Horse-ing Around

Parts 1 to 4

Swissish

Rohan is the most beautiful man ever. He's the warmest, gentlest, most caring person you'll ever meet. He's educated, knowledgeable, interesting and funny.

Rohan, who lives in Bangalore, planned to have a trip through Central Asia with his girlfriend, but just before they were due to leave she had a work crisis and couldn't come. So he had to cancel all their bookings, and decided to come alone anyway, with much less of a plan.

He knows all about Almaty, and all about the whole region actually, he's done the research, he knows about Kazakh food, culture, and knows exactly where he wants to go, what foods he wants to try, and what he wants to buy. He can answer so many of my questions about the place.

He'd already planned a little hiking adventure to Kok Zhailau, a mountain which is part of the range skirting the city, so we met up and caught a local bus up as close as we could, and climbed up.

It didn't take long to get beautiful.

"And fuck you too!" No no, I mean, "peace and love to you too brother."

Looking back at the city

So many grasses and herbs and flowers, and everything's looking so lush. It's a beautiful spring. This place really reminds me of Switzerland somehow, without all the wooden chalets, and without the crushing prices.

There's the occasional horseman about, and we saw loads of wild horses doing their own thing as well, generally horseing around, galloping around our tents, and even having little horsey domestic altercations. They're always so negative, neighing all the time, and whinnying about everything under the sun.

I'm very glad the herds of galloping equines dodged our tents during their fast runs through our camping spot though. Occasionally I was a bit worried, and thought we might have to suddenly hoof it out of there.

This was our water supply for the night, we climbed down.

Colour uncoordinated

Rohan guzzling a Nutella snack, wild horses guzzling fresh green grass behind him. Nutella! Yay! It came with these little crispy mini grissini sticks, the whole pack lasted about 2 minutes with us ravenous sweetteeth gorging into it. Luckily the horses are too smart to eat Nutella, and weren't interested.

Yeah, the sunset was something else.

And so was the sunrise:

My tent was right in the sun from sparrow's, I had no choice but to get up early, to avoid being cooked.

You have no idea how good having bread and cheese like this is for my soul.

Indian spicy porridge

We met some really sweet local uni students, and chatted for ages. The people are so super friendly here, so eager to connect. People just mingle automatically everywhere, share tables without asking, just start chatting with complete strangers and share their food.

In fact, on our way up the hill, as we were resting and eating delicious chocolates that Rohan had bought from the famous Rakhat chocolate factory down in town (very well named, as rakhat means pleasure in Kazakh), a couple of local men passed us and clearly motioned for us to give them some. We hadn't offered straight away. How rude of us. They would all automatically offer food and water to anyone who passed by.

We had a beautiful night up on the saddle, chatting for ages, and meeting a few other locals too. We also met 2 Indian students who, despite the acres and acres of space around, decided to pitch their tent right next to Rohan's. It's not the first time I've seen that happen. Safety in numbers.

Senseless

In the morning Rohan told me the most disturbing and harrowing news from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, which the Indian guys had told him all about the night before.

A few days ago some sort of verbal altercation occurred between some local Kyrgyz guys and some Egyptian uni students in Ala-Too Square, a big park in the centre of the city. As a result of whatever happened, gangs of Kyrgyz guys broke into Egyptian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi worker dormitories around the city and started randomly attacking foreigners from those countries.

They also attacked people on the street, if they looked slightly like they may be of South Asian or North African descent.

According to news reports, after police were called to the initial attacks, they failed to intervene whatsoever, and simply joined the onlookers. It took them over 24 hours before they started making arrests, to stop the violence.

The chaos lasted for days, spurred on by the fact that some of the Kyrgyz guys filmed the beatings on their phones and proudly uploaded them onto Tic Toc. Someone showed me some of the vids, they're so horrible to watch.

A Bangladeshi man was killed, many people were injured, universities were closed down and offered their classes online, and thousands of international students and workers took refuge in their private homes and apartments, and then left the country, helped by flights organised by their own governments. Some got straight out overland and went to Kazakhstan, like the guys camping with us.

No wonder they pitched their tent so close.

The situation has apparently calmed down now, but, understandably, tourists like Rohan have decided to completely skip the Kyrgyz leg of his journey. It's so disappointing, as the Kyrgyz part was the one he was looking forward to the most.

