Category Archives: Backpacking

Lanzhou to Xiehe, China

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3/5 -Got up early for the 10km taxi ride across Lanzhou back to the South Bus Station.  We arrived at about 8:25, prepared to buy tickets for the 9:30 bus to Xiehe.  Surprise – there was an 8:30 bus that hadn’t left yet!  A little man took charge of us and hustled us through security and onto the bus.  There was nothing on the ticket that was not in Chinese, and no bus number, so we hoped we were getting on the right bus!  We took two random empty seats, and the little man came on and moved us forward so that all the front seats were filled.  Very orderly.

It soon became apparent that there were no Chinese on the bus – all the folks were speaking a different language that Jim said was Tibetan, and they looked more like Native Americans than Chinese with long braids and brown, leathery skin.
We soon left the city, passing terraced farmland.IMG_7844-13

 

And then we were up into the mountains – Himalayas?  Without Google, I have no way of checking.  Anyway, we were heading toward the part of China formerly known as Tibet, to visit the Labrang Tibetan Monastery.
We arrived in Xiehe by noon, and hailed a taxi to take us to the Nirvana Hotel.  Jim had copied the name and address out in Chinese characters, but, you guessed it, the taxi driver couldn’t read Chinese!  Tibetan is what’s spoken here.  There was another guy in the cab, and he showed us a pic on his phone of red robed monks – is that where we are going?  Yes!  we said, right near the monastery.  He asked if we had a phone number, but we did not.  So the taxi driver picked up a young woman who looked Chinese, and asked her to read the script.  That got us onto the right street, but he couldn’t find the hotel.  Twice around the block, and I spied the name on the building in English. Stop!  Here it is!

We walked into the downstairs restaurant, to the sound of The Band on the sound system, and a western woman greeted us in perfect English – are you the McClenons? We’ve been waiting for you!  To say I was overcome would be an understatement – I burst into tears at the realization that I’d be able to speak English here!  Jim thought I’d lost my mind.
We dropped our stuff off in our lovely, if chilly, room, and went back down to have lunch.  Now Bob Dylan was playing, followed by the Eagles, the Beatles, and Meatloaf!  I was in oldies heaven. We had lovely yak and vegetable soup with rice on the side, and the first cappuccinos we’ve had since Italy. Don’t wake me up, I’m loving this dream!image
Our host Clarie, originally from Amsterdam, used to be a tour guide until she met her husband here and decided to stay and open a business.  While we were eating lunch, we met an English-speaking photographer and his wife from Shanghai, and Madelyn, an American from Oregon!  The next table over had a group of German tourists drinking beer – the first foreign tourists we’ve seen.
Madelyn had lots of info about the monastery.  Seems we arrived just in time for their New Years celebration, and tonight there will be a parade and the monks will be displaying sculptures made of yak butter!  Are we lucky or what?

Lanzhou – the Gansu Provincial Museum

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3/5 – After a shower with real hot water (several of our recent hotels only had tepid) and a nap, we took a taxi to the Gansu Provincial Museum, about a 40 minute ride in a direction we hadn’t yet seen.  We passed through the modern downtown with tall bank buildings., lots of traffic, and lots of people.  We are here to see the famous first century CE bronze statue called the Flying Horse of Gansu, a horse that runs so fast, he appears to fly.  He is shown with three feet off the ground, and his hind foot stepping on a little bird, who looks up at the horse in surprise.  Here it is.  It’s only about 12 inches tall, so you can’t really see the bird.



The museum also had a Buddhist Art exhibit, with statues from various grottoes, and prayer wheels.



Those big, decorated columns are prayer wheels – grab a handle at the bottom and spin to send your prayers heavenward.



There was also an exhibit with lots of dinosaur bones.  These pix are for you, Lexi!



We walked outside to see… Snow!  Enough winter already!  By the time we got back to our hotel, everything was slippery, and I found that I am very afraid of falling again.  I think I held Jim’s hand so tight, I cut off his circulation.  Get me to some nice, warm weather, please!  We walked a block to have supper at yet another noodle restaurant – I always associated Chinese food with rice, but here in the northwest, it’s all about noodles.  Happy to report that I am acquiring some proficiency using chopsticks with my left hand – otherwise, I might starve!

