Greg and Mandy's Travels

Some times I might embellish a story a little, but let me tell you without exaggeration that today was seriously challenging and rather dangerous. 

There are two major cities in the country, Khujan (koo-yarn) and Dushanbe (doo-shan-bee) which is the capital, and today we had to drive between the two. As 93% of the country is mountainous, this involved scaling two mountain ranges with a valley in between. Up until 2018 the country didn’t have an all-weather road between the two, so the Chinese helpfully constructed a brilliant toll road between them, and two 5km tunnels, one at the top of each range to cut off 1000 metres of climbing.…

Off to the border for our most complicated and potentially hazardous day. But before we leave Kyrgyzstan I need to tell you about caps. Traditionally the Kyrgyzs wear different coloured caps depending on their age. Children under 6 wear a light blue one, the young children wear another. After puberty, the colour changes again, all the way up to 63 when you get your white cap. Way to go, labelling people as old. 

Off to the nearby border after breakfast, passing a convoy of 75 empty buses with a police escort front and back. 

A bit of background. When the Soviets carved up the Fergana Valley in the 1930s into four districts, they paid little attention to which ethnic groups lived in each district.…

After grabbing a boxed lunch from the foyer of the hotel (which everybody threw away), we boarded the bus, and headed off to the airport. The security check at the airport made me pull out my perfectly legal screwdriver from the bottom of my checked baggage before I could get into the terminal, but at the second security check after getting our boarding passes they missed all kinds of things. Looked like they were going to confiscate the screwdriver, as the girl didn’t know what it was! However Valentina spoke to her severely and I finally put it back in my suitcase. …

Do you know that traditionally Kyrgyz people could only count to 7? Their counting system went – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, lots.

Anyway, we were up for our early breakfast on cushions in the yurt, before heading to the bus. Whilst talking of yurts, you may be interested to know that the centre motif of the Kyrgyz flag is a stylised centre hole in the roof of a yurt, and the forty bumps on the circle represent the forty tribes gathered together in one yurt. Nice flag actually.

Headed off through another 100km of bumpy, unmade roadworks. Passed by a black Mercedes limo with heavily tinted windows, and the number plate ‘AK47’.…

A bit of a ragged start to the day. One of our number was sick, and Valentina was simultaneously trying to assist her and herd cats at the same time.

After breakfast we headed down to the Russian Orthodox Church where the lady attendant couldn’t believe her eyes when a group of Australians rocked up. She scampered off to get her phone and show us some pictures of Australian flowers that she had been sent by a friend in Australia this morning. She was most impressed. “You people grow your own flowers while we have to buy them” came the translation.…

Putin has just flown in to Kazakhstan, so it was time to leave. Up at 5, breakfast at 6, and in the bus at 7.

Took a pit stop at the local supermarket to buy things for lunch, then it was off to Charyn Canyon. The locals call it the mini Grand Canyon, which is somewhat of a stretch, but it looks very similar, and has been carved out by the river in the same fashion. 160km long, so its a decent attraction. Spent an hour walking down the steps to the canyon floor, and along for a couple of kms, then having lunch watching the vista.…

Almaty is a very green city. Roughly translated it means ‘home of the apple trees’. Haven’t seen any apples, but there are a huge number of trees everywhere, and lots of parks. Wide boulevards, very attractive. Lots of walking and e-bike streets. They even erect bicycle repair poles, complete with a rack to hang your bike on, and spanners and allen keys to effect your repairs.

Unfortunately the city is surrounded by tall mountains in a bit of a basin, and with the number of cars choking the streets, the pollution is very bad, but its a lovely city to wander around in, so that’s what we did today – the only free day on the trip.…

OK, your first cultural lesson. Stan means ‘land’. There are seven ‘stans’. Just like we have Eng-land, Scot-land, Ice-land and so on, there is Kazakh-stan (land of the Kazakhs), Kyrgyz-stan (land of the Kyrgyzs) and so on. Seven of them actually. We’ll be going to four of them, bypassing Afghanistan and Pakistan because they are rather dangerous at the moment, and Turkmenistan because we felt like it.

The tour group consists of 13 – all from Australia. 4 couples and 5 singles. All of retirement age and, as you might expect of a group flying to Kazakhstan, all of them are very well traveled.…

After what seemed to be a fairly long wait – almost 6 hours – we boarded our Singapore Airlines 787 to Delhi. Never seen so many young kids on a plane. It was more of a creche than a flight. Couple of screamers of course, and given that it was 3 in the morning and we’d been going for 24 hours, it didn’t help the disposition much.

Sat on the tarmac for almost an hour while they walked up and down the aisles yelling two names. Yep, two people checked in and lodged luggage, but never fronted, so eventually we sat there whilst they found and off loaded their baggage.…

Pretty normal first day. Picked up in the wet by the Conn-X-ion shuttle bus, and taken down to Brisbane airport. Arrived around 11, and waited patiently in the queue for check-in to open. They couldn’t print the boarding passes for our last leg to Almaty, but the baggage got checked all the way through, which was a relief otherwise we’d have to get PCR tests to enter India to retrieve them.

Only three flights this afternoon from Brisbane international, so the terminal was pretty empty and quiet. Not as quiet as a few months ago, but still half the shops haven’t reopened.…