Author: admin

31/08

At some point the next day, we arrived in Pavlodar. It was to be a day of unexpected, inescapable urges to poo, car repairs and walking around in intense heat attempting to get on to trams.
The suspension was hanging so low that any flaw in the road caused the entire mechanism around the wheel to ram into the chassis. After attempting to find a replacement spring proved truly hopeless, Ollie and Steve resolved to replace the driver’s side suspension with the spring that they had extracted from the Rover when we had broken down in Turkmenistan, when our suspension collapsed, breaking our drive shaft. This spring was not a fantastic replacement. In addition, it is really quite complex to replace, involving, among other difficult operations, the transplantation of the home-made spacer, a blood transfusion and an extended period of dialysis.
Dom and Jack, meanwhile, made tea. And then when their usefulness was expended like the tired teabags that we were by this point re-using, they went to the shop to look for Bluetooth speakers. The sound quality of the two front speakers had been steadily deteriorating to the point where it was comparable to the sound your grandma might make, wedged deep inside your sock drawer. Except, it was probably slightly less endearing than your grandma (unless your grandma swears anywhere near as much as Biggy Smalls: we were going through a hip hop phase).
Ollie and Steve, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to do the repairs nowhere in particular near the Bluetooth-mobile-phone-speaker-shop. It was in this way that Jack and Dom begun trying to get onto trams. On their first attempt, they were told they needed to walk the other way. On their second attempt, Dom had an unexpected, inescapable urge to poo and so they hobbled to a hardware store across the road just as their tram was arriving. After painfully browsing faucets and fireplaces, Dom found a toilet. Unfortunately, it was not plumbed in to anything. After a hurried exit, Jack and Dom walked back to the car, empty-handed, one hour having been wasted on guerrilla diarrhoea and mounting trams headed in the wrong direction.
Gauging that they had more time by the fact that the car was still missing its driver side suspension, Dom and Jack made a third attempt. Steve was deep under the car, pouring toxic coolant directly onto his own face. Ollie was locked in battle with a greasy spring, feet pushing one end, arms pulling the other, amused Kazakh men staring on confusedly.
Waiting on the “platform”, an invisible, slight broadening of the dirt tracks that run alongside the tram line, Jack was hit by an unexpected, inescapable urge to poo. Bent at the hip, knees pointing in opposite directions, arms wrapped around his midriff, he soldiered on until finally were able to clamber onto a tram. It was still heading in the wrong direction. Frustrated and confused, hot and upset, we decided to walk.
As we walked, we improvised a song called “English Man in Kazakhstan” documenting the traumas of being a man of our nationality in this country of backwards trams.
English man in Kazakhstan,
Cannot catch Kazakh tram,

So he talks to Kazakh man,
Whose Kazakh name is ‘Kazakh Stan’,
“Kazakh Stan, how to catch a Kazakh tram?”
“You must talk to Kazakh Zack.
He will supply you what you lack”
English Man in Kazakhstan,
Cannot catch Kazakh tram,
So he talk to Kazakh Zack,
Who simply turns his Kazakh back
“The Kazakh tram cannot be caught
And Kazakh trust cannot be bought”
Said Kazakh Stan from Kazakhstan’s Kazakh man friend,
Kazakh Zack
English Man in Kazakhstan,
Cannot catch Kazakh tram…
….and so on. Luckily, there were not many people to overhear us, because the route we chose, and pursued for so long that we were irrevocably committed to it, took us across a bridge that was deep in the stages of being reconstructed. These comprehensive renovations probably explain the backwardness of the trams, which with sensible unanimity headed in the opposite direction. The fifty foot high concrete structure was propped up with poorly welded metal struts at one end and a sweating, terrified looking fat man at the other.
Having avoided death by exposed electrical wire, giant-hole-in-the-ground and carelessly-wielded-high-power-equipment, Jack and Dom reached a row of shops selling household electronics equipment, conveniently located at the other side of the monumental death trap. They felt a mixture between euphoria and intense abdominal cramps as they walked into the white, brightly lit interior of the first shop and gazed in wonder at an entire wall of speakers. None of which were Bluetooth, USB powered or rechargeable. Three shops later and still speakerless, they began searching for a tram, which, with the assistance of a pitying ticket-person they caught.
Soon we were on the road again. With delays having stymied our progress we made a decision that would change the entire nature of the journey. We would drive for 24 hours a day until we reached Mongolia. This was our escape from Kazakhstan; after having been here for two weeks, in three cities, in desert, mountain, lakeside and steppe. After breaking down and regaining our sanity and our momentum, we were on the final stretch to Mongolia, land of horses and horse meat and horse milk.
As we got closer to the Russian border the road began to deteriorate visibly, reaching the consistency of pork crackling, of thick, gnarled bark, of ossified cabbage. It was sort of unbelievable how much they had let the road go for the last 100m of Kazakhstan. There were moments, with the recoil from potholes racking the car, almost reminiscent of our escape from Turkmenistan.
The Kazakh border guard looking over our car spoke perfect English. He just wanted chat about our trip. The Russian border guards were more numerous, had dogs and seemed unwilling to write on our roof. They required that we disinfect our car. All buildings seemed temporary and everything was either on wheels or was very obviously a moveable structure: traffic cones, portakabins, guards on roller blades, dogs on skateboards, birds with wings. In the long grass at the other side of the crossing, we noticed a rusting gate: as if the entire border had been steadily encroaching into Kazakh territory. Those crafty Russians. They had even evidently made the traffic cones themselves.
There was one particularly hairy moment where guards, looking at our route map, pointed out that Crimea (still possessed by Ukraine when the map was printed) was now Russian. We had worried that this happened and awkwardly cajoled the conversation forward. After a light beating, we offered them eggs.
At the point at which we had to pay for things, such as tax and insurance, we realised that we had no currency. Relishing the opportunity to rescue a group of foolish young Englishmen, a group of Russians headed towards Novosibirsk stepped in and paid for everything for us. It just proves that even international hostility at the level of continent-scale diplomatic warfare can be overlooked if you drive a Rover and have a cheeky grin as loveable as Jack’s.
There was a reason for Jack’s sweet-cheeked serenity at that particular moment. For approximately 8 days he had been attempting to complete Tetris on its hardest setting. Steve had brought along the game seemingly in order to demonstrate the superiority of his thumb-based dexterity. The trip so far had been punctuated by exclamations such as “I just completed Tetris three times in a row” and “I don’t think any of you will complete Tetris during this trip” and “SLOT RIGHT IN THERE. OH YEH. OHH YEHHH.” Whilst Dom and Steve were wrangling insurance and stubbornly trying to pay in Euros some thousands of miles from Europe, Jack successfully did it. He put those pixelated little blocks on top of one another, over and over, filling in the gaps and making complete lines. He did that until he had made 25 lines. It was a positive omen, a high point of the trip.
And then we continued driving.
1/09 – 3/9