The whole story really shocked me, it's hard to understand how this sort of completely illogical and senseless mob mentality can take hold, and, in a testament to the underbelly of some parts of Kyrgyz society, it also shocks me that apparently almost all of the local media failed to report on the violence in their own capital.

Although, if I think about it, this could be due to government attempts to not be perceived as having failed to provide sufficient security in their lucrative education and tourism sectors, or to stifle any bad publicity that may negatively impact those sectors.

But the fact that the situation escalated so rapidly is an indication of some of the tensions and divisions that already exist beneath the surface of Kyrgyz society.

After that sobering discussion, Rohan and I eventually decided to get moving again, and we hiked our way down the other side of the ridgetop, slowly making our way back to the city from another direction.

The Best In Central Asia

Manisha recommended I go to the Abikan Kasteev State Art Museum, and the art in there was some of the best I've seen for a long time, probably for this whole trip. And I've been to a lot of galleries.

This particular art museum is regarded as the best collection of works in the whole of Central Asia, and after being so blown away by the quality of the works, I'm pretty sure that's not an exaggeration.

This wonderful gentleman greeted me outside

The Kazakh coat of arms. The middle circle represents the traditional design of the top of a yurt, called the crown, and the figures on the left and right are stylised winged horses.

The first part of the museum is dedicated to Kazakh clothing, felting, carpet and jewellery design. Some of it is totally stunning.

The tall hat in the middle is a traditional wedding hat for a woman.

Here's a selection of the beautiful works.

Charyn Canyon. I visited this place a couple of times later on.

Stunning carpets, an important part of the yurt culture. As is the felt, which lines yurt walls.

Embroidered muso

A portrait of Kenesary Kasymov, a leader of the Kazakh independence movement in the mid 1800s. The local Kazakhs weren't keen on Russian rule even way back then. The artist is Abikhan Kasteev, after whom the whole art museum is named.

Mulling it over

Forced kidnapping of girls. Unfortunately, bride kidnapping and child marriage is still a thing in Kazakhstan, even these days, despite its illegality. It happens in other countries in Central Asia too, and appears to be increasing in some places. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, it's estimated that a whopping 30% of weddings are the result of bride kidnappings.

Incredible, but true.

Sometimes the kidnappings occur as a way of the groom's family avoiding having to pay the dowry to the bride's family, the "bride price," and the act sometimes has the tacit approval of the bride's family. Wedding costs are often unaffordably high, and this practice saves money for both families.

In the case of a genuine kidnapping however, traditionally the young woman does still have the right to refuse, if she can weather hours of haranguing by the groom's female family members, who attempt to make her wear a symbolic bridal headscarf. But often she'll succumb, fearing an implied shame (or worse) if she refuses, and the girl's family, once contacted, often pressure her to agree to the marriage.

Must be so much fun being a young woman here.

This bride has been purchased. Looks happy, doesn't she. I hope her leering older husband-to-be falls off his horse, which then kicks him smack bang in his nether regions, causing permanent limpitis.

Portrait of Zhambyl Zhabayuly, a famous Kazakh dombra player and folk singer. He apparently wrote lots of pro-Soviet songs, and even wrote songs praising Stalin. But some Kazakh researchers dispute that, and say that Russian poets actually created those works, and that Zhambyl was named as the author in order to persuade ordinary Kazakhs to support the Soviets.

How I feel after a particularly brutal day of cycling (but without a ballerina on my nose).

Steppin' through the steppe

All bottled up

The "Virgin" Mary with a fully grown baby Jesus

"Abandoned child"

Portrait of a young man

"Crossing the pass" by a Georgian artist

Soviet era works

I caught this guy steeling my bike

"Try not to worry too much daddy, we've still got loads of chooks."

You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Wolf

Another beautiful depiction of the saukele, the bridal hat

No need for a stool to milk these beasts

Sittin' around jammin' and havin' a few quieties (of mare's milk).

Laundresses

Striking a rigid posture

Furry tales

Turkmeni women creating another mistresspiece

Uzbek work

There was a whole gallery of amazing manga works by Japanese artist Kaoru Mori, from her latest series, "The Story Of The Bride," which is set in Turkic Central Asia.

