Category: Kazakhstan

We spent 3 days covering the 1,630 km between Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan) and Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan). This journey rather neatly falls into 3 parts: crossing the border by road at Chernayevka, spending two nights in the modern city of Shymkent, and travelling the final stretch to Astana on a sleeper train.

Part 1: Crossing the border

We took a 20 minute taxi from Tashkent to the border crossing at Chernayevka. For many years, this border was notorious for its lengthy delays, during which foreign travellers would have their registration records and customs forms scrutinised, their currencies counted, bags searched and phone photos inspected as they exited Uzbekistan. However, the Uzbek government’s recent efforts to encourage tourists have done away with this bureaucracy, and our experience was no different to any other international border’s customary passport stamping and luggage scanning. Not wanting to push our luck, we refrained from taking any photos as we sped through the formalities.

Emerging onto the Kazakh side of the border, we were greeted by some of the most intense taxi and money changing hustling to date. Circles of hawkers followed us all the way to the “official” money changers, where we converted our remaining (Uz) Soum into (Kz) Tenge. Rather helpfully, we think the lady who changed our money told the taxi drivers that we didn’t have enough Tenge for the extortionate prices they were asking, and a few drivers lost interest in us.

We eventually found a taxi share with a Swiss-American couple who had been in Central Asia for the last few months and were heading north-east to Taraz. The negotiation was made much easier by the fact that the American chap spoke fluent Russian, so despite his hangover, he became our chief communicator, and we had a fun couple of hours exchanging stories and tips.

Part 2: Relaxing in Shymkent

Shymkent is Kazakhstan’s third largest city, and its modern amenities and food options felt like the land of plenty after a few weeks in Uzbekistan. On top of this, our comfortable hotel room bizarrely had a small washing machine in its bathroom, and we took delight in washing as many of our clothes as we could find hanging space for around our room. It’s the small things!

Since both of Shymkent’s museums were closed during our visit, we spent a good chunk of our time exploring the city’s parks. Like many other ex-Soviet cities, its vast parks were scattered with a handful of monuments and memorials, respectively celebrating independence and remembering lives lost in wars. First up was Abay park, which included yet another fighter jet, a tank and a few armoured vehicles, as well as various artillery.

However, it didn’t take long for the cold to get to us, and we retreated to the warmth of a shopping centre for food and to browse cosy winter clothes that had no chance of fitting in our backpacks.

We then followed the Koshkar-Ata canal through pre-Russian Shymkent with the hope of seeing some local life and potentially even making a feline friend. The quiet streets and village-like atmosphere were quite a contrast to the rest of Shymkent’s wide and busy roads, but sadly all the cats seemed to be hiding inside from the cold weather.

We emerged from this enclave of old Shymkent at Independence Park to take in the panoramic views and get up close to the park’s centre piece – a colossal torch-like monument which apparently represents the centre opening of a yurt.

With the obligatory parks and memorials ticked off, we had some time to stroll along Beybitshilik Avenue – a popular pedestrianised street flanked by various fairground-style attractions as well as some beautiful murals.

One attraction in particular caught our eye – a roller-disco blaring out cheesy-pop on its echoey PA system. This felt like a great opportunity to get the blood pumping in our legs again, and despite dragging up the average age by some margin, we donned some incredibly uncomfortable roller blades and hit the Rolik. Even though there were relatively few others at the roller-disco, there was no shortage of chaos provided by our fellow roller skaters, bladers, scooterers and skateboarders. We spent our allotted half-hour avoiding collisions and pondering the provenance of the red stains on the concrete floor…

Part 3: Shymkent to Astana

We managed to snag the last two same-compartment beds on the modern and relatively high-speed 15 hour train to Astana. Having taken a few trains over the past fortnight, we confidently boarded the train, met our compartment mates, and began the process of stowing our luggage and making our beds. However, I’d just about managed to wedge Sara’s bag firmly under one of the beds when it became clear that we were in the wrong wagon altogether. We apologised profusely and retrieved our luggage with some difficulty, before heading off in search of the compartment we’d actually booked.

Our actual compartment buddies turned out to be a super-friendly family of four, who (slightly confusingly) occupied the two lower berths of our four-berth compartment. Once again, Google translate came to our rescue as we covered the standard topics of the weather and the Premier League. They also generously shared with us their bag of Kurut, an Uzbek national snack of dried yoghurt resembling a golf ball, which our book helpfully described as “having the half-life of uranium.” Without this knowledge, I naively popped the whole thing in my mouth, before casually reaching for my water to try to replace some of the moisture that had been absorbed by the dry, salty gobstopper. Sara watched me with some amusement (she said I looked like a Blue Peter presenter trying desperately to hide my true feelings), before realising she would also need to eat hers to avoid causing any offence. I’m not sure that her strategy of washing small pieces down with an entire 500 ml bottle of water was any better, but we both got there in the end.

The train itself was delightfully fast, clean and modern, especially after the number of ancient trains we’d taken throughout Uzbekistan. On top of all this, it even had a dining car, which we were keen to experience. Despite the overpriced traditional fare, it felt pretty decadent to dine at a spacious table as the train whizzed through the night.

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Although we felt a bit mad for squeezing such a long journey into our remaining time in Central Asia, the speedy overnight train ate up the miles in what felt like no time at all. And my goodness was it worth it when we emerged into the snow-white and completely frozen futuristic city that is Astana.