The days blurred together; scratchy-eyed gravel stints breaking into lakes that hit the edges of the view like seas, and mountains swathed in trees but cut through by ski runs and rivers, interrupted by toy towns with rainbow-coloured, corrugated iron roofs that cluster around petrol stations run by families whose children bike around, as though there were no schools out that far into Siberia. Then there were gridded cities with grand motorways rammed through racks and racks of identical apartment buildings that crowded like ghettos that someone had pumped with concrete and jacked up to thirty stories, the scarred road separated from their incredulous windows by red and gold, pretentiously ornate fences.
The cardinal rule in Russia is that the next thing is always just over three hours away. And that those three hours are always tripled by road-works; climbing mountain passes on mountains of dirt and stones that they lay down to replace the tarmac. Lorries floodlight the crawling duel carriageways, deep pools of too-bright light in amidst total black, queuing indefinitely and being overtaken and overtaking and pulling over unexpectedly, and pulled over in the middle of nowhere in villages of vehicles.
We ate eggs in the mornings and pasta with tomato sauce in the evenings. Sometimes we ate sandwiches, in laybys, on the wall outside of supermarkets, with one hand whilst driving. We had a daily row over who would do the night shift, about a “new system” for the length of each shift, about the fact that, for a potentially life-altering period of approximately three seconds, we were all asleep simultaneously. The car rolled along, enjoying a sudden bout of free well and discerningly decided to use this freedom to pull us over onto the hard should and wait patiently for Jack to regain consciousness. All of our biological signs were reading “less than ideal”; hungry with heavy bowels, thirsty and sleep-deprived. We dosed in the back of the car, swaddled in a waist-deep pond of sleeping bags and blankets and jumpers and towels, lulled to sleep by the rattling syncopation of the car’s failed suspension.
We were pulled over twice on the way to Russia. Once early in the morning, by a policeman who simply wanted to laugh at our car from close up. Another time for overtaking a lorry at a junction. The second time, Dom was made to sit in a police car with an unemphatic, grey-faced man who asked repeatedly for payment, growing increasingly bewildered by Dom’s unerringly smiling, gormless face. Hysterical from having been in a car for 48 hours, Dom asked questions completely unrelated to the matter at hand, murdering half-learned Russian small-talk-phrases to his host’s dismay. “I see you in my dreams” was his closer: we were soon on our way, our pockets no lighter.
The car was beginning to appear tired. We suffered a terrifying moment at 3am with Jack behind the wheel, with the car suddenly jerking to the right and dropping a couple of inches in height. Haplessly bleary, Dom hopped out of the car to investigate. “I doooonnnn’t knowwww. Something is Wronggggg. Olllliiiiiiie. Oh, wait, yeh, it’s just a flat tyre.” The tyres were both worn disproportionately on the inside: they were leaning inwards due to the damage to the suspension, and we guessed that we would need to change them every couple of days from this point onwards. We put in place serious measures to stem the damage. We agreed to stop driving at over 85mph, bought new tyres and had the camber adjusted at a garage the next day.
As if to exacerbate the pain of being so far behind other Ralliers and of not doing the Western route, we saw multiple Mongol Rally cars coming the other way, returning from Mongolia and reminding us that we too would be heading back this way. We found solace in one description of Western Mongolia by a returning Rallier as “just really frustratingly bumpy for just a really long time”. He happened to be a friend of Laurence’s (of the Ice Cream Truck) brother and to live in Devon.
And then something unexpected happened. We arrived at the Mongolian border.

28/08

DAY 8 in Almaty. Dedicated to Alyona, without whom our escape from Kazakhstan would have been impossible.

We had planned to wake at 8am and be ready to get shafted. Instead, we ‘leapt into action’ at 10am, waking to discover that the rod had come (prematurely). “YES YES YES”, we ejaculated ecstatically, bouncing up and down rhythmically, “YEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!” We ran to the Markov Inn. Steve filmed as Ollie ran in and clutched his package with elation. After we had been dancing in a circle around the bewildered receptionist for some time, Steve announced that he had failed to click Record. Angry, and tired from the dancing, we replaced the package behind the desk and left the building. Then we ran in for a second time. “Have you got something for us?” The receptionist frowned as if reliving an uncomfortable memory. “Some kind of package?” nudged Ollie. Silence. “There it is!” yelled Ollie, grabbing the package from behind the desk and beginning the dance for a second time. Except this time, we got it on camera.

We went straight to Alyona’s office. Realising quickly that we had no idea what we were doing, she drove us to a garage that she was familiar with and negotiated on our behalf. When it became clear that we were highly reluctant to pay the £20 to have the car professionally towed to the garage, with a sigh, Alyona agreed to drive back to where the car was parked and tow us, though she emphasised that she had never done anything like this, even for friends. Then, she pulled the limousine along one of Almaty’s busiest roads in her 4×4. She enlisted a friend to project her entire upper body out of the rear window to monitor the tension in the tow line. There was much shouting of “Dvye! Dvye! Dvye!” which means “yes”, “no”, “go” and “watch out for that lorry” depending on intonation. And then we arrived at the garage where the limo was to be repaired for the final time on the trip.

Unlike in Uzbekistan, the Kazakh mechanics took lunch breaks. Ollie took the opportunity to remove the sump guard and drain the oil, in anticipation of an oil change. After much negotiation, much of which took place in a squatting position, the staff agreed to go against garage policy and buy cheaper oil for us at the market. Next, the drive shaft was replaced with relative ease. It was at this time that we discovered that it was still in a single piece. The shaft had slipped out of the CB joint, probably because the repair in Uzbekistan had slightly shortened the part.

The next revelation was that the bolt securing the alternator had sheared inside the hole. The repair was simple in theory: drill the broken bolt out of the hole. Insert new bolt. But for some reason, the garage did not have the required drill bit, which was a standard size piece just a little longer than the ones they had. There followed two useless hours of attempted broken bolt removal before Ollie hit upon the idea of lengthening the drill bit with a small piece of bar. Ollie ground the new piece of excess weldment. Sparks flew. No safety equipment was worn. Everyone was happy.

With the sky darkening, we tested out the new shaft, revving the limo in tight circuits of the car park. A quick knock with a hammer fixed one remaining rattle and we were done. The feeling driving along that highway, with the sun dropping in the sky, was incredible. “FUCK YOU ALMATY, WE’RE FREE”. We were driving the limo again, we weren’t just anonymous Brits in a hostel room; we were Mongol Ralliers headed for Ulaan Baator. The car was at full power again, no longer limited to an insulting 55mph. All 6 cylinders roaring the way that nature intended, petrol diminishing at a climate-annihilating, apocalypse-inducing rate, horn blaring at unsuspecting drivers. Mobile and eager to move.

We retired to the Markov Inn and watched the final episode of The Wire. It was all coming together and tomorrow, we would leave Almaty.

29/08

DAY 9 in Almaty

Escape from Almaty. Steve took the helm and we headed outwards, entangled in Almaty’s ring roads and slowed down by Steve’s Zoolander-like aversion from turning left across traffic. After several missed turns, a few accidental stretches of dirt roads and around 3 hours of driving, we had got out. It was a hugely momentous moment. The last couple of weeks had been shot through with uncertainty, with discussions about whether we needed to head straight back from Almaty towards home to avoid running close to our Russian visa deadlines, with serious concerns about the car. Now, we were not only moving, we were going faster than the car had been able to travel since before Turkmenistan, owing both to the repair and to the quality of the roads.

It was not long before we had run up against a huge lake, and were skirting its edge. On its coast was a small, fake castle which sold cutlets of dried fish. After Jack had ordered a meal, we changed our mind and left. Jack followed reluctantly, head hanging with betrayed anticipation.

Jutting onto the lake was a jetty. The wooden structure was supported by some of the most suspicious looking welding we have ever encountered. Whilst we stood there, the entire artifice collapsed, dooming us to watery graves. As Ollie fell through the air towards certain death, his final words rang out; “bury us in the Rover”. Months passed before anyone found our bodies, contorted and bloated beyond recognition, nibbled by fish and infested with snails, knotted with weed and grey with sandy soil. It was a beautiful place to die, but a terrible way to go.

We drove a few miles down the road and found a much cleaner looking, non-castle diner to eat at. A typical attempt to order food from a menu (rather than by pointing at random to foods displayed, as in an Almaty Bistro,) goes as follows:

Us: “Hi… Ah. Yes, what would you recommend?”

Staff: “…” (Shrugging)

Us: “Vuh mozhitye recommendityu?” (Means something like: “Can you fgh$%^&BKkh” because ‘recommendityu’ is not a word in Russian or Kazakh.)

Staff: “*FRUSTRATED KAZAKH WORDS*”

Us: “What. Should. We. Eat. EH?”

And so on. On this occasion, we simply pointed to things that other people were eating and were rewarded (disproportionately) with a filling meal of bulgur wheat and meat. On our way out, we bought sweeties.

That was the last event of note until our run in with the camel and the fighter plane at the wedding.

So there we were, parked under a fighter plane, looking at a camel attending a wedding. In retrospect, the camel probably had very little to do with the wedding. We had initially pulled over because the wedding party was being transported in a stretch Lincoln Navigator. We pulled up alongside the rival limousine. It was almost twice as long as ours, it was not at all dusty and it did not have the words “Limo can’t” (adapted from something rude) keyed into its paint. In our favour, the driver was wearing a two piece nylon Adidas tracksuit. In their favour, the tracksuit was probably cleaner than anything in the car.