"What!! You want me to marry that old wrinkly guy??!! No bloody way!!! You can stick that idea right up yer Khyber Pass!!!"

"Oh alright then dad. I'll be a domestic and sex slave for some random old guy for the rest of my life. Just for you. Please don't beat me again though."

Sob, sob. "Why couldn't I just have been born in Japan, to become a single, independent hippy artist with loads of time to just hang around and play with my fingernails?"

Why indeed?

Life isn't fair, it's a puzzle. And a lottery, with quite poor odds for many people.

Aah, anyway, it was an absolute treat to walk around the art museum like a single, independent hippy artist, playing with what's left of my fingernails, and admiring the consistently high quality of the works.

I came out feeling pensive, and inspired, and felt I'd learnt so much about Kazakh culture.

Charyn Canyon and Kolsai Lake

Rohan and I met ridiculously early one morning, to jump on a tour bus to visit some amazing places around Almaty. We didn't get back till around 10.30pm. The bus was jam packed full of Kazakhs and Russians. Rohan and I, and another bunch of 4 Indian students who've been studying in Kyrgyzstan, were the only English speakers there.

Unfortunately our Kazakh guide, as friendly and sweet as she was, rattled off all her info in Russian, which everyone but us could understand. She'd speak for five minutes about a place in Russian, and then say a sentence or two in English just for us.

Zippin' down the highway

Everything was so green, and then suddenly it wasn't. As we approached Charyn Canyon the land got drier and drier.

We walked inside the canyon for a couple of clicks, eventually hitting the river. It was stunningly beautiful. But we didn't have much time in there. That's the thing with tours.

We took a mashrutka back, a popular form of transport around here. It's just a van with rows of seats, normally inside the van. This one has the seats outside for the views, which were stunning.

A golden eagle, with its handler, and a local tourist who paid to get a photo taken with it. Eagles are commonly used for hunting on the steppe, and for earning tenge from tourists.

We visited another couple of canyons before lunch.

Equus everywhere

Steppe-en-wolf. Born to be wild. And now very tame, used only for more tourist pics. Bizarre.

We stopped in an old eating house for a completely overpriced lunch. They refused to reduce the price for a non-meat version of their lunch fare, which was pretty greedy of them really, considering the standard version was basically all meat, and the veg version consisted of a bunch of potatoes fished out of a chicken salad, served with a chunk of stale-ish bread.

That's what ya get on tours sometimes.

Kolsai Lake

We travelled to this magnificent lake, and, yeah, it felt just like the European Alps, except for the mashrutkas, the Kazakh flags and the Russian fashion.

Again, we didn't have too much time to really go on a hike, the lake is at least a three and a half hour drive from Almaty, and it was all go-go-go.

But it was really stunning, so all worth it.

He's not about to jump. The black rod has a camera attached to the end of it, which spins around the circular platform and makes a video of you being all patriotic and cool.

Stunning isn't it.

This was just before it started to rain.

Our bus broke down on the way back, and we were here for ages, which was totally fine by me, because we got to watch the sunset. It was pretty cold though. All of the passengers were eventually transferred to other buses, bit by bit, as they rolled past. Rohan and I and the other sweet Indians just chatted and played each other our favourite music, because they had a Bluetooth speaker. It was fun.

Takin Care Of Business

I've gotta tell you a little trivial secret.

Bicycle mechanics is one of my least favourite interests in the whole universe.

In my mind it's surpassed only by automobile mechanics, cats dressed up in baby clothes, eating at McDonalds, waiting at traffic lights, or listening to politicians avoid saying anything visionary or even meaningful.

But having chosen to ride a bicycle halfway around the world, there's certain things you just can't ignore forever, despite wanting to.

Black Bewdy was in desperate need of a service, and Almaty is the place to do it, with a host of experienced bike mechanics around.

But I hadn't thought of the fact that I'd arrived smack bang at the beginning of the cycling season, and that loads of local Almatians* are into riding. Every single bicycle mechanic I went to, (which was a lot), was too busy to work on her. I'd need to make an appointment, and wait at least another four days in Almaty.

I really didn't wanna do that.

