Finally! Ski opening in Shymbulak close to Almaty. It’s a mere 25 min ride from Almaty to the ski resort or less even if you get into the cablecar at Medeo. Unfortunately there wan’t an awful lot of snow, but the snow which I could sample was promising: nice and soft, in the same league as the Rockies’ champaign powder, I would say. The bottom section of the ressort was still closed, so there were only two slopes open on top of the ressort. Too little snow to go offpiste – I got a couple of good scratches on my skis now which illustrate this. That said, it’s a great place to be: season opening day, Saturday, the 29th Nov 2014, was a gorgeous bluebird day at initially -16 Celsius – phantastic views into the mountains and over smoggy Almaty.
Excellent fun! And I might have introduced telemarking to Shymbulak. Which wasn’t as spectacular as my Georgian skibuddy crashing onto the slope:
I love arriving at new places and experience the exciting difference in smells and sounds! Although Almaty at 4 o’clock in the morning didn’t greet me with all of those new sensations, I knew I wasn’t in England when I was faced with Kazakhstan queueing technique at the airport; the locals were all trying to cram themselves into the “queue” for Residents and if your mind and elbows weren’t sharp as razors, you quickly found a whole family of locals miraculously appearing in front of you. At that godawful time of the morning I should have known better and chosen the “German queue”, a nice and orderly formed line with lots of personal space – and as it turned out, just as fast (or slow).
After a few hours of sleep I was ready for Almaty. First stop Green Market (Zelyony Bazar) where I stepped into an explosion of smells! Meat, vegetables, fruit, Hello Kitty backpacks, metal spare parts who knows what they were for, bras the size of babyhats – you name it they had it!
Green Market: Local flair at meat counter
Remembering the absolutely wonderful pickled cucumbers from my Moscow days in the 80’s, I decided to buy my lunch here and bring it out into the warm sunshine. Three words of Russian and the use of fingers was enough to complete the transaction.
Yummy!
Travelling is fantastic, if you allow yourself the time to enjoy the day as it comes, just around the corner there is another unexpected highlight! Crossing the park back to the hotel in the last warm rays of sunshine, I came across some kids practicing martial arts on the grass. Kids and mothers are the same all over the world – the kids were larking about and the mothers were proudly taking pictures of them with their mobile phones!
Kids having fun in the park next to the Presidential Residence
The next day I decided to warm up my hiking legs before our Three-Day-Trek and took a driver to Aksay Valley. At a remote spot, monks built a small monastery in 1917 to avoid repercussions for their faith. The monastery was closed in 1921 but in 1993 some monks returned to live a secured life in the mountains. It’s a lovely walk up through fruit orchards where the monks have painstakingly laid stones to form stairs up to the monastery. A little further up the hill, passed the church, you get a wonderful view of the mountains, valleys – and the spreading city of Almaty. I ate my lunch in the shade of a tree overlooking Almaty on one side and the towering Tian Shan mountains on the other – remembering how wonderful life can be!
Women should show respect for the orthodox monks and cover themselves when visiting the monastery
Back in Almaty – work again! But this time I didn’t come alone but was accompanied by my wife Anna, who I met travelling and we are still travelling well together. Anna, all keen to explore the secrets of Kazakhstan, arranged a three day hike through the Northern Tian Shan Mountains. We were picked up at the hotel on Friday morning, punctual at 7am, to be driven into a small valley just East of Medeo. At around 1800m the ride ended and the hike started. We went straight up to the Butakovsky Pass at almost 2900m. Not a walk in the park exactly, but a beautiful hike rewarded by a spectacular view over snow capped peaks over 5000m:
View from Butakovsky Pass over some peaks towering above 5000m. Slightly boring, thinks our guide Alexander, who made attempts on Everest and Lhotse and stood on the summit of Makalu. Alexander, it has been a pleasure to hike with a man who climbed an 8000 without oxygen!
The walk down Butakovsky valley through fields of wild raspberries was another highlight until we reached the Talgar river, a rather wild mountain creek. We found a beautiful campsite right at the river – the instant noodles from the gas stove were a highly deserved dinner after a long (after all, we are desk bound city dwellers) hike.
Nothing nicer than a camp fire after a day of hiking. Good company and a bottle of whisky helps, too.
The next day Anna and Alexander set off to another exciting hike, while I had to watch the campsite to shoo off wolves, bears, snow leopards and mind my sore knee. It seems that rolling back and forth in an office chair is rather insufficient preparation for a hike like that. I shall roll faster in the future to be better prepared. Anyway, Anna and Alex had a wonderful hike with great views and some interesting little observations on the way: looking at a glacier our guide couldn’t quite remember whether this particular glacier had merely a number or an actual name – quite a different approach to the alps where every semi-persistent snowfield has a well known name. Here in the Tian Shan a glacier gets interesting when it stretches over 10 km. Some impressions from the hike:
Edelweiss not restricted to the Alps, but also found in the Tian Shan Mountains.Constitution peak seen from the Talgar Valley.A nameless little glacier seen from the Talgar Valley.
