Kazakhstan- Finished

So, I dont know what you know about the Peace Corps' pulling out of Kazakhstan. It made the international news, so does that make me a celebrity now?

There were a number of 'facts' floating around, as well as 'official reasons', and i thought i would address them all, with my understanding of the reasons.

Peace Corps told us that the programme was being 'suspended', with 1 week's notice, due to:
- Security concerns- both attacks on volunteers (there had been 3 rapes), and increased terrorist activity (not aimed at volunteers)
- Political - the KNB, as well as certain government departments, had grown less helpful and were causing problems, in regards to getting teaching permission for the following year
- Budgets - Kazakhstan was a very expensive programme, and in order to meet the security issues, it would have cost a lot more money.

This is what were were told, and it makes sense to me, but the 1 week notice would suggest the the security issues were stronger than we were told.

Now, the official response from the Kazakhstan government was, and I paraphrase:
'We are a top 50 developed nation now, and we don't need volunteers any more'.
This attitude would seem to support the issues Peace Corps had regarding political issues.

What all of this meant, was that instead of 27months of volunteering in Kazakhstan, I left after 8, having spent 2 months in full time training, 3 months on summer holiday, and only 3 months actually teaching. It was very frustrating, as I was just starting to feel like my presence was making a difference, and my language learning was bearing fruit.

Oh well.....I enjoyed my time greatly, and learnt plenty.

17 December

I really liked Taraz, a smaller and more manageable city than Shymkent, and with much more helpful citizens! Whenever i asked people for directions in Shymkent, i was always given contradictory ones, but not so in Taraz, which was fantastic!

Not that the city was without issues. Due either to this, or just the problems of travelling by myself, i dont know, but for the first time in Kazakhstan, i was stopped and questioned by the police...TWICE! First was at the trainstation, where i was sleeping, after arriving in the city by train at 3am. I was woken up and taken to the police room for questioning, most probably in the hope of getting a bribe. But thanks to limited Kazakh I have, and a stubborn determination to be polite and civil and not pay anything, it turned into a friendly chat about the city!

The next time was less fun, but resulted in an even better reward. I had been trying very hard to find a bus to take me out to this, and had achieved little more than discover that no one knew how to get there. It was only 20km outside of town! Two police men came and asked me to follow them into an alley, where they demanded a bag search, and the usual questions about drugs, guns and money. One was very friendly, the other....less so, and I think the nice one outranked the other, as after a less than friendly encounter, where he has established my innocence, an effort was made to help me! They ended up walking with me to the other side of the bazaar, and got me on the correct bus. It was a great ending to the whole ordeal. But it got even better.


At the bus station, the ticket lady instantly called up her daughter and told her to come and talk to me. I was slightly apprehensive, but It actually turned out to be great. Her English was great, and she became my tour guide for the rest of the day, taking me to see Ayasha Bibi, getting an invite for lunch with a lady on the bus, and her 90 year old father, which not only was tasty, but i got to see his photos from the 40's and 50's that were soooo interesting! After the war, he had worked at the local hospital, as a physiotherapist.

After the great lunch, it I then went back to my new guides family home, for a nap first (trying to sleep in a near freezing trainstation is not great for sleep), and then a dinner, before getting a lift to the station for my train back to Almaty, and some money (traditional gift for travelling guests) and some prayer beads from Mecca! Such a lovely family, it was a great day, and a great way to end my time in Kazakhstan.

16 December

Right, so, after 5 University applications, I have some more time to write this!

34hours on the train took us almost a 1/3 of the way back towards Almaty, with the destination being Aralsk. This was a former major harbour on the northern coast of the Aral sea. With the much publicised shrinkage of the sea, the harbour is now dry. And full of snow at the moment. Indeed, there was so much snow, that the proposed trip out to sea the current sea level, and the ships stranded in the desert had to be abandoned. And it meant about 12hours in total of sitting around at the train station. Between timetables and lack of tickets, we were unlucky indeed!

Next stop was Turkestan, one of the main reasons why I accepted the Peace Corps Kazakhstan offer, and the real purpose for the whole trip! In the town is the Shrine to Yasavi, the 2nd holiest building in Sufi Islam, and an amazing example of Timur's architecture. It truely is an impressive building, made even more so, by the fact that it was never finished, so it still has the scaffolding in place. Typically though, the main hall was closed for refurbishment, and will remain so for another 2 years. The outside was still great though.

This is where our group split up. The others all wanted to head back to Almaty quicker, and visit their first host families. I had been unable to get hold of mine, so decided to see an extra city on the way.