Dunhuang to Lanzhou, China

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3/3 – I’ve really enjoyed our few days in this pretty town.  The New Year’s celebrations are still winding down, and we hear lots of firecrackers going off in the streets.  It is the Year of the Ram.





After our day of sightseeing, we relaxed, ate noodles and beef in little restaurants (Jim asked repeatedly where we could sample some donkey meat, but the Donkey and Yellow Noodle Restaurant seemed to be the only place in town, and it was closed), and bought our train tickets for the next leg of our journey.  

We found an open-air market with all kinds of produce for sale.



I even found some wall art, showing the areas this town is known for – the Magao Caves, the Gobi Desert, the White Pagoda.



We also checked out the local supermarkets, and brought home some samples to try (with mixed results). The food here is VERY salty, but the beer is fine! (Note the old-fashioned pop tops!). We have been looking for several weeks for dental floss, which we have determined is just not used in this part of the world.



Wherever we go, people are surprised or amused to see westerners, and ask to take our picture.  We are the only non-Asian people in this town, as far as we can tell, and even at the big hotels, not a word of English is known.  Very few people – western or Asian – try to cross China overland, especially in winter. 

We are becoming experts in pantomime and planning – Jim looks up and copies out key words in Chinese into his notebook to show people what we want, before we leave the hotel.  At restaurants, we walk around to see what others are eating, and point to things that look good. At stores, we look at the register display, or the shopkeeper shows us western numbers on a calculator, to see what we owe.  This has worked pretty well so far.  

These little girls followed us down the street, shouting giggly Hellos! at us.  When I responded Nie Hao!, they just roared with laughter.  I don’t think my pronunciation is very good…



We left our hotel at 6pm to catch a taxi for our 8pm train.  The station is about 10 miles out of town, and is quite impressive.



We had a four berth compartment to ourselves for our overnight ride  – in fact, there were only three other people in the whole car!  This must really be the off-season in China.  

Arrived on time at 7:30am, and walked across the street to the bus station to purchase our tickets for tomorrow.  Was informed by the nice Information Lady that tickets to Xiahe can only be bought at the South Bus Station, 10 km away.  Okay, time for a morning taxi ride across town!

Lanzhou is a big, dirty city, that either has many abandoned buildings, or ones that were never finished.  People walk on dirt right along the main road – no sidewalks.  



In 20 minutes we were at the South Bus Station, and asked for tickets on tomorrow’s bus.  The ticket lady informed us that tickets could only be purchased for today’s bus, and to come back in the morning.  Agghhh!   Our online blog advisors had specifically warned that these tickets sould be purchased in advance.  Oh well – at least we now know that the bus leaves at 9:30am. 

Another taxi ride all the way back to the train station, where Jm had booked a conveniently close hotel.  Best laid plans and all that…  So now we are in our kinda dumpy hotel in a smoggy city, and will rest up for our long bus ride to Xiahe tomorrow.

Urumqi to LiuYuan to Dunhuang, China

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2/27 – Back to the Urumqi train station we go! Our train to LiuYuan departs at 9:27am so we left the hotel before 8 to make sure we got a taxi and got through the security check points at the station. Once again, we were asked to step aside for a thorough search after our packs went through the scanner. Profiling! Again, they were interested in our canteens, but rather than confiscating the water bottles like in the US, they just make you take a drink. If you don’t die immediately, they let you pass.

We entered a huge waiting area totally packed with people – think Grand Central Station, and then some. I watched the board that included our train, and assumed that all these people were waiting for different trains. When our train was announced, EVERYBODY started moving – all these people were getting on the same train!image

We found car 14, which was an open sleeper with 6 berths per compartment, but the compartments had no doors. We were the only ones in our section,N which was good, because I didn’t know how I would climb into an upper berth with my arm in a sling.

