Short Journeys: Kazakhstan. Second Edition. Written by Andrew Boland. Photographs by Andrew Boland. copyright 2013/14

Transcription

1 Short Journeys: Kazakhstan Second Edition Written by Andrew Boland Photographs by Andrew Boland copyright 2013/14

2 Précis Short Journeys is a series of stories about my travels to different countries. Whilst they are not intended as a guide book, I have endeavoured to include information about where I stayed, what I ate, what I saw and how to go about it if you were to visit the countries in question. My previous writings the Dhaka to Dakar books, were simply travel experiences. This time I wanted to go a little further for the reader. I wanted to include any stories and experiences I thought were either interesting, important or amusing whilst I was travelling. I want to encourage you the reader to read, think about, and then perhaps go there yourself. You will find information on the places I stayed and visited, and how I got there and around. Occasionally I may write about a place I didn t stay at if say I stayed with a friend to give you an option. However, please don t use these writings as a guide book! The countries covered will in the main part not be the most touristed of places. Hence they may be less literature out there for these places than say Western Europe, but they are places I found very interesting, beautiful, perhaps challenging at times, but essentially worthwhile. Don t be afraid to challenge yourself and head somewhere you may have never considered before. You won t be sorry!

3 Kazakhstan: Snapshots Location: Central Asia, landlocked. Borders: China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan. Population: 17.8 million Capital: Astana Area: 2, 724, 900 square kilometres Currency: $1US = 180 Tenge (March 2014) Religion: Islam (70%), Russian Orthodox (20%) Language: Kazakh, Russian Head of State: President Nursultan Nazabaev

4 Introduction Why go to Kazakhstan? There are a lot of reasons to travel to Kazakhstan, outside from visiting a place lace whic which is well and truly off the tourist route and nd being able to wow your friends when you gett home. O Ok, that s not a good enough reason on its own, but bu I hope to give you many reasons to go to the n ninth-biggest country in the world. Kazakhstan is a country with th a long history, a diverse people, and a countryy which is just growing more and more as every day ay passe passes in the 21st century. There s something beautifu beautifully ancient about the country, something delightfully lightfully modern at the same time. A country building ilding a future across a wide land, in a location between tween Europe Eu and Asia, with a mix of Russia and the Ukraine Ukra added to the Kazakh people. Gorgeous Almaty. People are generally warm and frie friendly, the food is rich and meaty. Almaty and Astana Ast are the old and the new, and both have ve something somet to offer the traveller that s hard to find som somewhere else in the world. Then you have Semey, a town with a Russian history, which Dostoevsky toevsky lived in for a time, but is also host to a museum m for a national n hero, Abay, perhaps Kazakhstan s greate reatest poet. You can see Russian, European, local al and N Nomadic influences all over the place. There ere are b breathtaking mountains too, thousands of kilometres kilom of steppe; desert the land has it all! Why go to Kazakhstan? Why hy HAVEN T HAVEN you gone to Kazakhstan yet?