So I had to make do with getting a new tyre for her, and, unfortunately, the mechanic was so rushed and flustered that he didn't do a good job putting it on, he put a new tube in her with the wrong valve (which didn't fit my pump), and fiddled around with my brake pads so they were set really badly (unbeknown to me).

Even I could've done a better job than him, which is really saying something.

I had to go back to him the next day, and I bought a new pump with adjustable fittings, and I didn't really notice how bad the brakes were until much later, when I had a proper load on and was going steeply downhill (not a good time to discover your brakes aren't working properly).

So I've learnt a lesson.

Always check the work.

*PS. If I was an Almatian I would definitely get a dog, and no prizes for guessing which one.

Bewdy with her new tyre.

Classic old Soviet-era apartment block

Real beer. The first super tasty strong one I've had since leaving Australia. Liquid gold.

Liquid milk. Of the horse and camel variety. In the supermarket.

Wanting to be back swimming in the freshwater mountain lake, but having no body to go with.

The grapes are just starting to appear on the vines here.

Back In Her Arms

Don't get too excited. I'm talking about Mother Nature.

I was ready to go bush, back to Pachamama, and felt like having a cycling companion or two for awhile. Since I arrived in Almaty I'd really been enjoying hanging out with English speakers at length, which I've hardly done this whole trip, and so I sent a message to our WhatsApp Central Asia cycling group asking if anyone wanted a riding buddy for a trip east from Almaty, and then down to Issyk-Kul, a huge freshwater lake in Kyrgyzstan.

A sweet German couple, Anna Lena and Julian, replied straight away, saying they were interested. They arrived in Almaty the next day, we had an Indian meal together (yeah, I know, Indian!), and we all decided to head off together the next day.

They're both uni students from Nuremberg, studying medicine and IT, and both are in the latter parts of their studies. They're super knowledgeable about loads of things (including bikes!), and are really interesting to talk to. But the best thing about them is that they're the sweetest, warmest, most caring people ever, we immediately got along famously, and ended up having an amazing time together for the next week and a half.

Plus they love chocolate, and music.

And nature.

What more could you possibly ask for?

We met in the morning, went to a big supermarket, and bought about 10 times as much food as we needed. They travel heavy in the food department, insisting on such cycle-friendly delicacies as glass-bottled olive oil and pasta sauces, fat bags of heavy pasta and grains, chunky blocks of chocolate and chocolate biscuits, and other items to fill cycle panniers to levels they weren't ever designed to have to endure.

Let alone the riders.

Anna Lena and I did the shopping. Julian carried their food. A great move on Anna Lena's part, no wonder she's smart enough to be a doctor.

Bewdy was giving me filthy looks as we finally headed off, all heavy and wobbly. She'd never had to suffer anything like this before, not from anyone.

The thing is, we weren't exactly sure what would be available on the way, so we'd decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

Or, in this case, better to be stupid than smart.

Heading East

It was actually pretty cruisey getting out of town, mainly through the back streets.

Our bikes before we packed them full of food

Random scenes from the burbs

The countryside was beautiful, and the riding good, once we'd left some busy high-trafficked roads just outa town.

These guys laughed at us as if we looked really funny. We laughed at them as if they looked really funny. It's all relative innit.

I bought a local honey, because I wasn't carrying enough already.

Lunch stop. Desperately trying to rid our panniers of weight.

Kazakhstani chocolate from the famous Rakhat chocolate factory in Almaty. Plus Ritter Sports Rum'n'Raisin, all the way from Germany. Well, the recipe anyway. Who knows where it's actually made. Thanks Anna Lena, I was happy to rekindle my love for real chocolate as a result of yours.

The strawberries here are the bomb at the moment. 800 tenge, $2.50 Oz, per kilo!

Modern yurts are often metal framed these days.

Our first campsite, by a dry river bed. It was our only waterless spot for our whole camping time together, but the Deutschies had enough water to see us through.

We sat around and sang songs and ate pasta and chocolate deep into the night. So good.

Trigger Unhappy

It was hot when we left the next morning, relatively late. Those guys were lucky enough to be in the shade in their tent for much longer than me.

We stopped at the first running water we could find, and filtered away.