Lots of brown desert, and brown mountains. All day. Once we far enough from the city, the sky actually turned blue!image

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The conductor stopped by with his camera and a friend who wanted his picture taken with us. The novelty of being a westerner! We were happy to oblige. The nice conductor let us know when we were approaching our stop, and we were ready to get off by 6pm. LiuYuan is a one road town that depends on the train station for its livelihood. It has no hotels, so even though it was late in the day, we had to press on to Dunhuang. As we had read, there were taxis and a minibus waiting outside the train station. We jumped onto the minibus for the 128km /80 mile ride to Dunhuang.

Sharing the ride with us were three young Chinese women on holiday. One had a bit of English, and asked if we were going to see the sights of Dunhuang tomorrow. When we replied yes, she suggested that we go together and share the taxi fare. Deal!

Here’s a funny thing. The minibus had to stop for gas. As soon as the bus stopped, everybody got off, and walked briskly to the edge of the road, as far from the natural gas pumps as possible. There we stood, shivering in sub-zero temperatures, as the attendant filled the tank. Do buses explode often here?

The road to Dunhuang is an absolutely straight two lanes, rutted and potholed, through absolutely flat, featureless desert. The most interesting thing was watching for the kilometer markers as we bounced along (my arm aching with every bounce). After the sun set, the ride became more interesting, as our driver expertly maneuvered around bicycles, pedestrians, and three wheeled carts with no lights at all. By 8:30pm we were in Dunhuang, a brightly lit, friendly looking town. The bus driver took us right to our hotel, and the three young women decided to stay at the same hotel too.

Dunhuang was an important stop on the ancient Silk Road. Tomorrow, the sights!

Thursday in Urumqi – the Bone Hospital And the Museum

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2/26 – When we woke up this morning, Jim said we’d waited long enough for my arm to feel better.  Time to take action!  We looked at our map and saw a hospital within walking distance.  Jim copied out the Chinese words for ‘shoulder’ and ‘X-Ray’, and we set off down the road.  We walked into the hospital, teeming with parents and children.  The nurse at the front desk let us know this was a children’s hospital, and she went and got a lady who spoke enough English to tell us we needed the Bone Hospital.  She wrote out the words in Chinese so we could show the taxi driver.

15 minutes later, we walked into another hospital.  There were lots of people limping and in casts and crutches, so we figured we were in the right place.  The nurse checked us in using my passport as ID, and issued us a plastic card that would be swiped for each transaction.

We waited in a hallway until we were called in to see a doctor, who concurred that I needed an X-ray.  He called over a young resident who spoke some English, who took us upstairs and instructed us to wait until we were called.  He asked if he could take our picture, as we were his first foreign patients!image

Within an hour, my X-rays were done, and we waited until they were developed, then brought them back to the doctor on the first floor.  He showed me where my upper arm bone (humerus) was fractured right below the shoulder.  He called the young resident back, and he said it didn’t need an operation or a cast, just don’t move it for three weeks.  Jim asked if we could purchase a sling, and the young doctor took us up to the tenth floor to be fitted for one.  Here’s the happy result!

 

From start to finish, we were there less than three hours.  Total cost:  less than $50.00!

We went to lunch, and I discovered that chopsticks are even more challenging left-handed.  I ended up using a spoon…

After lunch we took a taxi to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Museum, to learn more about Uyghur culture.  Here are some pix.

Wednesday in Urumqi, China 

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2/25 – Woke up this morning to the conductor pounding on our door.  Urumqi!  (pronounced Ur UM chee).  We scrambled to dress and get our packs together, and looked out the window.  Snow on the ground, and smog in the air.  A big city.  In my mind, Urumqi, on China’s western frontier, was not so big and crowded, or so smoggy.  Oh well.



We got off the train, looking for an ATM to get some Chinese money.  The Yuan is equal to about 16 cents US, or 6 yuan to the dollar.  There was an ATM in the train station, but it rejected our card.  Since we left Türkiye, it takes us an average of 5 ATMs before we find one that will give us money.  We hoped to have better luck here…  We walk next door to the huge and crowded ticket hall, going through a metal detector, a pat-down and a hat removal, to find no ATM there.  We need cash to buy train tickets, and to get a taxi to our hotel.  Back out on the street, it is SO crowded!  Thousands of people with places to go.  We try a bank, no luck at their ATM, and they can’t give us a cash advance from our credit card, nor change our remaining Kazakh money.  The cleaning lady has some English, and tells us to try China Bank, by getting on Bus 52.  We explain that we can’t take a bus, as we have no Chinese money.  She reaches into her pocket and produces two bills, presumably enough for bus fare.  First Nice Person of China!