So I headed off to Shymkent, a city that I had hoped to visit next spring for its special festival. In December, it was less interesting, but its War Memorial is certainly the grandest I have seen in Kazakhstan, it was huge, and shared similar ideas with the Vietnam memorial in Washington. I managed to get some help in finding a cheap hotel from some university students who studied English, and the museum was interesting enough, but it was the village of Sayram that I was most interested in seeing, with its Silk Road heritage. I wasn't dissapointed, as the few sights that remained were interesting, and the town is now 90% Uzbek in population, so it was great to meet a different ethnic group.

After a busy day, and LOTS of walking, I set off to Taraz, the last stop on the trip, and the subject of the next update. Sorry!

10th December

10^th December

"Its about zoology"

"Thats a big word (for a girl) isnt it?"

"No, actually it isnt," said Tiffany. "Patronising is a big word. Zoology is actually quite short." The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett

So I am back in the UK now, after the Peace Corps programme in Kazakhstan was ended. I will write about that later, I promise. But I have just finished a 2 week trip around the south of the country, and I would prefer to write about that first!

So, firstly, it wouldn’t be an epic Pete trip without a map.

The numbers relate to things we saw, and this first post will cover 1 and 2.

I had kinda planned this trip already, to be the return leg of the Uzbekistan holiday for next summer, so it wasn’t completely from scratch, but it still needed some work.

The basic idea was to see lots of cool stuff. Which should be the basic idea of every trip in my opinion. The main sights were to be Beket Ata , Aktau, the Aral Sea, Turkistan, Shymkent and Taraz. To do all this, I set 11days, as Kazakhstan really is a big country!

With the plan set in my head, it was time to recruit a team! Travelling alone is well and good, but its always fun to travel with others. I ended up with 7 others willing to come along and get a final look at Kazakhstan before our Visa’s expired, which was more than I had counted on and slightly scary. But it worked, so that’s ok.

The biggest part of the journey, and the one that we were all dreading, was the initial 71hour train ride, across almost the whole country, and 3000km of being on 1 single train. My previous train record was 16hours from Serbia to Romania, and I had thought that was too long on a train, so this was even scary for me. The advantage of the Kazakh train though, was the prospect of a bed, and free hot water. Not much to look forward to, but the 5,500tenge (£25) ticket really couldn’t be beaten on price!

To be honest, it wasn’t really that scary at all, and the days seemed to just blur together. I spent a lot of time reading and napping, and looking out of the window at the snowy steppe. Aktau was the destination, a city on the Caspian coast that only came into existence in the 1950’s, due the discovery of oil in the area. It’s a strange city, as the buildings built in the initial expansion are all looking terribly dated, especially when contrasted against all the shiny new ones being put up.

We managed to find an apartment on the internet (thank goodness for Kindles), after discovering that hotels in the city were really rather expensive. So we packed 8 of us into the apartment, which was in a gourgous new block, overlooking the sea, and was very posh indeed. It was also only designed for 2 people, but hey, it was the cheapest option we could find.

There were 2 reasons to visit Aktau, 1 was to visit Beket Ata, a famous cave mosque and a very important pilgrimage destination (more on that later). The other was to swim in the Caspian, and Steven and I managed :D It was FREEZING cold, but certainly worth it.

We arranged for two cars to drive us out to Beket Ata (a 5 hour or so drive, into the desert), stay over at the free (and fantastic) guesthouse, and drive us back in time for the first of our return train rides. It snowed about 15cm that night, and it made the drive really rather difficult, and we had to get out and push the cars up one particularly difficult hill. But it was certainly worth it. The mosques and necropolis that we visited were great, and the people were really happy to see foreign tourists visiting what is such a sacred Kazakh site. We stayed over at the guesthouse, and I was treated to my final Beshbarmak of Kazakhstan, complete with sheep’s head. I was sitting at the head of the table, so couldn’t really refuse when I was given a big piece of cheek, and a handful of brains, but I didn’t throw up, and the conversation was fun. We managed to “sell” two of the girls who came in our group of 8, for the grand price of 4 camels, and that act provided entertainment for the rest of the trip. Speaking of camels, we saw many of them out in the snow, which isn’t the classic image of them, but was great to see them up close.

I don’t know what else to say about the first bit of the trip. Bekat Ata was a great experience, and I would recommend it to anyone visiting the area. The caves are cool, and the whole atmosphere is very reserved and rewarding.

Ill talk about the other parts of the trip later. I will try and get the photos up before TOOO long.