All the men were drunk. They crowded around the limo and we got talking, taking pictures. When they found out that Jack was Scottish, they made him put on his kilt, forcibly disrobing him and pulling the kilt onto him. More pictures were taken, the happy couple wrote on our roof, we wrote on their car. Then we put the kilt on the bride and did the Okey Kokey with her in the middle. The bride got a bit annoyed and then we all drove away. A microcosm of modernity.

It was around that point that we all, simultaneously, developed an irresistible, grumbling craving for Heinz Baked Beans. So. We drove to a small supermarket and sent out Ollie and Jack to seek some out. We were quietly confident that this Kazakh city, located in precisely the middle of nowhere, would stock our idiosyncratic, British, bean-based snack. It did get us thinking about the history of baked beans. It just seems strange to puree tomatoes and then bake beans in them. Baked Beans is not that similar to any particular dish or meal that you might find in the British culinary palette. And it’s one of those things that really only goes with toast. You have to picture the Board of Directors of Heinz, sitting around their boardroom table in serious discussion about these cans of sugary pulses. “Yes, we are aiming at the savoury toast-eating market”, a suited, executive would be proclaiming, pie chart projected in black and white behind him. Moustachioed executives with round glasses must have nodded sternly in response “Yes, yes that does make a lot of sense!” If any of us tried to pull that shit today we’d be laughed out of the app store. It just goes to show that trips like this: trips of a lifetime; can really bring you to reflect on those bean-based things you take for granted.

Luckily, Jack and Ollie (abbreviates to J’Ollie) met a Kazakh gangster at just the right time. He had overheard their garbled request in the supermarket and waited for them outside. Grabbing Ollie by the arm he pulled our two team members aside and confided that he knew where to get the beans. “I’m Kazakh gangster” he confided reassuringly. They all stood nodding at one another, smiling slyly in silence for a few seconds before he put J’Ollie in his car and drove away. Once inside, the Kazakh gangster softened their caution by providing beers. To show that the beer was OK, he downed one at a set of traffic lights. Passing the police, he twisted around in his seat to smile at J’Ollie; one of those wide smiles that shows the gold teeth you have at the back of your mouth. As he turned back to the road, he completed the overtake.

They arrived at an almost identical supermarket. Inside, the gangster walked directly to the counter and leaned on it with both elbows. He did one of those knowing upwards nods and winked at the girl behind the counter, gesturing towards J’Ollie, also with his head. The girl, a smile playing teasingly on her lips, checked J’Ollie out, her tongue poking through heavily glossed lips, and beckoned for them to follow her into a back room. Some time later, they emerged with a can of baked beans. The gangster then took a severed index feature wrapped in a sandwich bag, secured with a single elastic band, out of his pocket and threw it to the till assistant, who grinned understandingly.

When we were all reunited at the limo, Ollie was given a phone with an English-speaking voice at the other end. There was a brief period of time, as we stood around drinking beers with our new gangster friend, during which the plan was to go back to his house and drink more beers with him. Instead, we ended up saying our goodbyes and heading out, opting to gain some ground that evening.

With the sun beginning to be lame, Ollie and Jack took us to a sheltered spot along a dirt track at the base of a hill. Falling back into the old ritual, we split into two teams, one pair cooking and one pair setting up tents. It had been a long day and we lay around, eating baked beans and watching the Milky Way emerge. At first it looks like a vapour trail, just insubstantial wisps, but as the sky bleeds light onto the horizon, the Milky Way becomes the rest of the universe, revealed as if the blue of the day was just a dust sheet. We climbed the neighbouring hill, and as we stood at the top looking over an empty expanse that captured the situation in central Kazakhstan so well, we all heard Jack say “how will we ever get out of this mess?”

Wrapped in blankets against cold, we lay on the tarpaulin and ate dessert: canned peaches on biscuits and sour jam, also on biscuits.
30/08

By 11am the next day Dom was standing alone inside a police station, staring desperately at the dusty flagstones and shaking his head. “How will I ever get out of this mess?” With one day left to register his visa, he had just learnt that today was the first day of a three day national holiday called “Kazakhstan Day”.
“But, shouldn’t it be Kazakhstan Days? Because…” fright jumping into his eyes, Ollie silenced Dom with a curt shake of his head. The duty policeman glanced at the awkward pair, but returned swiftly to his work. “It turns out Kazakhstan Day started when the ‘day’ was first discovered by a National Kazakh Research facility back in 1993 (just two years after Kazakhstan itself was invented). Originally, Kazakh scientists posited that the ‘day’ was 72 hours long, but this was later, after a prolonged period of laboratory testing, revised to 24 hours in 2011. It turned out that the ‘hour’ was 180 minutes long all along” whispered Ollie urgently.
This in effect meant either waiting in the office for six hours (that’s only two Kazakh hours) for someone (inevitably angry, probably half cut and in their PJs) to come in from their holiday (traditionally involves angrily drinking in your PJs) or attempting to hurriedly travel to the border (without crashing, breaking down, falling foul of the law, dying spontaneously of a stroke, getting distracted for a period of longer than 24 hours, getting lost and ending up further away from Russia than when we started that morning, having the car stolen and so on and so forth).
Pausing wistfully, (it just really seemed like the right time for wist) we reflected (the room was full of mirrored surfaces) that “adventure” on the Mongol Rally really simply stands for “opaque bureaucratic process and inadequate road surfaces”. With this revelation fresh in our hearts, we did the compassionate thing and drove on, risking Dom being deported, arrested, fined, water-boarded and so on and so forth.
After packing the car with as much spaghetti and noodles as it would take, (noodles bulging out of every car-orifice, stuffed into the seats, inside the dashboard, up our trouser legs) we drove.
With Dom’s deportation and extended torture at stake, we were very careful with the car. Ollie got the limousine up to125mph on a flat motorway, its top speed on public roads. Dom slept fitfully in the back.
(PIC OLLIE LYING DOWN IN ROAD)
Our suspension was sagging like an overstretched ear lobe. The roads were fickle; susceptible to sudden changes of surface quality. Sometimes they were more wrinkled than your grandma when you’ve left her in the pool too long, forgotten to iron her, screwed her up and put her at the bottom of your drawer (whilst she was still damp) and sometimes they were like something really, really smooth.
It looked, in places, like a broadsheet newspaper that a person who was new to broadsheets, and with a particularly unimpressive arm-span, had tried to fold on the tube at rush hour. Or as if they had built it badly a long time ago and then allowed it to be warped by severe temperature changes. Either way, it was rutted.
As we had come to expect by now, as it got later in the day, the sun began to lose altitude. Steve spotted a river on the map and we found a sheltered place to camp alongside it, tents set up in deep grass. A Lada howled somewhere nearby and trains moaned threateningly. The tribulations of an English Man in Kazakhstan. This was the last time that we would camp, or sleep simultaneously, until we reached Mongolia.

Continues in Kazakhstan part 8

26/08

DAY 6 in Almaty. DAY 1 in Kyrgyzstan.

After an oily breakfast at an oily bistro, at which we were quickly becoming regulars (and at £1 per meal who would hold it against us? Our parents? Our bowels?), and a 2km reccy back to the car, Dom was set for his adventure/exile to Kyrgyzstan.

He would hitchhike the 500km to Bishkek and back over a 24 hour period. Dom, a veteran adventurer, had an illustrious and much storied background to grant him confidence. To begin with, he had racked up a full 2 miles hitching in Devon’s fairly tame moorland on a moderately sunny Sunday morning. Hitching twenty times further through Kazakhstan’s largely uninhabited mountainous borderland was probably going to be different. Cornering two hitchhikers who were staying at the hostel before he set out, he enlightened himself as to the proper decorum with a couple of searching questions (“so… do you actually just stick your arm out, then?” and “is it better to be walking or standing still?”)

Perhaps this plan was a figment of being recklessly bored of dorm-room incarceration in Almaty, but it did seem better than the alternative options, which included getting a train 2,000km to Novosibirsk, Russia or simply waiting it out and hoping the drive shaft came in time for a speedy repair and an uneventful escape from Kazakhstan. And with our luck with delivery companies, spending 24 hours being driven through wilderness by strangers seemed preferable.

