July 25, 2011
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The Silk Road Overland
Friday 22 July 2011
This has been an excellent day. My taxi driver arrived on time in a sturdy-looking minivan with 4x4-type tyres. We reached Shakpak Ata after about two and a half hours of driving. For the last hour we drove across the steppe on a pretty challenging gravel road. I arrived well shaken but this did not diminish the impact of seeing this incredibly interesting archaeological site.Shakpak Ata is this underground/cliff mosque constructed in the ninth or tenth century. It's quite large and designed in the shape of a cross (as seen from above) - and I've seen information that some people think it originally was a church.
This underground mosque is set in incredibly interesting surroundings, where the cliff face looks a bit like Swiss cheese. The cave mosque is incredibly beautiful, with Arabic inscriptions on the walls, along with graffiti of different origins and the most gorgeous wall etchings of horses I've ever seen. There was nobody there and the serenity of this place was mesmerising. I just couldn't stop looking at these incredible - even funky! - wall etchings of horses. I will never forget this place.
The journey back was equally bumpy, and I can report that for the two hours of driving over the Kazakh steppe (one hour in each direction) we met one (1) vehicle in total. I feel it's a privilege to have been able to see such a remote and seldom visited archaeological site.
In the afternoon I found a great Chinese restaurant and I also managed to squeeze in a 20-minute visit at the Aktau Museum. Not a single sign in English. I had no idea what I was looking at.
Tomorrow, I'm flying to Almaty - and my overland journey will cease being overland.
The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
Saturday 23 July 2011
My Air Astana flight took off from Aktau Airport at 10.45 AM this morning, and at that moment, my summer travels following the Silk Road definitely ceased being an overland trip. And quite decisively so: the Aktau to Almaty flight covers over 2,000 km. Anyway, what I anticipated being a 67 hour train journey across Central Asia shrunk to a three hour flight and with that, my overland ambitions are gone.In Almaty, I checked in at a three-star hotel called Astra Hotel, near one of the two train stations in town. At USD80, it's definitely overpriced compared to what you can get in Dubai. However, the hotel room is quite big and there is free WiFi throughout the hotel.
I was immediately struck by how green Almaty is. It's a leafy, pleasant city with trees absolutely everywhere and snow-capped mountains in the distance.
Before I went on my Lonely Planet city walk to orientate myself, I tried to book train tickets for Astana for Monday night, coming back on Tuesday evening. Fully booked. I then checked Shymkent and Turkistan, the two other cities I also want to see. Also sold out. Nothing available for a week, give or take. What a hopeless, frustrating situation! I know trains in Europe also can be crowded in summer, but normally you can still get first class seats if you are willing to pay for them. There seems to be a systemic issue with trains in Kazakhstan - any destination within the country is always fully booked. Kazakhs must be a very forward-looking and organised lot, always managing to book their local train travels well in advance,
Anyway, my city walk went according to plan. Except for the fact that I had forgotten the one-hour time difference between Aktau and Almaty. The result was that I saw the last two or three sights after sunset.
My favourite was the colourful Zenkov Cathedral in the centre of Panfilov Park. It looked audaciously colourful, and apparently it's made if wood throughout, even the nails!
A sight that could have been dropped from the city walk was the Zelyony Bazaar. It seemed like an incomprehensible monstrosity to me.
I've got a 32 inch flat panel TV in my hotel room. Good. It has 65 channels. Nice. Sixty channels are in Russian and five in Kazakh. Zero channels in English. Hmm, Almaty is definitely not a global hub. Not yet.