We try a nearby hotel, where we hope to find someone with advice in English.  No luck.  We walk down the very crowded street, past markets and mobile phone shops.  I spy a sign that says ATM.  Success!  

Now we return to the ticket hall, through the metal detector and the pat-down.  This time they are interested in the water bottle in Jim’s pack, which they weren’t interested in before.  My hiking poles are a red flag, and I have to open my pack and pantomime that they are used as walking sticks.  We get on one of the lines to purchase our tickets to our next destination, Dunhuang.  When we show the word, written in Chinese, to the clerk, he says something in Chinese that we can’t understand.  He leaves his station, and comes back with a young woman who speaks English.  She explains that there is no train to the town we wish to go to – we can get tickets for a 9 hour ride to LiuYuan, then take a two hour bus from there.  Sounds like a plan, and we get our tickets.

Jim dickers with an unlicensed taxi driver for a ride to our hotel.  He’s sure we are paying too much, but it’s not a lot by American standards.  Jim shows the man his hand drawn map (my phone plan works here, but Google Maps does not, thanks to the Great Firewall of China blocking all Google products and social media) and the guy takes off in the opposite direction.  After a while, he rolls down  his window and asks directions of passersby.  Deja vu!  Drivers are alike in every country!  He finally turns down the right street, and I yell for him to stop as he passes our hotel.  Sheesh!  We have arrived, safe and sound, to our lovely upscale hotel with western toilet and wifi.

For supper we walk down the street where there are a number of restaurants, and choose one that displays pictures of the dishes.  We select beef and noodles with celery and greens.  Eating soup with chopsticks is challenging, and my arm still hurts whenever I try to raise it, but the food was delicious!



Almaty, Kazakhstan to Urumqi, China

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2/23 – We hung around our hotel today, listening to the construction above our heads as they rebuild the hotel after a fire. The goal was to give my arm a day of rest before subjecting it to another bumpy train ride. My throat is full of construction dust and my eyes are scratchy. I’ve had enough of Kazakhstan, thank you!

We used the one finger method to catch a ride to the railway station. Best system ever!

2/24 – Midnight train to Urumqi, China. This little cutie was very interested in my iPad.image

Had to cross over three sets of tracks and vault up onto the train. The conductor tried to help me up by grabbing my arm – ouch! Re-injured my shoulder. We have a four berth compartment to ourselves. image

In the morning, lots of cold desert. Discovered there was no dining car, as we had been led to believe by the Man in Seat 61. Hope we have enough snacks!image

The path we are following is part of the ancient Silk Road trade route through the east.
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At 5pm our conductor indicated that we would be stopping for one hour, and could get something to eat in the station. We understand that this break is to enable them to change the wheels on the train, as the track gauge is different in China (Lionel vs. H.O.?).
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The menu was only in Russian, so we walked around the cafe, saw a tasty Asian stir-fry with rice at another table, and pointed to it. That’s how we get fed!

By 7pm our room had been inspected by Kazakh customs. This was the first time our bags had been searched – we had to dump out the contents of our backpacks for inspection.

By 9pm we repeated the process for Chinese customs. Bags searched again. They turned on my phone and were interested in the picture I had saved of the Istanbul metro – I wonder what they were looking for? The train started moving again at 11:30pm, and we adjusted our watches for China time, so it is 1:30am. Welcome to China! Not sure if we’ll be able to blog reliably from here due to censorship, or the Great Firewall of China, so please be patient. We’ll do our best!

Astana to Almaty, Kazakhstan

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2/20 – Last day in Astana. The temperature got into the positive single digits today! Jim was worried about the effect the jouncing of the train would have on my sore arm, so he found a small pharmacy inside a clothing shop, and asked for pain medication. He came back with a tube that I was hoping was a topical analgesic, but turned out to be flesh-colored makeup to cover bruises, called Bruise Off! Such are the adventures of communication in foreign languages – and thanks to Google Translate for letting us know what we bought.