So in the midday sun, Dom caught a taxi to a bus stop, a bus to a bus station and walked until he was clear of Almaty.

The problem with getting a lift outside large cities in Kazakhstan is the fact that everyone is running a taxi service, because it is legal for anyone to collect strangers in their car from the side of the road and to charge them for the service. Before he managed to get a lift, more than 10 taxis stopped by: often seeing another car drive away inspired them to take their chances and pull over, leading to chains of disappointed commuters: taking a scruffy English kid to Bishkek for free was no one’s idea of fun.

Eventually, a taxi with a single spare seat picked him up. Wedged in the front seat with his unnecessarily bulky rucksack on his lap, Dom double-checked that the man did not want money. He simply appeared to be curious. And to be an evangelical Muslim intent on conversion. For it was only the words that referred to Islam that Dom was able to recognise. Twisting awkwardly in his seat, he took in the three female passengers in the back, who smiled laughingly at him. When Dom returned his gaze to the road he noticed that they were navigating a crowded car park at some speed, evidently in an attempt to short circuit the unreasonably hectic traffic on the road alongside them. Horn held firmly down, pedestrians fleeing in indignant terror, the driver continued to name-drop Allah and chat at Dom cheerfully, occasionally looking back at the road. Eventually, once they were past the thick of it, he let Dom out with a promise that it would be easier to catch a lift from the new spot. Wistfully, Dom realised he had simply succeeded in hitching to a place that was too far to walk back to Almaty from, and barely closer to his destination.

The tactic that succeeded in securing his next lift was as follows. Stand still with your bag on the floor. Attempt to make eye contact with the driver and when you succeed, gesture very slightly with your outheld arm. At the very least, the drivers will shake their heads in apology.

The outskirts of Almaty look a lot more like what I pictured of Kazakhstan prior to the trip and contrast severely with the large swathes of the city occupied by trendy restaurants and entire districts of 5 star hotels. “Dusty” is a word we use a lot to describe Central Asia, but this is unavoidable. The substance suspended in the air and lying thick on the ground is too fine and filthy to be sand, sticks to everything, powders your throat and burns your eyes. In the dust, people of every variety mill chaotically, often walking into the middle of the road to hail taxis or standing in large, impassable and highly vocal groups. Shacks and stands and people pushing trolleys loaded with products make up the commercial architecture, whilst the background ambience is largely determined by the tenor of the orchestral chorus of car horns, cutting through sulphur-yellow, low octane petrol fog.

The person who eventually got Dom to the border was not, by anyone’s account, pretty. His teeth gleamed gold from the blackish depths of the cabin of his truck. His only hobby, as far as Dom could glean through two hours of dictionary-mediated ‘conversation’, was alcohol. When asking after the contents of the truck the driver only shook his head in grim wordlessness.

Perhaps out of some romantic notion of frugality, Dom had purchased a couple of rounds of bread and not much else to keep him nourished while travelling, and the odd-couple shared this on the journey. They talked about the driver’s children, his wife and his destination and regularly fell into tense silence in between bouts of stuttering incomprehension, which was broken only when Dom pulled out his harmonica and broke the instrument itself.

The mountains that divide Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan run down to the road on your left, and as you drive away from Almaty they fade away, counting down the miles to the pass. On your other side there is endless grass, carpeting endless country. Eventually they arrived in Korday, the border town. After a 2km walk to the actual crossing (which was in the process of closing) Dom was through, with no assurance that he’d be able to get back. On the other side, after determinedly walking for 20 minutes, Dom caved and hitched the final 20km in a lavish 4×4. The driver helped him find somewhere to stay and asked for 200 Som (£2) for his trouble.

Bishkek felt less wealthy than either Shymkent or Almaty. Everything other than the roads was on a smaller scale. In the dark, Dom went out foraging. Clearly a foreigner in a part of town that seemed unused to foreigners, he walked into a small family-run café. He had to actually walk through someone’s living room to get to the kitchen, saying hello to a teenager in school uniform studying as he passed through. As in many places, it was the teenagers who ended up translating the menu into English whilst the mother stared on in amused confusion. Little did Dom know how this functional small talk would damage his mental health.

It began during the meal, with just one girl sitting opposite, talking about school. But whilst the other customers at the restaurant filtered out, she was joined by a sister and a cousin, then a second cousin and an aunt. With mounting terror, he mopped up the last of the ketchup covered dumplings as he was gradually surrounded by three generations of Kyrgyz women, none of whom had ever left the country. To his despair, they bombarded him relentlessly with nonsensical English non sequiturs such as “Red is my favourite colour”. Feeling intensely nervous about the way things were going, he feigned ‘nodding contemplatively’ in response to being told “London is the capital of Grrrreat Brrrrritain” for the second time, all the while priming himself for a crafty escape. In a lull in the barrage he put one hand in the air and paused for effect, “well, I’ve always thought…” he started, before bursting precipitously through their formation to beat a flustered exit, laughing hysterically into the night. A close shave (but unfortunately not the kind his face so desperately needed).

27/08
DAY 7 in Almaty,
A phone call that morning to DHL brought back distressing news. We had known that the drive shaft had been in customs for two days now, but it became apparent that this was only because they needed more information from us. We set to work immediately. We needed a scan of Jack’s girlfriend’s mum’s passport. DHL also requested a receipt for when she had purchased the passport, a thumbprint, a urine sample and a lock of her armpit hair. Not having any of the above, Ollie was ready with chewing gum, a pen knife and cardboard to craft something together. Without a printer, everything had to be made by hand. It took most of the morning, but in a feat of remarkable bureaucracy, we created a passable passport fake that day using more or less just our minds and a couple of sharpies. Jack cut off some of his leg hair, and we convinced a French Vietnamese woman we encountered in the street to pee for us. Sweat popping out on his brow, Jack forged Jeanne’s mum’s signature and the deed was done.

With all of this achieved, the drive shaft’s ETA was “within 2-3 days”. This, very evidently, was political correctness gone mad. It was the EU fucking up everything as usual. It was immigrants taking our jobs. In the first place we were given an estimate of 1-3 working days. If it takes an item 2 or more days just to get out of customs it was unclear how with any conscience they could give us that initial estimate to go all the way from England to Kazakhstan. Furious, Jack set about using his connections to pose a legitimate threat of nuclear response should DHL fail to comply with our demands. When DHL grasped the threat of nuclear holocaust, they agreed to “see what they could do”.

When this was all over, we were slightly bored. “I just NEED some CULTURE!” screamed Steve, his voice breaking with emotion, his fingers curled and the ligaments on his neck standing out, humming with tension. Hemmed in by bunk beds on all sides, the team were in a desperate crisis.

“OK” said Jack, flustered, “Jeez.” The team was breaking down without Dom. Without him there to be over-reactive and up-tight about everything, the burden was spread unevenly between the others.

And so we set out for the “Museum of Modern Suffering”, which for obvious reasons shares a building with the Museums for the Kazakh State, for its Art and for its Musical Instruments. Yet when we arrived at the place marked on the map, instead of finding a museum of modern suffering, we found a secondary school, the bureau of criminal investigations and a marriage councillor.

Haranguing a nearby travel agent got us a different address. The address was different because it was for a different museum; “Central Museum”. This was set in a stunning, ornate white building with cerulean blue domes and tall thin windows. Inside, they clearly understood that some of their visitors would be English, as they had provided information in English to let these people know what they could, and could not, touch. However, other than this, all of the exhibits were labelled in Kazakh and Russian, leaving us to work out Kazakhstan’s glorious history for ourselves from pictures.

The museum deserves particular mention because the emphasis they place on different topics seems to mirror wider feeling in the country. An entire floor is dedicated to Nursultan Nazarbayev, the incumbent president. The 74 year old dictator is the father of Kazakhstan, having been in charge since it was a Soviet state (25 years). Nazarbayev, jointly with Russia’s Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, was awarded the “Man of the year Award” in 2012. He is “an Ultimate Oligarch”, is a member of the Order of the Golden Eagle, the order of the Red Banner of Labour, and was awarded the Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George by the UK.