5 Background Kazakhstan is perhaps not a country everyone knows about in the world today. Some people possibly think it s completely fictitious, created by Sacha Baron Cohen as the homeland of Borat for the sake of a joke, but Kazakhstan is real, it s big and it s nothing like Cohen s frankly racist vision of the place. The ninth-biggest country on Earth, Kazakhstan sits below Russia to the west of China. There s a lot of desert, but also some interesting cities, history and a capital which hopes one day to rival Dubai for new modern architecture and features buildings shaped like pyramids and ice cream cones. The people of Kazakhstan are a mixture of Russian and Kazakh, principally. Kazakhstan has the largest population of Russians in Central Asia. Fyodor Dostoevsky was exiled to Semey in Kazakhstan for a time. You can visit the house where he lived. Modern Kazakhstan, born from the ashes of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, has been growing under the reins of their larger than life president, Nazabaev. President since Kazakhstan regained status as a sovereign state, the guy thinks big. You just have to visit Astana to see that. A small and almost insignificant place twenty years ago, it s is growing as fast as the economy will let it, albeit without the population presently to fill it. Locals in Astana are confident the people will come. Like Australia, and other countries in Central Asia, Kazakhstan s economy is being fuelled by a resources boom. Blessed with natural resources including oil and natural gas, Kazakhstan has money to burn. Which they do by building some rather exceptional, if a little bonkers, buildings. All in the capital Astana. Sadly the money does not appear to filter down as quickly to other parts of the country, including the biggest city, Almaty. Semey, in the north, also could do with some funds beautify and repair the streets. Some of the roads in the north are in serious disrepair, and some work on the train tracks could speed the transport up too. But it s not my country, and Nazabaev has a vision! The history of Kazakhstan is one of nomads and yurts, and then a Russian influence seeped in a few hundred years ago, and so did Russians. Then of course came the Soviet Union, with Central Asia claimed as part of this great behemoth. Kazakhstan had its ups and downs as part of the Soviet Union. As result Nazabaev is not so chummy these days with Moscow thanks to nuclear tests done on Kazakh soil. An area near Semey called the Ploygon, was used over many years as a test site for nuclear weapons. Something like 460 nuclear bombs were tested (detonated) in this area. Today, the country is nuclear free, and it s fair to say people weren t so happy about their country being used as Russia s nuclear playground. Still, the positive side of the modern-kazakh coin reveals that Kazakhstan is still important to Russia, and indeed the international space programme. Although I didn t get to visit the space centre, it is visitable and for space buffs would make an interesting excursion westwards. The Baykonur Cosmodome is in the central south of the country, a couple of days by land from Almaty. Today Kazakhs make up the majority of the population, but fifty years ago more than 60 percent were Russians. Most Kazakhs are Muslim, Islam is the main religion in Kazakhstan, although you could say it s a very moderate form of Islam. Something like 20% of the population are Russian Orthodox, so both churches and mosques can be found frequently in Kazakhstan.

6 Preparationing My itinerary Kazakhstan is a big place, a little like Australia in some respects as the middle is rather desert-like with not much to do and see there. I stuck to the eastern side of the country and didn t get west of the capital, Astana. I arrived in Almaty, the biggest city and in many ways still the main city in Kazakhstan. For example, I had to visit two embassies whilst I was there to get onward visas, plus a travel agency to get a letter of invitation for Uzbekistan, and those three places were located in Almaty. In fact, most embassies are. I organised a bit of a loop then going northward to Semey, round via Pavlodar (a one night stop) and then to the capital Astana. From Astana I headed back to Almaty, from where I continued on to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Basically, the loop was Almaty Semey Astana Almaty. Although I didn t get to a lot of places, I felt I got a sense of the country and the people. I was fortunate to meet a lot of local people on my journey but this was one country I hardly met a western tourist in at all. The only tourists I remember even chatting to in Kazakhstan were waiting for visas with me at the Uzbek Embassy. The transporting around I flew into Kazakhstan from China, but internally I took trains, buses and Marshrutkas. A Marshrutka is basically a small mini-bus, often packed to the hilt, with little space for your legs. It s a common form of transport in Kazakhstan, but even more common in neighbouring countries where they don t have as good a rail system as Kazakhstan. Rail in Kazakhstan is pretty good, however it s Astana and Almaty centric in other words a lot of connections require you to go through the two main cities. I went from Semey to Astana by bus, which required an overnight stop in Pavlodar, because there is no direct rail link between the two cities and going back to Almaty would have required probably two nights on the train. I flew in with China Southern Airlines, a decent if not brilliant airline, from Xi an in China, with a stop in Urumqi. Flying through the Urumqi airport can be a bit of a headache, you can t get checked

