This is part two of my adventure after my girlfriend Jana and I parted ways in Moscow. You can read part one here.

I am going to guess that most of you reading have never been to Kazakhstan, and some of you might not know where it is. Please leave all Borat related thoughts aside. Kazakhstan is a large country nestled to the south of Russia with the Caspian sea to the west, China’s Xinjiang province to the east and Mongolia to the northeast. I happen to have been born there after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a non-Kazakh, Russian speaker of mixed heritage.

In the past 25 years Kazakhstan has really come into its own and is far from the crumbling post-soviet state that it was when my family left for Canada. It is now a developed country with beautiful people and beautiful nature. I suggest a readup on  Wikipedia if you want to know more about the country. I am here to tell you about my personal experience this year in Kazakhstan, visiting the so-called “southern capital” Almaty (the largest city and my hometown), as well as a brief trip to the actual capital, Astana.

I flew from Athens, Greece, via Istanbul, arriving around 4am in Almaty International Airport where my grandparents came to pick me up. My mother’s parents are my only two relatives that did not leave Kazakhstan. They survived the turbulent 90s and now live happily in a nice apartment right in the center of town. As dawn lit up the sharp mountain peaks behind Almaty, my second home, I was quickly reminded how open and welcoming the Kazakh people are. The taxi driver was a very friendly Kazakh man who told us in broken Russian about how his son also studied overseas and came back to run a business in Almaty. He told me that he hopes I will do the same (I laughed).

We arrived home at sunrise and ate a short breakfast made by my grandma, after which I power napped till 11am. I began the day with a walk. I started walking and just kept going. I forgot how compact the city was! Walking up Abay Prospect I crossed the Esentai river, saw the Central Stadium, Circus building, and eventually came to the Novaya Ploshchad (New Square), a legacy of when Almaty was the capital of Kazakhstan. I ended the day watching the sun set from Kok Tobe, a hill with panoramic views of the city and the Alatau mountains framing it from three sides.

 

 

I caught a ride down the hill and took the metro home; a metro which has won multiple international awards for the beauty of its stations (I am starting to sound like Borat aren’t I).

In Almaty, hitching a ride with locals is common practice and easy to do if you speak Russian or Kazakh. You raise your hand slightly, a car will usually pull up in seconds, and you quickly negotiate your destination and price (in 2015, around 400 tenge [2 USD] within town). I met many interesting people hitching rides this way. Of course, if you are new to the country it is best you order an official taxi. Hitchhiking is not regulated so proceed at your own risk, with caution.

I spent much of my time exploring the town, meeting friends, and taking music lessons (I am a music nerdwho is well known for it in Kazakhstan). I went shopping with my grandma at the many bazaars of Almaty. One early morning, I hiked with a friend up to Kok Zhailau, a meadow/plateau in the mountains above Almaty. It rained for the first time in months so we came back soaked and caked with mud, but the hike was well worth it.

I did not plan to initially, but a situation of complete chance made me decide to fly for a day to Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan. As if like clockwork, on my second week in Almaty, the local currency fell by a significant margin, making airline tickets suddenly very accessibly priced for me. The next evening a friend gave me a call from Astana, hearing that I was in Kazakhstan, and invited me to come visit. In Canada we say “you only live once”. In Kazakh they say алға жигиттер!

Anyway. I was in Astana four days later, leaving Almaty on the earliest morning flight. I arrived at sunrise, and it was cold! In August, Almaty was a balmy 25 degrees, where Astana, only 2 hours north, was +6 as the sun came up over the massive skyscrapers soaring over me. I ate breakfast and went off to explore the Left Bank, which is the government, entertainment and financial centre of the city. Astana is a planned city, unlike Almaty, and as a result looks like a very symmetrical urban metropolis in the middle of nowhere. It is a shimmering glass oasis in the vast northern steppe. I visited the National Museum which houses relics of Kazakhstan’s historical legacy. I came out into a large square where I met friends at the Hazrat Sultan Mosque, carved from marble, a pleasing contrast to the other large mosque in town, Nur Astana, which is plated in gold.

You can feel the oil and gas money pumping through the streets of this city. I strolled up and down the main thoroughfare between the presidential palace and the Khan Shatyr, the world’s largest tent and a massive entertainment complex/indoor beach resort, and noticed that everything on the way is made entirely of granite. The benches are granite, the fountains are granite, even the garbage cans are carved from granite. You rarely see concrete in this town.

Halfway down the thoroughfare stands the Baiterek, a large golden orb crowning a spire tower. It represents a pre-islamic Kazakh legend about a poplar tree giving birth to life. Inside I touched a solid gold imprint of president Nazarbayev’s hand, and marveled at the view. I could go on forever about all the things I managed to cram into my 24 hour day but the highlight was probably relaxing on the beach inside the Khan Shatyr. Above the indoor amusement park and shopping center, there is a large beach with real seawater, waterslides, palm trees and sand imported from the Maldives. Every city that gets cold in the winter should have one of these. In Astana, you can buy some nice Gucci shoes (or just about any other brand for that matter), then sunbathe in the sand under a palm tree wearing them while -40 degree winds are howling outside.

I returned to Almaty just past midnight, almost 24 hours later. I fell into bed exhausted and satisfied.

I ended my stay in Kazakhstan at my grandpa’s colleague’s “ranch” (whatever the Kazakhstani equivalent is) towards the Chinese border, a few hours from Almaty. I spent a few good days fishing with my grandpa and strolling through the fields nearby gawking at the mountains.

All good things come to an end, and so my last leg of Jana and I’s 3 and a half month journey was finally over. I hugged my grandparents goodbye and flew all the way home to Vancouver with a stopover for one night in London, England. I will miss the many sights and flavours I have seen, the many people I have met, but look forward to seeing my family and the gorgeous city I live in. This trip has changed us forever and is only the beginning of our many adventures to come. We have caught that bug all the travelers seem to talk about and intend to cultivate said bug.