Nazarbayev has declared a ‘Holy War’ against corruption. He is the author of the prescient “Kazakhstan 2050” initiative which predicts Kazakhstan’s future (for example, that country’s aubergines will be twice as big, that average walking speed will be ‘quite quick’, that Russia and Kazakhstan’s socio-political relationship will be 4 degrees Celsius warmer) and he likes to ski, play with baby animals and to play curling in his spare time.

The other major exhibit of note is the interactive feature on oil and gas. The feature allows individuals to try “fracking” themselves, controlling a remote, active seam of fuel via webcam with a joystick. It includes an 18 minute “choose the next step” interactive video on a 3mx3m touch screen, and attendees are given a small pouch of oil to take away with them as a sample.

Later that day, Dom returned.

DAY 2 in Kyrgyzstan

Meanwhile, at a café somewhere in Bishkek, disappointedly slurping instant coffee (rather than the artisanal fairtrade organic Ethiopian blend he had hoped for) Dom became aware that his cry for help had been answered through the Mongol Rally Facebook group. Just Add Water, who had accompanied us through our damaging Turkmen saga, came to the rescue once more: they set up a meet that morning.

Notwithstanding, flaunting their arrangements, Dom caught them stopped at a set of traffic lights. Running up to the car with his arms waving, his face distorted in ecstasy, mouth wide open and emitting a glottal, undulating wail – “I’m not where I suppose to be” he said as he arrived at the window, in place of “hello”. They drove on. Wheezing, he caught them further on, “what gives?” he asked. “We thought you were a homeless man”. Caressing his matted beard and arranging his filthy shirt on his narrow frame, Dom shook his head in perplexity.

Dom rode with Buster of team “Geek and a Freak”, who was driving the legendary Fiat Panda 4×4. The inside of the car was brilliantly modified, with a dash cam suspended in a net of duct tape, oversize speakers and subwoofers, switches to manually operate the engine-cooling fan and the lights. The heater intermittently roasted our feet as we travelled: taking its hot air off the engine, it actually helped to stop the engine overheating.

The pair of cars made it to the border after Just Add Water were pulled over twice by police, firstly for running a set of lights and secondly for speeding. Munching fresh fruit we had obtained by offloading the last of our Kyrgyz Som, we were surrounded by friendly border-loiterers as we queued. Many borders accommodate such a contingent of individuals, who hang around with the intention of “helping” travellers. We met one such gentleman that day who spoke English, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Russian and Korean. Fluently. And his job was to sell hats to tourists. This is incredibly impressive, and we should not look down on anybody who falls foul of the wiles of such a person, even if the hats are obviously over-priced.

Later, travelling with him in a taxi away from the border, back towards Bishkek (just after the car had gone through the crossing) Sophie and Dom were headed to a nearby village to be sold some over-priced hats. We arrived at a village composed of freshly built houses with shiny new corrugated roofs. There, an old woman emerged clutching the package. The hand-off took place and we were on our way again, this time climbing into a Marshrutka to make the return trip. Pressed against a huddle of old ladies in the doorway of the vehicle, we felt a little like intruders.

When we got back to the border, the others had crossed through already. We were to experience the ruck for ourselves. The queue was a heaving mass of wrestling people, bowed over crates as large as large children (they could have contained children for all anyone knew). Reaching the other side, Dom was accompanied by a 6 year old child, who rose from hands and knees from between someone’s legs, pink and moist, with his arms in the air. “YES!” he shouted, slowly rotating in triumph “I WIN!” That was how Dom felt too. It was only then that Dom realised that there was a possibility that, following this exit stamp, he would be stuck in no-man’s-land, unable to return to Kazakhstan. He did not have time to wallow in the melodrama of the situation for too long, as the Kazakh border control was show-stoppingly efficient. No problems; homeward bound.

The journey to Almaty was notable for only two things. The first was Just Add Water being pulled over for a third time (such a liability) and the second was the topiary. Dom had somehow missed the irregular chainsaw hedge sculptures that lined the central reservation for miles and miles.

The two teams did not intend to linger in Almaty, so they stopped at the very north of the city at a Monster Truck garage (apparently the only place qualified to look at the huge springs that suspend the little Skoda Felicia). After a detour to get Vietnamese food (in line with Kazakh tradition, the Vietnamese restaurant sold one Kazakh dish and nothing else, which they half-reheated for us in a microwave), Dom thanked the teams and headed out on his own to get back.

It was rush hour. This meant the number of lanes of traffic doubled, that you could see the seams of the buses straining as more people levered themselves inside, that it was faster to jump from roof to roof than to be inside any of the cars. It was then that Dom resorted to the Metro. None of us had even really realised that Almaty had a metro. The journey cost Dom 80p, took him the entire length of the city, and did so in an empty, air-conditioned, scrupulously clean car. The stations were marble and lit tastefully. Everything was deserted. It was like travelling in a 4 star hotel.

Back in the hostel room, we murmured our hellos to one another and put an episode of ‘The Wire’ on.

Continues in Kazakhstan Part 7

23/08
DAY 3 in Almaty

Dom had been whining about not having gone paragliding in Georgia for some weeks by this point. Rousing the team at 8am he announced that he had committed us all to a session paragliding. Collected from our hostel with sleep in our eyes and reluctant limbs, we were driven 40km outside Almaty to a big hill. We then proceeded to jump off the hill, strapped to monolingual bearded men, to float around for about 30 minutes each, our only instruction being “RUN RUN RUN” pre-take-off (Health and Safety gone mad!) A whole day spent waiting to look at the ground from slightly higher up (and paying £50 each for the privilege). Ollie got quite close to some Kazakh birds (eagles or similar) and Dom took off backwards. Steve went pretty high and Jack went pretty far. All in all, I think we all agree we would have preferred to stay in the dorm and watch The Wire.

Our guide, however, was very interesting. Working for a paragliding company, he couldn’t tell us anything about it in advance of our flights because he had never done it himself. We learnt from him about Almaty’s split personality between winter as a ski resort and summer as an adventure site for hikers, climbers, bikers and so on. We learnt about the deep pride that the Kazakhs have for their multicultural tolerance and acceptance of all religions. About their preference to marry young. About their unique diplomatic position, in having fostered positive relationships with China, Russia and the West. About the differing attitudes of people from the city and those from the countryside. About how Bob Marley’s music can put children to sleep.

We wanted to walk to the bazaar, but at this point there was, again, about half an hour until the Bazaar closed before we remembered.

Dom had been whining about not seeing much of each place we stayed in, ever since we had driven directly through Hungary without stopping. To shut him up, we looked up some “areas of interest” and walked around them a couple of times. We saw a park and a church thing. The most interesting thing about them were the use of old Ice Tea bottles as sprinklers to revive the balding, anaemic grass. It was nice, but it was not quite driving. Then we went and ate at a “Chinese Restaurant”. This was just a Kazakh restaurant with a sign saying “Chinese Restaurant” outside. It had pictures of approximately 8 different meals outside, only one of which we could order.

We then went for a couple of drinks at an unjustifiably expensive bar before heading back and watching The Wire. Finally.

24/08

DAY 4 in Almaty

Unable to motivate ourselves to move, we stayed in bed until it was almost too late to go to the bazaar. But then we did actually go to the bazaar. The bazaar’s meat hall alone is the size of a normal supermarket. Add two warehouse-sized indoor sectors, an outdoor sector quadruple the size of those combined, laid out over three floors, and you have no trouble losing Dominic first and then Jack. Ollie bought a blanket, we tried and failed to buy a chess set for the 15th country in a row and got out-bartered by half a dozen stall-holders whilst trying to buy Kazakhstan t shirts. We did manage to buy a ‘Good’ drink, its logo eerily similar to Google’s.

We could all feel the trip slipping away from us. We were so close to Mongolia. Our visa dates for Russia were starting to slip, Dom was running up against the number of days he could stay in Kazakhstan without a Business visa. Every day spent in Almaty meant accumulating inevitable expense: there was no way, by this point, that we would have either the money or the time to do the ‘Western route’ through Mongolia; the reason most people even bother doing the Mongol Rally. The Western Route is a roadless expanse of nomadic wilderness that is the closest thing (that you can drive to) to the end of civilisation. Imagining the limousine crossing rivers and getting stuck, its wheels falling off in the midst of Yak-inhabited steppe, was the real comedy behind choosing it. We were fairly down about the wrecked suspension and the delays.