Aktau is a city in the far western reaches of Kazakhstan, a long, long way from anything else. It is on the coast and is where our ship would have docked, had we been able to stick to our original plan of crossing the Caspian Sea, so it was an obvious place to pick up our overland route and begin our Central Asian adventure. We landed right in the middle of the night and finally got to bed at about 5.30am – we are way too old for this kind of thing! We’d chosen to stay in our first proper international hotel of our trip and it was a real treat to have a couple of days of predictably bland decor, breakfast buffets and American-style customer service. Obviously, the novelty of this would have worn off very quickly but we enjoyed it while it lasted!

After a very long sleep to recover from our night time adventures, we ventured out just before dusk to walk along the coast and see the statues and monuments that are an essential part of every Soviet-era city.

I loved these huge murals on the side of the apartment blocks. Elsewhere in the city there are more that depict Kazakh “national fathers”, but these ones were much more visually interesting.

Aktau’s main reasons for existence are uranium, oil and gas, and there’s not a lot in the way of tourist sites (other than its beach, which was a bit bleak at this time of year – I’d be curious to know how different the atmosphere is in the summer).

However, we did read about Koshkar Ata, a necropolis in a village in the desert not too far outside the city, so we decided to check it out. The below is what we could see from Google satellite view when planning our excursion – it covered a huge area and certainly piqued our interest!

We had to take a taxi (there’s not a lot of public transport in the desert) and our driver was incredulous that we wanted to visit an area that he said was just a couple of graves with nothing to see. I think the chap at the hotel reception thought the same but hid it rather better (IHG service standards, after all)! If anything, this made us want to visit even more. I love this about travel – things differ so much across the world that one person’s boring graveyard is another person’s exciting expedition.

When we arrived, it didn’t disappoint. The necropolis stretched further than we could see and was filled with endless sand-coloured mausoleums of all shapes and sizes. It was like a miniature city (which makes sense really, given that necropolis literally translates as city of the dead).

We were interested to discover that in the vast majority of mausoleums, even when the exterior was large and ornate, the interior contained a very simple grave marked by a pile of earth and plain headstones and footstones.

Of the hundreds we saw, the below was the only one that had a highly decorated interior. The exterior wasn’t more grand than others – just somehow different, but sadly we could only speculate as to why.

Overall, we liked Aktau way more than we expected and probably more than was justified – it somehow felt both very modern but also right at the end of the road. It was definitely an interesting place to spend a couple of days and we ate some decent food while we were there (including at yet another Georgian restaurant – I think we have problem).

Our next move was into Uzbekistan by train (we’ll return to Kazakhstan later), and so we headed to the station to begin a marathon 26-hour journey. We boarded at about 15.30 and got settled in our second class compartment, and the train departed as scheduled at 16.18 on the dot.

We’d read that the best strategy was to try to sleep straight away, and so we followed the lead of our compartment buddies who made up their beds soon after they boarded. Admittedly, it was a rather early night, but this was important for later! We woke up to have a Big Bon Max (pot noodle) each for dinner, filling them from the samovar at the end of the carriage, and then went back to sleep until we arrived at Beyneu around midnight.

We managed to snag seats in a crowded waiting room, and Oli went off to buy some much-needed chocolate bars and more Big Bons (sadly not Big Bon Max this time – perhaps their tagline could be, “Just as uninspiring, but in a smaller package”) for lunch the next day. He reported back that there was a proper party atmosphere on the platform, with music and dancing, but when I went out to investigate there was nothing happening so I assume he was just delirious…

Eventually, we boarded our second train, which would cross the border into Uzbekistan and then head towards Nukus, a city in the Republic of Karakalpakstan in the remote west of the country. The border formalities started almost immediately and continued until it was light outside, when we could finally settle down to get some sleep. This was a bit tricky as we were in the open sleepers of third class, and there was near-constant chaos. The ladies seated next to us were in hysterical giggles almost the whole way and it was pretty infectious so it wasn’t all misery, though. When it was my turn to speak to the border guard at the end of the carriage, they took great delight in conducting their own interrogation of Oli about our relationship and broke out into more giggles when they found out we were a couple. When I returned, they didn’t want to speak to me – they’d already got all the goss they needed from Oli!

Our second class compartment on the Aktau – Beyneu train had had probably the comfiest beds we’ve ever had on a train, and this only served as a reminder of quite how big a difference there was between second and third class! Our new beds were much smaller and lumpier (and most sad of all, much grubbier), and Oli’s feet kept poking out into the aisle, ready to be bumped by the incessant stream of people wandering up and down the train. These included three little girls in adorable matching pyjamas and two ladies who had boarded shortly after the border and were selling clothes and toys on the train. They chose our compartment to store (and regularly unpack and re-pack) their wares, and at one point I woke to find they were keeping things on my feet as I slept!

We spent basically the entire 15 hours baffled at what was going on around us, but it did serve as excellent entertainment as we rolled past mile after mile of dry, featureless desert.

Eventually, at around 18.00 on the day after we set off, we drew into Nukus, described promisingly by the Lonely Planet as, “one of Uzbekistan’s least appealing cities”. We were ready, as they put it, to sample the “general sense of hopelessness and desolation”. Lovely!