The Tien-Shan Mountains

The rest of our train journey to Almaty was tedious.

Long flat plains are okay if you have a comfortable seat where you can read and play cards, occasionally staring out of the window and spotting a camel chewing belligerently in the distance. Then, an air of romance might be kept in tact after 42 hours, but twelve trips to the smallest, smelliest toilet ever and sleeping above two snorers from Turkestan made the second half of the journey a bit dull.

Don’t get me wrong, ‘Mr Smokey Smokerson’ and his mate ‘Loves Heavy Metal Music’ were sweet, they were hard working men and kind in small ways.

Just not in the big, ‘it’s okay we’ll take the top bunk’ ways 🙂 …and every stop they got off and had a quick ciggie or two and then came back in bringing that long forgotten aroma with them…they snored, they slept at weird times and they liked lying down in their bunks…which meant we had to lie in ours, or stand in the corridor.

We eventually decided we could afford to have one pot of tea that lasted two hours so we could sit in the buffet car…but there’s only so much tea you can drink so we were all delighted when the train finally arrived in Almaty.

We had met a young couple who were expecting their first baby in December and they went out of their way to help order us a taxi to our hostel…(thank you!)

Our taxi driver was a lovely man and he played ‘What a wonderful world’ as we drove down the wide, tree lined streets of Almaty towards the snow capped Tien-Shan mountains. Louis Armstrong’s voice touched us all with the romance of the moment and we relaxed into the beauty of where we where, we would be exploring those mountains soon – we were bound to see a snow leopard or two!

We were laughing and joking as we entered the front gate of the hostel – the garden looked lovely and the inside was clean, but where was the receptionist?

Theo eventually went to ask the women in the kitchen area how to get hold of someone, she reacted like a stray dog had come in to steal her dinner, but she did reluctantly make a phone call, even if only to remove this menace from the vicinity…

A tall young man appeared looking like he’d been asleep and showed us our room, it had four beds, no furniture and one window – okay for the price. We gave him our passports and then he asked me to pay.

His version of what we owed was four times the price quoted on booking.com – I showed him my booking and the price (in bold!) for a quadruple room for three nights. I asked to see our booking his end but he couldn’t find any record of us…

We had a difficult backwards and forwards conversation on iTranslate where he told me the price was ridiculous and that we wouldn’t find anywhere else cheaper anywhere in Almaty, and I tried to explain that his boss needed to take some responsibility here and honour the price we had agreed to pay on the system they used to get bookings.

For a relaxed looking dude he was having none of it and my reluctant  offer to pay triple what I had been quoted was met with a swift shake of the head.

We eventually decided to stay for one night because the vibe by this point wasn’t great, we were running out of time to use the free WiFi to find somewhere else to stay, and we just wanted to shut the door and relax – and that’s when he decided to move us …to a much smaller room with hardly enough room to unpack, and a window almost to high to see out if. He told us we’d have to pay more to stay in the room he’d shown us originally.

We swore – we shouted a bit, we picked up our rucksacks, growled at the mean woman, and left. (We didn’t actually growl at anyone, but we wanted to…)

During the thirty minutes of negotiating Rosa had found somewhere that might be okay to stay, and we’d found it on the map – only an hour and forty minute walk away…

We managed about twenty minutes before we stopped and ate some melon – we sat by a river and watched an industrious black and white rat collecting bits of bread from the grassy bank opposite us.

We deleted all our photos of our arrival at the rubbish hostel and set off again – fortified by both the gifts of  melon and chocolate that Abylai, a beautiful Kazakh man Theo had met on the train, gave us before he left…We didn’t have it in us to walk the full 7.5 km so after another twenty minutes we got a taxi (for £1.70) which brought us to the Dostyk Assem Hostel.

I shimmied under the corrugated iron gate and let the others in. We made our way through the shared courtyard to the garden of the new hostel…it was such a leafy green garden with outside spaces to sit and once I’d figured out how to contact the owner we made friends with the kitten (Rosa named her Vodka), and waited.

Assem, the owner, was lovely, she was only able to offer us two nights to start with but by the time we leave this room we will have been here for a week. She opened the door into a little apartment; there was a large bedroom room with a double bed and two bunks, there was a kitchen and a bathroom…all for cheaper than the other cruddy room in the first horrible hostel…we were so grateful and we collapsed into our new home with relief!

We showered, walked to the local supermarket, made dinner …and then I got ill, really ill, very quickly.

No mountain walking for me…no snow leopards.

It was horrible, I was properly poorly and with China looming at the end of the week we were worried.

We were aware of the challenge we faced getting across the Russian border, but we did have bus tickets at least.

Since we finally made the decision to go to Australia we have been trying to find a solution to this part of the journey. All trains and buses across the Chinese border stopped during Covid and they haven’t started again… we have read blogs, scoured websites and tried ringing bus stations but got nowhere further than the plan we set off with.

We will get to Almaty, where we are now in Kazakhstan, five hours from China, then get a bus to Zharkent, a small town about four hours closer to China, and then ask!

Literally try and find someone willing to drive us across the border into China…we all agreed to this sitting on our sofa at home, why do things like this always seem so much easier when you are 6,900 miles away sitting in your own living room? We didn’t know if there was a real chance of this working – there had been vague mentions of people coming across from the other direction but we knew it was a bit weak as plans go… and I remember at the time how proud of us I felt for being willing to try. Pride I still felt, but with a nice edge of anxiety thrown in…

What I did know was that we were going to need every bit of resilience we had, and probably not just resilience, some luck, a fair wind and definitely no-one being ill.

China will be our home for a month, a proper chance to experience a new culture. Rosa and I are booked to study Mandarin for a week at one of Chinas best language institutes (four hours of one to one study a day while Theo drinks tea, writes and makes friends with local dogs…I know why Rosa is doing it, but why am I again?!)

Anyway, I was proper poorly. No details will be shared, we’ve all been there and imagination is all you need!

Rosa hasn’t been great but I take the crown for the laid out groaning and moaning one for this month – all the bloody trips to the smelly train toilet, and the minibuses in Georgia, is what I’m blaming this on…(I suspect I will still be blaming things on Georgian minibus drivers even when I am back at home!)

…and in the midst of all this Theo went back on one of the websites we’ve checked hundreds of times to see if the buses were running again …and there it was! Last week some people had bought bus tickets from Almaty to Yining, a smallish city across the border in China.

It was incredible news…and we had to find out if it was true, which meant an hours walk to the bus station.

We tried once and I couldn’t make it.

Didn’t even try the next day…

Climbed my own Tien-Shan mountain yesterday and made it to the bus station…where, unbelievably we booked tickets, with the help of another kind stranger, a Russian catholic who was doing a PhD on medieval history.

I have the tickets in our bag…so whilst the chances of us making it to the real mountains here in Kazakhstan are still remote, our dreams of making it into China without flying remain in tact!

I need another lie down after writing all that, but I am feeling much better than I was, I have been nursed back to health by our latest feline companion who has lain on my for a few hours in the last few days putting her magic back into me (Rosa named her Baileys, you’ll have to ask her why all the alcohol names) …and you’ll be pleased to know that I now know the Kazakh  word for paracetamol – Парацетамол …just in case it’s ever useful!