in that order, showing that they have successfully broken away from Russia. In addition, they are gradually shifting from the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet to the Latin alphabet (what we use).

After we arrived in Almaty, we went straight to the Royal Tulip Hotel, one of the best hotels of our trip. Yes, it was very Dutch.