So there we were, watching the world Volleyball championships and eating garlic croutons, our litres of beer served to us by Fraus in traditional Bavarian dress, in a German bar in Almaty, Kazakhstan. We stayed like this until we had finished the free garlic croutons and caught a taxi back to Dastarkhan, where we knew the beer was marginally cheaper.

Little did we know the margin by which it was cheaper. When we ordered 4 litres of beer, it was served to us in a ‘tower’ at a steep discount (averaging out at £1 / Litre). We were met there by a pair of American ralliers who had valorously opted to do the Rally in the tiny Daewoo Matiz. We merrily drank our way through several towers. Dom fell asleep. Jack excused himself to the bathroom. Once there, carefully surveying the room, he opted, after a slight pause, to throw up into the sink. After some time at this activity, Jack (with dismay) noted that the discharge was not going down the sink. A bouncer arrived at the door. “Hello!” Said Jack cheerfully, giving the man a nod and a wink. Turning back to the task at hand with utter despair, Jack begun using his hands as surreptitiously as he could, under the supervision of his new friend. He used his finger to poke the larger chunks of part-digested garlic crouton through the narrow gratings in the sink. He was, overall, hideously unsuccessful. We all soon left – never to return.

The walk from Dastarkhan to the Hostel takes approximately 90 seconds. Dom and Steve decided to spice things up, bored as they were, by taking a new route back. They arrived back at the hostel more than an hour later after having got lost walking round the corner. The saga continues.

25/08

DAY 5 in Almaty

The situation was thus. Dom, being the least organised of the group in the run up to the trip, had delayed arranging a Kazakh visa for so long that Kazakhstan had repealed the visa requirement for British citizens. He therefore had 15 days visa-free in Kazakhstan whilst Steve, Ollie and Jack had a full 30 days on their visa. This 15 day quota was running thin due to the delays with the drive shaft. With no available information on the new arrangement, Dom peeled himself from bed, hungover, pre-8am, and set out in search of the British Embassy.

Standing in the address that Google Maps had given him, he could not help but feel as though something was not quite right. There was more greenery than he was expecting, and fewer walls. The British Embassy appeared to be a disused lot with some old children’s play equipment rusting in it. Checking his facts online, he was redirected to a nearby hotel. There was a picture of the hotel on the British consular section’s website. That was how Dom knew he was in the right hotel.

“They have moved”. The stony receptionist told him adamantly. “I don’t know where they have gone”. After a couple of phone calls, she had an address for him. On the opposite side of Almaty, Dom found himself in the building that also housed the US embassy; this seemed hopeful.

The foyer was split into two halves. On the US half sat 6 armed guards in full uniform, set up with a pair of PCs and a full walkthrough metal detector. On the British side sat a
Kazakh teenager in a fake Gucci t shirt playing on her iphone. She stared through his passport with glazed eyes and directed him up 8 floors. Dom, following these instructions, arrived in the offices of the British Council, an organisation for the promotion of British culture and the English language outside the UK. They have absolutely no dealings with Visas, but the staff there had a tip as to where he ought to go next. The directions took him back towards the centre of town to a complex that was approximately 3 minutes’ walk the Hostel. After walking two laps of the complex, Dom eventually realised that his destination was a set of closed shutters adorned with precisely no information as regards opening times. Dom would later discover that August bank holiday applies to British staff working in Almaty. But even if the place had been open, it would have only helped him get a visa for Britain, being the British visa service for Kazakh citizens.

In a nearby café, Dom phoned the number listed on the British embassy website. The number rang through to silence three or four times before someone answered. “Hello, this is Happyland Almaty!” Bewildered, Dom borrowed the café’s phone. “Happyland Almaty, how can we help?” came the beatific response.

The British embassy in Almaty is not where it says it is, and there is no information at their previous address as to where in fuck’s name they’ve gone. The phone number on their website sometimes rings through to what we can only assume is a child’s play centre or a well-disguised brothel. When you email them, you receive an automated response. More than a week later, they send you a canned response telling you that they cannot advise you on the visa conditions of other nations.

After lunch, Dom and Steve begun another wild goose chase. We did learn an important lesson. When all seems lost, travel agents will try their very best to help. They will make phone calls, print things, give directions and speak English to you. The one that we tried sent us to the (admittedly wrong) immigration police office.

Talking to the single police officer we found there, wedged under a flight of stairs leading up to an apartment building, we were overheard by a short, rotund civilian. She rattled off a couple of phrases in broken English. Nodding in oblivious agreement, we climbed into her car.

At the other end was the correct police station. Our guide/kidnapper melted silently into the crowd. The office looked a little bit like a British post office, except one wall was lined with a cage full of police (the naughty ones, we guessed) and the queuing system involved significantly more ramming than you might find on your typical UK high street. The police there moved us from one queue to another for a little while, sort of how you might shift food you don’t particularly want around your plate, after sadistically hearing out Dom’s tediously long and certainly incomprehensible Russian explanation of why he was there. Eventually another complete stranger told us Dom could only extend his visa for business purposes. Or perhaps he could leave and come back and everything would be fine.

Back at the hostel, we finally managed to get through to a British consular office in Astana. A confused individual, ostensibly working in the visa office for British nationals in Kazakhstan, explained “I am not sure about the visa rules for British Nationals in Kazakhstan. Either way, it is the policy of the British Embassy in Kazakhstan not to give advice on the visa rules for British nationals in Kazakhstan. Unofficially, you could probably leave and come back”.

Having pursued the topic for an entire day and beginning to understand how gristle, doing circuits around the human digestive system and enduring peristalsis and stomach acid, but ultimately remaining undigested, must feel, Dom ‘decided’ he would just go to Kyrgyzstan the next day anyway. At the worst, the car would by 60kg lighter. At the best, we would be shot of Dom for 24 hours.

Sitting listlessly in our hostel room, hitherto our exclusive sanctuary, we were disappointed to receive news that two more guests would be sharing with us. We opened the windows, put our shoes out of the windows, put our socks out of the windows, binned the remnants of sausage and cheese that littered the floor and generally tried to skim off the stench that was churning around in there. The two men who entered were vaguely familiar. After several minutes of conversation we realised that we had met them before. They were the pair of Israeli hitchhikers we had met at the port in Baku more than three weeks ago. They had caught us up!

There is something amazing about this pair. They fought as though they had endured 30 years of marriage together, carried everything they needed on their backs, did what they wanted to do and went where they wanted to go whenever they felt like it, met incredible people wherever they went and were constantly imbued with restless, cheerful and yet critical energy. They urged everyone around them to explore more, to be more interesting, to get more from their situation. For instance later that day, at a music store looking for strings for their ukulele, they befriended a Kazakh and his girlfriend and stayed the night with them, even though they had paid for the hostel.

Hugely relieved that they had left us to grow mildew in our damp squalor once more, free from the pressure to have adventures and such, we brought the shoes back inside and closed the window, loaded The Wire onto the laptop and sunk into the midst of West Baltimore’s most exquisite traumas.

Continues in Kazakhstan Part 6

21/08
DAY 1 in Almaty
The three adventurers awoke to discover Jack’s kebab lay, untouched, in its protective packaging. Kicking him awake, they sought answers. They had risked arrest, (almost) fought a man from China, disrobed in an upmarket nightclub, jumped off a moving car, walked at least 6km and carried a rather pungent kebab with them, complete with onion to garnish, for some 6 hours; all in order to satiate Jack’s hunger. And this was how he chose to repay them.

 

This was the day our shiny new (second hand) driveshaft was supposed to arrive. We checked the tracker. It was in Leipzig, Germany! That’s 11 hours of flight time, with one change to get to Almaty. Barely checking our stride, we pushed on with the day through hangovers so dense you could tile bathrooms with them, so debilitating we could speak only out of the corners of our mouths and so aromatic we’d render any given space Kefir.

