192km Shymkent-Taraz

The well-dressed fellow at our table didn’t look like your typical alcoholic. With his well tailored suit and fancy watch he seemed more like a business man waiting for a meeting. But in the few minutes since we’d been at the cafe he’d already ordered three pitchers of vodka and a large beer. Four plates of meat and french fries also appeared along with bread and salads at our table but this seemed more for our benefit than his. He barely touched his meal as he downed shot after shot of vodka and rambled on to us in Russian.

In fact the man was already taking a great interest in our friend Michel when we arrived. We’d only just found Michel after being separated when we stopped to register our visa in Shymkent and he carried on down the road. We vastly underestimated how long it would take to work through post-Soviet bureaucracy and our hopes of leaving Shymkent to catch up with Michel by noon were quickly thwarted. “Come back at 5pm,” the man behind the desk said. By the time we left Shymkent on Monday the evening call to prayer was already ringing out over the city. (more…)

Just a quick note to let everyone know we made it to Taraz and we’re continuing east to Almaty today. We’d love to bring you photos of some of the beautiful sights from the last few days but unfortunately the internet cafe isn’t helping…. there’s no way we can attach our USB stick so the pictures and journals are stuck firmly offline for the moment. The photo of the ferris wheel came from Shymkent. Today is Kazakh International Day. Instead of celebrating May 1st as Labour Day as in Britain, here Kazakhstan’s 100 nationalities dress up in traditional costumes and hold a parade. It’s a colourful start to our day! When we do get a chance to upload photos we’ll have some beautiful outfits to show you. It could be a few days though. From here we head through an arid part of the country without too many big cities en route.

125km Tashkent-Shymkent

Kazakhstan greeted us with the sound of the Beatles playing from a speaker outside a slick new shopping centre. Inside its air conditioned walls were all the big clothing names, an Apple computer store and a thoroughly modern supermarket. We were back in the land of vegetables wrapped in plastic and whole rows devoted to olive oil. Returning outside, it took us a moment to recover from the shock of seeing our first real supermarket since Turkey. As we rested in the shade we watched brand new SUVs roll down the streets of Shymkent and young women parading in high heels down the newly cobbled and tree-lined sidewalks.

Was this really Kazakhstan? It felt more like a middle-class London suburb. Up the road from the shopping centre was a restaurant with wireless internet access where Kazakhs were surfing the net on their laptops. Around the corner, a night club had just opened charging 3,000 Tenge for admission – about $25 U.S. – for admission, no drinks included.

By now we’d realised that Kazakhstan was the most prosperous country in the region by a long way and the prices reflected its riches. Everywhere in Shymkent, one of Kazakhstan’s largest cities, people seemed to be pursuing Western standards of wealth and for the first time in quite a while we felt like the poor cousins.

It was different in the countryside, of course. There we found people still in traditional dress, the women with their colourful headscarves, the men in felt hats. To the east we were treated to a stunning view of blue skies and snow-capped mountains and all around horses grazed in green fields, newly born foals at their sides. But even far from Shymkent, the new cars rolled by us regularly. There were far fewer Ladas here than in Uzbekistan and many more people wearing dark glasses and dressed impeccably in tailored suits. (more…)