We breezed through the border officials as we exited Uzbekistan but were asked for our first bribe by a Kazakhstan official…ahhh how cute. NO!! was our response. We got through without giving a cent but lost a coloured glittery pen to an official who was in charge of opening the gate to leave us into Kazakhstan. Damn it they were for the Mongolian children!! Meanie pants.
We spent our first night in Shymkent on the hardest bed in the world. We then drove on the next day with Kealan and Claudine in our little convoy and camped in the evening on grassland at the edge of a village. During the evening we were visited by practically the whole village. They laughed at the lads’ tent and said they would be very cold in it. Larry showed them some photos on his camera one with him in his tent in Ireland camping. Kazakh people may now think all Irish people live in tents. Sorry guys.
We were given a present of a giant water melon by local children and shown family photos. We also got a visit by the police to check up on us. Then another car came by to laugh at the notion of staying in a tent.
We had a lovely sleep and were visited again in the morning by some friendly men and were given locally made balls of cheese that were very salty and unfortunately inedible.
We left for Almaty a big city in the south east of Kazakhstan. We stayed one night as the hotels were very expensive – $140 for one night with no air conditioning! Tsk. Had a good night out on the town as we met up with two ex-pats who filled us in on a thing or two about the country…very interesting…
We left Almaty the next day and spent it camping at a lake further up the country. Think Ireland is dirty…the place was nearly a rubbish dump it was that bad. We were kept awake all night by silly young Kazakhs and left the next morning in a grumpy mood.
Another night of camping with the mosquitos and we stayed our last night in Semey in Northern Kazakhstan. It was the site of numerous nuclear bomb test in the Soviet era and supposedly a whole city nearby was wiped out with 2 million killed. Its never been mentioned and was covered up by the Soviet government of the time. It was a very poor city.
Next day we left Kazakhstan which we liked – friendly and not so friendly people, nice countryside. We never got to use some Borat quotes as apparently they actually really do dislike any mention of it. Boo. On to Russia!
