Still in Almaty

Still in Almaty,

We have stayed in Almaty longer than we intended to because our luggage which we sent from Beijing did not arrive in the expected 10 days.  It took 3 weeks for the first box to arrive and when we enquired where the other two were the girl at the post office just shrugged her shoulders. As time marched on we were contemplating leaving without our luggage as we had limited time on our visas. 

When we first arrived in Almaty we met an Australian, David, and his Russian wife, Fatima, who both work at the university, while we in the supermarket and they gave us their details and offered to be of assistance if we needed any while we were in the city. We got in touch with them and Fatima went to the post office with us.  What a difference it makes when you can speak the language.  The post office staff traced our boxes to still being in customs, the reason they were not sent with the first box is that they are damaged and they advised us to go the pick them up ourselves as the next day was that start of a week of public holidays, similar to our Anzac day, 29 million Russians died during the second world war when Kazakhstan part of Russia. Customs were a long way out of town and Fatima came with us and the boxes were eventually located.  One box weighed 200 grams less than when it left Beijing but we were not bothered about that we just wanted to pick up the boxes.  When we unpacked everything the only thing we can find missing was Mike’s beard trimmer and we can live without that.

While we were waiting we passed the days by doing a lot of walking around the city, very confused by the Russian spelling of the street names.  We visited the museum, climbed to a lookout where we could see over the city and we walked along the river where the wealthy Russians live.  Tas, our host look us to Almaty Lake.  First we caught a public bus part way up the mountain and then we had a long climb ahead of us but fortunately a private bus, a very old one, taking staff who work at an observatory high in the mountain stopped and gave us a ride all the way to the lake.  The lake was frozen and very beautiful surrounded by snowcapped mountains.  We were approached by two gun toting army men who asked to see our passports and told us we would have to leave.  Apparently the Kygyzstan border is just over the mountains and perhaps something was going on, we just left.  Luckily they did  not see us when we first arrived and we had a picnic and a look around, unfortunately we did not get to walk around the lake.  On our way down the same bus which gave us a ride up the mountain was returning taking workers down the mountain and the driver stopped and gave us a ride again.

It has been frustrating for us to wait for our luggage but we are packed now and ready to head off over the mountains to Bishkek in Kygyzstan.

The food in Cetral Asiais very plain. Plov is eaten a lot, rice with some vegetables and horse meat. We tried the national dish, besbarmak, consisting of flat noodles, onion and horse meat which we found bland and the idea of horse meat a bit off putting. Shashlyk are popular and vary in quality and price. We went for dinner with David and Fatima who knew a good place and they were delicious, especially the ones with mushrooms. We discovered monty which we liked, a soup with  onions and cabbage and meat.  No Mc Donalds but there is KFC and Burger King and lots of takeaway hamburgers and kebabs.