There is an English language school in our hotel, so we stopped in to talk to the students and teachers. They all agree that English is a good language to know if you want to travel. Someday, they would like to go to London and Paris.

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We negotiated with the front desk clerk to keep our room until 3pm. Our express train leaves at 6:30pm for the overnight ride to Almaty, our last stop in Kazakhstan. We’ll just hang out in the train station until it’s time to board. Here’s the train station in the light of day.image

We boarded our express train, and had our compartment to ourselves. After watching the miles roll by in the dark, we locked the door, got undressed, and turned out the light. At about 10:30pm we heard a furious pounding on the door. Uh oh, guess we’ll be sharing our compartment after all! Jim opened the door, and a woman in furs and high heels rolled a big suitcase into the tiny compartment. She started shrieking in Russian, waving her arms about, until the train attendant came and yanked her out. Evidently, she did not intend to share space with two undressed Americans, and suffer the indignities of climbing into an upper berth. A minute later, a young Kazakh man came in to take her place. He vaulted into the upper bunk, and all was well.

The train arrived in Almaty at 7:30 the next morning. We went to the ticket office to secure our next tickets, to Urumqi, China. We read that we could save 8 hours of this journey by taking a series of buses, but we are comfortable with the train. There was only one ticket window open at this early hour, and the woman, who had no English, communicated that we needed to get our tickets from Window 7, which would open at 8am. When no one opened Window 7 at 8am, we went to the station cafe and had some breakfast, then returned. Window 7 still dark. We asked at all the other windows, and were told by each that Window 7 was the only game in town for tickets to Urumqi. We went to the Information booth to ask when Window 7 would open. The info lady walked with us back to the darkened window and read a note in Russan on the glass. She pointed to where it said 11:30. Oh no! We were punchy from too little sleep, and decided to go find our hotel and come back later. As we were shouldering our packs, she came back with an update – 9:30. It was already 9 o’clock, so we sat back down to wait. Sure enough, at 9:30 the little window opened, and we got our tickets. The train to Urumqi only runs twice a week, and leaves at midnight. As the Chinese New Year celebrations are still going on, we felt lucky to get the tickets.

We walked out onto the street, through the gauntlet of men muttering “taxi” under their breath. Evidently, they are not licensed taxis, so try not to call attention to themselves. Jim chose one, and showed him the address of the hotel and a hand-drawn map showing where it was. It’s been our experience that taxi drivers have no idea of where you want to go, and if you don’t direct them, they are happy to drive around all day, running up the fare.

We arrived at the Mark Inn Hotel, to find a construction zone. The reception area was filled with Sheetrock, and there was hammering, sawing and piles of debris everywhere. There was no one to check us in, and the owner was not on site. One of the workman called him and we spoke on the phone. Seems there was a fire, and they were trying to rebuild. Our room was fine, if you like noise and dust… Always an adventure!

Astana, Kazakhstan

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2/17 – It is minus 10 degrees F when we get off the train.  Oh my it is cold!  We stay in the station to buy the tickets for the next leg of our journey.  It’s about 8am by the time we exit the train station, and still pitch dark.  We know that the Hotel Aka is not far from the station, and decide to walk it.  It is snowing, and the streets are covered with snow and ice. Taking baby steps to avoid slipping on the ice, I go down anyway like a ton of bricks with my backpack on.  Left knee, right shoulder.  The air is knocked out of me, and my arm really hurts – I think maybe something is broken.  Jim hauls me up, shoulders my pack as well as his own, and we keep walking, while I make little whimpering sounds.  We stop to ask directions several times, but no one can point out our hotel.  We finally go into the lobby of another hotel and ask.  The lady says we passed it.  I sit down and can walk no further.  Jim asks the lady to call us a taxi, which then takes us back up the street to our hotel, which we had passed in the dark (the entrance was not on the main road, and the hotel name was not displayed, so we walked right by).  I can’t wait until we get back to a country where we can use the GPS on the phone!  Don’t know how people ever navigated without it.