7 through so you have to collect llect your bags and check into the next flight there. re. Fortunately Fortu there was a lot of time between flights ts to Alm Almaty and that wasn t an issue. However, later in I came back through the same airport with a two-hour tw layover. I had to get issued with a transit visa for China at the airport which involved a bit of w waiting around, and I was lucky to make the connection. conn So if you are flying through Urumqi without previously stopping in China, make sure you ou allow allo time between flights to get a transit visa,, get your bags and then check in and make your next flight. fligh There are a number of airlines ines that go to Almaty airport. Mostly Russian Airlines, rlines, China Ch Southern and other Chinese airlines. The local car carrier is Air Astana, one of the few Centrall Asian aairlines allowed to land at European airports, so their planes are the most popular. There are a few different dif Central Asian airlines, but apparently tly many don t meet the minimum safety requirements ements to t fly into Europe. Keep this in mind when booking oking tickets, tic especially flights inside Central Asia. For Europe, your best bet is possibly possibl the low-cost carrier Air Baltic. I flew with ith them from Tashkent (Uzbekistan) to London, with ith a stop stopover in Riga. They also fly to Almaty and d their prices pr are cheap. It is basic travel though, if you u want ffood you have to pay for it, and the flights ts are rea real red-eyespecials (they fly in the middle ddle of the th night). Aeroflot is another option, and d there aare some more expensive European airlines es too which wh do the journey. From the States you d d have to connect in Asia or Europe. Arrival in Almaty at the airport port was straight forward enough. I already had my visa. Do check the visa section (next) in this book,, because it s not ALL straight forward. I was picked ed up by car, I am lucky enough to have some friends ds in Almaty, Alm and I also had a place to stay. Stopped at a station on the train to Semey. Around the country I took a couple of overnight train rides. The trains are in reasonable reason condition, similar to the sleepers in China. hina. One On was second class, one was first I think (Astana to Almaty). The trains don t move too fast outside rroutes connecting to Astana, but they are re still an enjoyable way to travel. They will pull up to the smal smaller stations where stalls are set up on thee platform platfor if you wish to buy something. The stops are usua usually like ten minutes so people have a chance nce to h have a smoke and buy something. I bussed it around from Semey mey to A Astana, via Pavlodar. The roads up there weren t n t great, but more on that journey later. The buses are pretty cheap, not so comfortable but not ot too bad. b

8 The getting of the visa. Well, the first thing that strikes you in regards to getting a Kazakh visa as an Australian is the total lack of a Kazakh embassy in Australia. If you re in Europe of the States you are luckier, but Australia does not have an embassy for Kazakhstan in its borders sadly. This meant posting the application with a money order and my passport to Singapore, but it arrived on a public holiday. Yet they still took it to the embassy, no-one was there to sign for it so it went back to the post office where it was forgotten. Only after repeated calls to the post office in question did I discover what had happened, they found it and delivered it the next day. I was fortunate that the embassy kept in good communication with me and I knew it still hadn t arrived. I was leaving for a big trip whilst organising all this and with visas for Vietnam and China still to organise, this was starting to become a worry. As it was there was still time to get the other two, but the wait and worry about where my passport was 4 weeks out from leaving Australia was definitely a concern! Fortunately, a letter of invitation was not required, but I m not sure if that s true for all embassies and nationalities. So check up on that well before your trip! One thing you will have to do, though, is register your visa once you are in Kazakhstan, unless you are there for less than five days I believe (don t quote me on that). I needed a letter of invitation for Uzbekistan, which I was due to travel too after Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and was in contact with a company called Stan Tours, who are experts in dealing with the multitude of visa issues that can arise in Central Asia. They have an office in Almaty, and were able to register my Kazakh visa for me. Handy, as I was already going there to get my Letter of Invitation to Uzbekistan. They also advised me to go and see the Kyrgyzstan embassy that day, as it could take two weeks or more to receive a visa and that was my next destination. I did and they must have liked my face because I had my visa (at a very expensive $120) within two hours! The guy next to me had been waiting 2 weeks with no luck. Money and Health The currency used in Kazakhstan is the Tenge. One US Dollar is worth roughly 180 Tenge (March 2014), One UK pound 300 Tenge, One Euro 250 Tenge and One Australian Dollar 160 Tenge. It does move up and down a bit, so check as you plan and before you go. The Tenge has gone down in value around 10% or more between editions of this book (November 2013 March 2014), showing you how volatile and changeable it is. There aren t a lot of big issues to your health in Kazakhstan. You ll probably want to drink bottled or boiled water, have tetanus and TB shots, maybe shots for Hepatitis. Check with your doctor or a travel doctor before you go as well, see them at most a month before you go if you can and they can do a detailed check to see what s required and advised.