 

When we eventually left the hostel, we were immediately confronted by a particularly busy road. A road that we had been assured ad nauseum was inaccessible. A small ring road was either pointlessly circuiting the hostel inside the obstructive ditch, or the train of 4x4s and people carriers was coming from somewhere beyond the territory it marked out. Crossing the moat, we also noted that the deserted street, which we could not by any circumstances park on the night before, was encrusted with vehicles (in places three cars deep). We had lost our antenna in vain, and now our car was stranded in a dank side alley. Reluctantly, we elected to leave the car where it was until the shaft had arrived and we could actually do repairs. Given our best idea of the arrival time of the shaft, this was not felt to be a substantial risk.

We had a complete list of errands and Jack, typically the best-prepared of the group, had meticulously created a route map for us to tick these off. We needed a mosquito net, insect repellent, a roll mat, coffee and wanted to see Almaty’s bazaar. Jack had also located Burger King and KFC and knew the fastest route to that area of town. Probably still feeling a little uncomfortable about our 100% McDonalds record in Tbilisi, we ate at a small local bistro by popular objection. Four twenty year olds standing awkwardly at the counter, pointing hesitantly through the reinforced safety glass (are they protecting the food from us or vice versa?), whilst aged, bemused locals look on. It was as though, looking for a British secondary school canteen, we had accidentally invaded a central Asian retirement home kitchen.

Almaty’s bistros are not especially complex and follow a fairly standard pattern. You can see the food, you have a tray to put the food on, and there is person behind the counter who does the work in between. However, to the bistro-neophyte who does not speak Russian or Kazakh and who attempts initiation into this ritual through an alcoholic haze, the process can be fairly lumpy. Firstly, seeing is not necessarily understanding. Kazakhstan’s opaque soups and miscellaneously meaty stews obscured by thick oily glazes introduce an element of chance and guesswork. Are those brown lumps some kind of gelatinous vegetable or are they the flesh of something, long-dead, which once had eyes? Are those orange bits flecks of oil or carrots in the final stage of disintegration? Is the beige, grainy mound, rice, bulgur wheat or fine, watery sawdust? In the swirling maelstrom of that yellowy soup: what animal lies submerged in wait to ambush your naïve taste buds? Gird your loins and clutch your wet wipes, dig deep and politely ask for your food to be microwaved for a few seconds beyond the standard 4 seconds (apparently the Kazakhs like their soups a shade colder than lukewarm, their pre-cooked stews ‘bleu’: moist and cold.)

All of this said, Ollie rated that first meal in Almaty amongst his all-time favourites on the Rally. The portions were generous and filling and probably a shade more nutritious than a Whopper Meal.

We traipsed on. The heat allied with Steve’s footwear woes (blisters) to retard our expedition. Almaty is just the wrong size. Too big to comfortably get around on foot, too hectic to cycle through, too small for the absolutely stunning, tragically underused underground metro to have been worthwhile. In common with almost all of the Central Asian cities we had visited, save Samarkand, Almaty is a disciplined grid of low rise buildings. Unlike Nukus or Shymkent, it does have several nuclei, which takes away some of the diffuse hopelessness of the place and makes it feel more city-like. Nevertheless, everywhere you ever want to go in Almaty is at least 2km away.
This was also the case with the camping shops that Jack had spotted. With a roll mat and mosquito repellent purchased and after an over-long sit down in the comfiest folding fishing chairs that Kazakhstan has to offer, we picked out a café. There are two things in Almaty that you never have to walk far to reach: Karaoke Bars and cafés. Korea meets France.

So there we were, in Kazakhstan, supping whipped cream and chocolate concoctions in a shady courtyard, playing chess. Waiting for our drive shaft to arrive by aeroplane and trying to decide if we could ever walk again. Not having a limousine is so much hassle.
At around 4.30pm we contemplated going to the bazaar. The bazaar closed in 30 minutes. It was a 40 minute walk. We wandered back to the hostel. We picked up pizza on the way home, bullying the staff there to stay open an extra half an hour to make us pizza. Steve and Ollie ate the renowned Kazakh delicacy: horse pizza. Then, caving to exhaustion, we began something that would ultimately signal the end of adventure, which would suck the ambition and energy from us and render us room-bound for the next 9 days. We began season 1 of The Wire.

22/08
DAY 2 in Almaty

The drive shaft was starting to grind. It was a spear, plunged deep into our flank. It was a spike anchoring us to Almaty. It was such an unwieldy, awkwardly shaped piece of metal that at Leipzig, Germany, highly qualified staff had failed to fit it onto the plane and had sent it back to the East Midlands. Apparently, when they had looked at the 50cm x 15cm x 15cm box-shaped box containing the drive shaft, and then looked back at the 8,000cm x 1,000cm x 1,500cm freight aircraft they just didn’t think it would fit inside. Not even under the pilot’s seat. They had tried to chop it in half using a Rover suspension set they had lying around but hadn’t quite managed it. “You told us it was a Volvo drive shaft” they had hollered down the phone to the flustered East Midlands staff who had sent it on. East Midlands had in turned phoned DHL. A staff member there, reading through the email which Dom had sent them thanking them for saving the trip, with the addendum “don’t screw up”, had, in his intense distress over the incident, smashed himself repeatedly over the head with the telephone until unconscious. This incident resulted in the reclassification of the drive shaft from “car part” to “weaponised customs obstruction”. There would be further ramifications down the line.

 

We took the news quite badly. It is fairly expensive to repeatedly ship shards of hardened steel 8,000 miles on the fastest possible schedule with the best known delivery company available. To this point, we had swallowed the expense as pertaining to the only breakdown we had encountered: we knew the car was going to break down at some point and were prepared for the resultant cost. But we had bargained on the Rover, rather than delivery companies, causing us the problems.
Meanwhile, the first drive shaft we had ordered showed no obvious sign of having progressed.

 

No longer happy with the location of the limousine, curled up in its thief-infested, CB Radio-aerial-hungry cul de sac, we set about trying to tow it to the hostel car park. Ollie and Steve had discovered a back route circumventing the moat along which the car could be towed to safety. Even though, as the crow flies, the limousine was only 300m from the hostel, in line with Almaty Standard Distance (ASD) we would have to tow the car over 2km. We splintered into three tactical squads to set about commandeering a local to tow us. Whilst Steve and Jack sat on the car and looked bewitchingly in need of help, Ollie went one way up the street wielding a tow rope and Dom went another. Steve and Jack drew first blood, receiving an offer from a group of friendly road workers who were repairing pot holes without safety equipment nearby. They had at their discretion the ricketiest truck Almaty could produce. The wooden shit-wagon was probably itself mostly held together with tow rope and there was no way the driver would be able to see the limo being towed behind it.

 

Politely postponing a verdict on the offer, Steve and Jack also befriended a local who took Dom into a nearby basement. There, in the dank, unlit passageways, he gave Dom over to second man who showed him into what looked like a cross between a surveillance cell and a recording studio, strewn with wire and synthesisers, with two aging Kazakh men nestled inside. The shorter of the two directed for Dom to wait outside the room, before leading him to a padlocked door, gesturing unintelligibly and turning him back out into the daylight. After 20 minutes or so, Dom returned to the car. Encountering the first local there, he was lead back into the basement. Enquiring with the second local (aged synth guy), he was brought back to the padlocked door, now unlocked, containing locals three and four. Three was a young, English-speaking woman called Alyona, four was her rugged Russian-speaking friend.

 

These wonderful human beings assisted us in moving the limousine to a secure car park only 20m away. Ollie reversed the limo downhill the whole distance, in neutral, directly into a parking bay. Little did they know that we would milk their kindness like a Mongolian Mare-milker desperate for a glass of its sweet, sweet milks.

The second part of our two part plan to settle in Almaty was to find a cheaper hostel. We sniffed around the street, seeking the distinctive reek of customer dissatisfaction. We found two travellers who could not have been more disappointed with their hostel. They had been charged twice at twice the quoted price, propositioned by prostitutes, bothered by cockroaches and drug dealers, bitten by semi-wild animals, hung, drawn, quartered and finally beheaded, their eyes removed and replaced with glass by an amateur taxidermist and their formaldehyde-soaked, rigid corpses placed in compromising positions in the window of a backstreet erotic trivia dealer. We arrived at the hostel to find a kitten playing with a puppy in the lobby, were served free tea and coffee and given an 8 person dorm of our own. Ollie got a cut price blow job and Jack had his legs preserved for posterity (we were glad we had brought what was left of them all the way from Turkey). I guess some people are just unlucky. The Hostel bore the mysterious moniker “Hostel 74/76”.