Then Anna Lena saw this lovely dead sheep upstream from where we were collecting the water, not too far from the creek. Hmmm. I kept my supply, as it was super hot and had taken me ages to filter, but those guys went further upstream and started again. Their filter was way quicker than mine.

There were lots of little green frogs in the ponds adjacent to the creek.

Beautiful scenes as we rode off. You can probably tell from the picture quality that some of these pics were taken by Anna Lena and Julian.

Not long into the day we met a Kiwi cyclist, who was heading in the same direction as us. As soon as we met, I introduced myself, and then asked her her name. She said "Pinny," with a broad Kiwi accent, and I laughed, and said, "ah, Pinny, nice to meet you."

That was a mistake.

Before I could tell her that I was only joking and that I knew her name was actually Penny* and that she was a Kiwi, she'd already barked her name at me again, in an over-exaggerated Australian way, acting as if I was really stupid and rude.

Ooops.

And so began my accidental pulling of Penny's trigger with pretty much every single thing I said or did.

Penny's just spent some time cycling alone in Turkey, and was travelling in a completely different way to us, but immediately invited herself into our party without a moment's hesitation, announcing that she was now travelling with us, without any opportunity for a discussion whatsoever, and without even a little bit of time to see how we all fit together as a group.

I've gotta say I was pretty shocked by how she initially appeared to have no sense of humour whatsoever, and by how much she appeared to hate me, right from the start. It really threw me, and was a major bummer, because before she arrived Anna Lena, Julian and I had been having such a gentle sweet time cycling and hanging out together.

For the first day or so of cycling with her, I laughed everything off, her rudeness and her blatant criticism, and tried to bring her around, with general kindness and lots of listening. But it had no impact whatsoever. In fact, it appeared to make things worse.

Penny appeared very keen on controlling every single aspect of the group's movement, or, at the very least, making very very early decisions about things such as when we'd get up, when we'd leave our campsite, when we'd stop for lunch, how long we'd stop for breaks etc etc, ad fucking nauseum.

She told us early on she'd been a hiking guide in Pakistan in her twenties, and appeared to believe that she was now the self-appointed leader of our group, and had all the knowledge as to how the group should function, as well as exactly how we'd most efficiently get to our perceived destinations.

Aaaaargh!

Travelling with a control freak is not easy for me, especially when that freak totally has it in for me.

After my attempts to kill her (with kindness) spectacularly failed, I then began to get annoyed, but after a while of that, which turned me into someone I really didn't like very much, I decided that the only thing I could do was to just ignore her, and try not to be triggered by what she was saying and doing, and just be happy anyway.

Well, that great enlightened realisation lasted for about 2 minutes and 23 seconds, after which I reverted to hating her guts. In the nicest possible way of course.

Well .... you know me, I didn't hate her, I empathised with whatever was making her be like this, but it was pretty much impossible to have a good time or even an ok time trying to relate with her when she was constantly unable to do so in any meaningful way, unable to answer any normal question of mine with anything but ridicule of my question itself, unable to be anything other than be critical of me, and unable to be comfortable in my presence whatsoever.

*not her real name

Luckily the cycling was incredible though.

We found the most stunning spot to camp for the night, alongside this beautiful, fast flowing river.

Anna Lena, Julian and I stayed up, admiring the most brilliantly illuminated night sky.

We saw so many shooting stars, Sternschnuppe in German, and every time I said that word the Deutschies found it side-splittingly funny, I think because I kept saying it in an exaggerated Swiss way, which sounds absolutely hilarious to Germans.

Yeah, the celestial beings really turned it on for us that night, the sky was the stage for the most divine cosmic performance ever.

But Nothing's Permanent

And thank fucking Christ for that.

Although we tried to intervene and sort out the situation with Penny, attempts which didn't really seem to work for very long, it unexpectedly sorted itself out.

I'll tell you the rest of that story next time, so this blog's not too long, and to keep you in suspense, so you have no option but to read the next one, to find out what happened.

I've learnt from my Netflix days. Everything's never completely resolved, there's always so much more shit to sort out just as the previous pile is finally cleaned up. So you have to watch on.

Suffice it to say that we ended up having the most amazing trip ever, and camped in some of the most stunning landscapes you could ever wish to see.

I can't wait to show you more of it❤️

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