We get up to our room, and Jim pulls up Google Translate to figure out how to say ‘my wife needs a doctor’ in Russian.  I tell him I’m not going anywhere (after two full days on the train) until I’ve had a hot shower.  The shower enables me to assess the damage – knee scraped and swollen, and shoulder painful, but I can move everything.  I don’t think anything is broken, and ask for some ibuprofen and a day of rest.  It continues to snow all day – a good day to stay inside.

2/18 – This morning it is minus 20 degrees!  Jim thinks I must be reading Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.  Nope  – in Celsius it’s minus 29!!  I am feeling better today after a good sleep and ibuprofen every four hours.  My upper arm is one big bruise, and I don’t have range of motion, but it feels like a soft tissue injury, and I just need to give it some time to heal.  Today the sun is out, and it is the day we had earmarked for walking around the city to see all the monuments, but no way am I walking on any more ice!

We have breakfast at the hotel, and lunch at a cafeteria next door where we can point to food instead of trying to interpret a Russian menu.  It is definitely not high cuisine. After lunch we put on our long underwear, bundle up, and Jim asks for a taxi.  We travel to the other side of town, where there are lots of skyscrapers, and a long mall like in Washington D.C., with monuments on both sides. Astana became a capital city in 1997. The word Astana means capital. Most of these buildings have been erected within the last 10 years!

Our first stop is the Palace of Peace and Accord, a conference center built in 2010 to foster communication and peace among religions.  It is shaped like a pyramid, and is supposed to have a stunning room at the top.  image

The taxi drops us off in front, but it has a big promenade drive, and by the time we walk up to the door my mouth is frozen and tears are sprouting in my eyes.  So cold!  And windy!  image

I reach the door first and pull on the handle – locked!  I can see people inside, and bang on the door.  A security guard opens the lock and begrudgingly lets us in.  He motions us over to two young women behind the counter, who tell us in very precise English that the elevators in the building are not working, for an indefinite period, so no tours are being given.  Perhaps we can return next month?  Jim and I give each other the “you’ve got to be kidding” look. We ask if there are stairs we can walk up, but are told no. We ask if we can at least look around the ground floor, and we’re told we could.

The conference center:
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The first floor lobby:image

There is a big staircase, and we start to walk up, when an older, supervisory looking woman stops us and says we can’t proceed without a guide. We say we were told we could walk around. She leaves, and suddenly the two young women from the front desk are marching up the steps – they are now our guides!

They show us the library on the second floor.image

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On the third floor are Egyptian artifact replicas.

Also, a display of native costumes, representing the 106 ethnicities of Kazakhstan:

That’s as far as we got. Here is a window with doves on the staircase:image

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The top of the pyramid is supposed to be breathtaking with these doves on the glass, but we won’t get to see it today.

We thank the young women and ask them to call us a taxi so we can visit the Bayterek. One of the girls tells us it is not too far – we can walk. I say today is much too cold for walking, but they laugh – this is normal weather here – they don’t think it’s cold until it gets to 50 below!

The Bayterek Tower was built in 1997, and represents the folktale in which the bird of happiness lays a golden egg in the branches of a poplar tree.image

We entered on the ground floor and purchased tickets to ride the elevator up to the observation deck. Here we had a 360 view of the city through tinted glass.image

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Beyond the office buildings known as the Golden Beer Cans, you can see the Pyramid we visited earlier.
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There were lots of visitors here, lining up to place their palm in the president’s golden handprint, and snap pix of the views. image

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We hailed another taxi to take us back to the hotel – enough excitement and cold for one day! These are some other notable buildings seen through the cab windows. The very large Hazrat Sultan mosque:image

The Palace of Creativity (looks like a dog bowl):image

Khan Shatyr, the world’s largest shopping mall built inside an inflatable tent:image

Quite the day!

Aktau to Astana, Kazakhstan

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2/13 – We stayed only one night at the lovely but high-priced Hotel Harat. After purchasing our train tickets and finding that the train only runs on odd numbered days, we looked for another hotel that was more reasonably priced, so we can settle in for two more nights. We are very pleased with the Silk Way Hotel, which actually offers better amenities, and a wonderful breakfast.