We obtained dinner round the corner at “Dastarkhan”, another of Almaty’s Bistros – it would be a haunt of ours for some time due to its low prices and convenient location. Until, of course, Jack would ruin it for everyone. More on that later.

 

Relatively tired but keen to do something, we searched for somewhere to play pool. When we finally made staff at Dastarkhan understand what we were talking about, we were directed 5km away into Almaty’s underbelly. The building, when we found it, also housed a bowling alley; through the window we could see that it was under plastic wrap for redecoration. Walking up winding stairs away from those obscured pine lanes felt like walking into a secret mafia hideout. Debouching into a sparingly lit, open room full of plush felt tables did nothing to quash that impression. Neither did the clientele: men wearing slicked back hair and tall, too-skinny women on their gold-strung arms. So there we were, in the midst of a Kazakh gangster money-laundering operation, supping cold beers and playing pool. For the record, Ollie won the tournament before we called it a night.

Continues in Kazakhstan Part 5

We arrived in Almaty early in the morning, more or less on schedule with our original plan. Tired, tipsy in places and a little delirious from the traumas of the day, we struggled to find the hostel at which we had planned to stay (and where the drive shaft was due to be delivered the following day). The map showed the address we had as being the location of “Almaty Backpackers Hostel” whilst our sources informed us that the hostel was actually called “The Park Inn Hostel”. Before this could even become a problem, however, we had severe difficulties finding the address in the first place. Asking a group of youths playing basketball lead us in the wrong direction for some time, whilst inviting a stranger we found on the street into the cabin of the tow truck resulted in our prompt arrival at a Holiday Inn.

Finding the right street, we sent Ollie down back alleys to see if the hostel was nestled somewhere inconspicuous. After being chased by wild, rabid dogs the size of (small) horses (dog-sized horses), Ollie found the place. He returned to the limo to discover it had a small, playful kitten inside of it.
(KITTEN PICTURE – Jack’s Phone?)

Because it would have been just too easy otherwise, the hostel had a 6ft, impassable rock and gravel moat surrounding it on all visible sides, preventing us from leaving our car in the Hostel’s fenced car park. The night-duty staff member, after Steve had badgered him on the topic for some time, was adamant that there was no road leading from the other direction by which it could be accessed. Additionally, the road opposite the hostel ran past the local police station. This meant, our Holiday Inn-loving local informed us, that we could not, under any circumstances, park on the street there. Unwilling to leave our gentle limo vulnerable to the night, we hid it as best we could down a back alley 5 minutes from the hostel. The solution was far from ideal but it appeared that we had very few options.

We threw down our bags in our room. All of us were exhausted, triumphant but above all, starving. We were so hungry we even considered cooking something for ourselves. Mercifully deciding against this, we launched ourselves frenetically into the early morning in search for something devoid of any nutritional value, something steaming hot and dripping with viscous orange fluid, with big chunks of meat and cheese. We left Jack engrossed in the rediscovered joys of moderately fast WiFi, promising to return within 20 minutes.

The part of Almaty we had stumbled into appeared to be a business district of some kind, utterly unsuited to pedestrian transit – it was miles of gracefully rising concrete concourses running up to 50 floor hotels and shopping complexes. We walked indefinitely in several directions and found nothing but bus stops and dormant white, monolithic buildings. And none of them contained processed, melted cheese that we could access.

We doubled back and eventually found an open air restaurant/bar with a BBQ. Unable to decipher the menu, Ollie took the initiative and dived head-first into a group of young Kazakh men nearby, pushing a menu in front of one of them and asking for recommendations. And so it begun. We had sat down with a group of friends, several of whom were brothers, and whose ages ranged between 15 and 28. We had just enough money to buy 4 Shaschlick Kebabs (we had one carefully packaged in specially designed heat retentive material for Jack). The Kazakhs bought us a round of beers to welcome us to the country.

(Jack’s luscious Kebab)

Several beers and another kebab later, the toasting began.
“To Kazakhstan!”
“To Nazarbayev!”
“To Almaty!”
“To Steve Jobs!” said the business-savvy business-suited businessman of the group. He had his own business and gave us business cards so that we might take advantage of his business.

“To Kazakhstan!”
“To aubergines, TWICE as big!” said Steve, encouraging our new friends in the face of their unspoken but clearly implicit hopes and fears for the future fecundity of the nascent Kazakh aubergine sector over the next 36 years.
“To Steve Jobs!” we said again. And again.

The night quickly spiralled out of hand. After retelling the fable of how DHL had saved the limo in a way that probably did not make it across the language barrier, we began chanting “DHL! DHL! DHL!” and “Steve Jobs!

Stevie Stevie Jobs! Steve Jobs! Steve Brace! Steven Brace!” Ollie promised to play badminton the next day.

One of the men, Isthkander, punctuated the ‘dialogue’ with what sounded like very convincing Borat impressions.

 

 

For some reason, after several people had thrown up (including Steve and Isthkander), we climbed into a car. Not all of us fitted into a car, so Dom caught a taxi with two of the group. Before the car full of Kazakhs could leave, however, Dom decided to climb onto its boot. As is natural when drunkenly driving a fast car and finding a drunken companion on the boot, the driver accelerated. As is natural when the fast car you have grabbed onto accelerates in a seemingly determined way, Dom let go and bounced off the tarmac, mainly unscathed.

We all arrived several minutes later at a nightclub called “Fridays”. It was Thursday by this stage in the proceedings, which seemed to be close enough, as the club was busy. Dom, Steve and Ollie were sporting the classic Mongol Rally look; sandals, shorts, filthy t shirts and a dishevelled, “I fought a snake this morning” look about them. However, the regular clientele of this establishment in general diverged from our particular stylistic strain by washing regularly and wearing nice clothes. We pleaded with the door staff in vain. When they objected to our shorts and sandals, Dom obliged their request and removed these items from his person, to no avail. Ollie subjected them to his best puppy dog impression and ate someone’s wallet. This did nothing to assuage their (evidently baseless) concerns. Just after Dom had almost started a fight with a guy from Beijing (“he was looking at my sandals funny”), we left in search of more alcohol, stopping at several shops before we gave up on the evening.

Heading back, we were pulled over by the police. The police found four inebriated young men without seat belts crammed into seats fit for three. They found a (sober) underage driver who did not match the documentation provided, sitting next to the individual (drunk) who did match the documentation. A policeman climbed into the driver’s seat and twisted around in his seat to say something in Russian to the four bleary backseaters. Dom and Steve dosed, untroubled, throughout. Eventually, the owner of the car told us that “you should get out of the car.”

We did so, only for the car to be driven off by the police officer without any further explanation. This being our first night in Almaty, we were relatively unfamiliar with the city, which is Kazakhstan’s largest. After consulting a map, we discovered that we were 4km from the Hostel. The roads and bus shelters were silent. Isthkander, who had been the fourth person in the back with us, stumbled away down the street in a seemingly purposeful manner. We left him to it and went about getting home. Slowed by our alcoholic stupor and the excessive length of our day by this point, we took over an hour and a half to get back to the hostel.

 

Dom took a detour to the car to pick up water. This took around 30 minutes of walking in circles through the maze of identical alleyways that concealed the limousine. When he eventually found the car, he also found three of the Kazakhs they had been enjoying the company of earlier that day. They had their car and seemed in good spirits. One of them clutched our severed CB Radio aerial. It was now 6am. “We found thieves, they cut off your aerial. We chased them.” They grinned, heedlessly pleased with themselves in the midst of the longest day of all time. Dom, nodding mutely, weathered the conversation, promised Ollie’s attendance at the badminton game the next day. Then they asked “have you seen our friend, Isthkander?” Alarmed in a noncommittal sort of way, Dom assured them that if he had made it home, he was sure Isthkander was fine too, and slouched back to the room. And so it ended.

Continues in Kazakhstan Part 4