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The currency here is the tenge, and one tenge is equivalent to five cents in US dollars. This has the unfortunate result of making everything sound really expensive while you are trying to work the math – our new hotel costs 14,000 tenge a night, which works out to be about $75.00. Still too expensive, but Kazakhstan is an expensive country, thanks to uranium, oil and gas wealth.

Unlike the wide avenues and glittering buildings of Baku, we don’t see the wealth here. Buildings are flaking and haphazardly painted, streets are rutted, sidewalks broken or just dirt paths. Even the 4 star Hotel Aktau, commanding $400.00 a night, looks on the outside like it has seen better days. We find this strange, as Aktau was only built 40 years ago. Maybe the harsh climate?imageimage

This is literally the city “where the streets have no name”. The buildings are numbered and the areas referred to as micro-districts. Google Maps was confused, and so were we…

That said, the people we met were very nice. A young man encountered us searching in vain for an ATM that would accept our debit card, and walked us to the main street where we found one. An older man tried to direct us to the travel agency without a word of English. Jim had written down several phrases in Kazakh, which turned out to be of no use, as folks here speak Russian. This is the first country where many of the people look Asian, probably a politically incorrect thing to say. 50% of the people here are Kazakh, and 30% are Russian.

The president wants to change the name of the country to Kazakh Eli, as he doesn’t want to be associated with the other, poorer “stans”. He also wants to reintroduce Kazakh as a national language. He moved the capital from Almaty, near Uzbekistan, to Astana, in the middle of the country, a few years ago, and built lots of monuments to attract tourists. He sounds like a guy who gets things done (and he was elected with 95% of the vote)!

2/15 – got up early Sunday morning for the taxi ride to the train station, which is about 12 miles north of town. We have second class tickets for the sleeper to Astana, which will take two full days to arrive. Here is our sunrise.

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The train sleeps four to a cabin, but we are the only ones in our cabin so far. We meet Timon, a full-contact fighter from Azerbaijan, who is on his way to Astana with his team mates for a wrestling match. He showed us the scar on his nose, and helped us practice our Russian phrases.image

These were the views we had today. Flat desert:image

Desert with camels:image

Desert with mountains:image

We stopped occasionally, and more folks got on. image

The scenery showed that it was getting colder as we rode northeast.image

We saw women selling food on the siding right outside the train – we weren’t sure what food options would be available, so we brought our own fruit, water and canned tuna. And cookies. Maybe tomorrow we’ll hop off and see what the women are selling. The train attendant came by once selling socks, and again selling whole smoked fish. Pee Eww!

At 7:30pm we were joined by two young men who had tickets to the top bunks. They had no English, and heaven knows we don’t have enough Russian for a conversation. I hope they don’t snore. I can’t help remembering back in Turkey, where they wouldn’t sell me an empty bunk because there was a man in the section. Now here I am with three men!image

2/16 – the view out the window is just as flat, but now it’s white… I wonder how cold it is out there? imageimage

It’s still 85 in here – slept all night without even a sheet, never mind the thick woolen blankets we were given. Turns out Jim was the only snorer, so I slept pretty well. More people coming down the aisle today, selling clothing and trinkets. The word has gotten out that we are Americans, and several have stopped in to acknowledge that fact. Americans? they say. Da, we say. That’s about it!

Today Jim jumped off the train at lunchtime, and came back with a plastic bag of hot stew – potatoes and what is probably horse meat – definitely not beef or lamb. They eat both horse and camel here…image

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At mid afternoon a Mongolian-looking man came into our cabin and introduced himself as Norman. He said it made his heart happy to see Americans here. He is from Uzbekistan, and worked for 10 years at a gold company. It’s the longest conversation we’ve had all week!

By supper time our cabin-mates were packing up. They will be getting off at the next stop, so we’ll have our little cabin to ourselves tonight.

2/17 – the loudspeaker woke us at 5am – the train is due in to Astana at 6:10, and I guess its going to be on time!image