On our third and final day we hiked up to the Small Talgar Pass at 2800m and continued to the Big Talgar Pass at 3180m. That is also the top of the Shymbulak ski resort and accessible by cable car, so there were quite a few people from the city enjoying the beautiful weather and nice views from there. It has been a wonderful hike with a great guide – thanks Alexander and the guys from Tour Asia Travel Agency – it was not cheap, but very well organised and worth the bucks. And the promise to work with professional guides was certainly kept with Alex, who had climbed Makalu at 8,463 meters (27,765 feet).
So I am back. I’ve actually been here for a week already, but the week was dedicated to my project here (90%) and watching the World Cup (football a.k.a. soccer. – 10%). You do the math what that means in terms of work hours. That said, I still enjoy Almaty – I have the pleasure of working with a great team here – and here is another reason why: my view out of the hotel room on Saturday afternoon.
On the road again: this time, unfortunately, a very short work trip only! From a travelling perspective probably the worst scenario: hard work from Monday to Friday and then back home in the true red-eye-clipper on Saturday morning at 3.50! So hopefully I’ll still find some new place food and drinks wise – stay tuned!
First hop on the way to Almaty: Munich – Frankfurt.
After our Saturday excursion to the Charyn Canyon with 8 hours on a bus, followed by the glorious Bayern victory in the German Cup Final we felt rather lazy on Sunday morning. Off for brunch to the Coffee Room, which we’ve experienced during our last stay here already and which seemed worth another visit. Which was indeed the case: it’s a nice relaxed atmosphere there, a very nice terrace to sit outside, good service and coffees and brunch type food. Following that we walked down to the cable car which goes up Kok Tobe, the hill that overlooks Almaty. Excellent choice, as it turned out!
We took the cable car up (single ride: 800T, return 2000T – don’t ask me why that is), which was an experience on its own: being used to fairly modern cable cars that go up the Alps stepping into a rather small cabin, which swung up and down with every person entering, was almost a small adventure. The ride up took a few minutes and provided some great views over Almaty.
The cable car up Kok Tobe – a hangout place above Almaty for families and everybody, really.
Kok Tobe itself turned out to be a very relaxed hangout catering for everybody. A few very nice attractions for kids, a loungy restaurant with some life music and tasty food, a few sad cages containing mostly birds (that was a bit sad, actually) and a good crowd wanting to have a good time make for a nice, pleasant atmosphere. Since the weather was really nice it was a great place to be.
Jurassic Park meets Kok Tobe.
There’s also a summer tobogan ride (some refer to it as roller coaster) on top of the hill: it’s good fun to do the downhill ride in the little carts – try it! Further, there is a Beatles monument on the hill, which seems to be a very attractive place to have your photo taken. All in all, a nice, relaxed Sunday.
If you are into football (even if I am at risk to repeat myself: the real football, not the game that has been designed to bridge the gaps between ads on television) you will understand that the day your team is playing in your country’s cup final is not the day you want to be away 6000 km. Alas, here I am in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and my home team, Bayern Munich, is playing our arch rival, Borussia Dortmund. As it turns out, a lot of locals are into football and support clubs like Barcelona, Arsenal and … Bayern! So, there I was, in the Assorti Arena Bar in Almaty, watching the German club final with a whole crowd dressed in Bayern kit!
Avid Bayern fans in Almaty. The picture doesn’t even remotely picture the enthusiasm, and for that matter, the number of fans who support Bayern Munich.
The game ended 2:0 for Bayern in extra time – I have seen better football games, but none with more enthusiastic supporters in front of the TV. Almaty, keep supporting Bayern!
Finally! Not just time for an excursion outside Almaty, but also the weather for it. You might remember, my first weekend in Almaty, as exciting as it might have been, suffered a little bit under a weather condition that one might call “raining cats and dogs”. Which basically meant, that our chance to explore anything outside Almaty was restricted to a very brief trip up the mountain to Shymbulak. But, here we go:
Approximately 210 km East from Almaty is the Charyn Canyon located in the Charyn National Park. There is a variety of tour operators offering day trips from Almaty – so it is easily accessible and not overly adventurous.
After the best part of four hours we arrived from Almaty at Charyn. We hadn’t booked a tour, but some local friends called on of the tour operators for us to check whether seats were available. We showed up at the bus stop at the Central Stadium in Almaty (East side), found the bus and, again with the help of a local friend on his mobile phone, bought the ticket here and there for 4000 KZT. It would be helpful to have a vocabulary of 300 words in Russian. Unlike on other Asian countries (if you ever bought a bus ticket for an express ride in India you know what I’m talking about) it was a direct ride from Almaty – one stop to fuel up and another to visit the restroom:
Refreshment stand along the road to Charyn Canyon.
So, all in all an easy trip. The bus wasn’t new, but fairly comfortable, the air-conditioning worked, the roads, once outside Almaty, were a bit pot-holed but not too bad and the general behaviour on the road was acceptable. Our journey went along with a range of mountains in the South on tarmac roads, just the last maybe 10 km were on gravel roads. The canyon didn’t show until we arrived – there it was, like a gigantic hole in the ground. We had a nice and experienced guide who led us down a little bit off the beaten track. The canyon itself is quite impressive. I haven’t been to Grand Canyon and would expect that to be even more impressive (bigger, deeper, faster, stronger – in other words: American), but I have hiked in the Colca Canyon in Peru (which I was led to believe is the second biggest canyon in the world) – Charyn canyon rocks! You walk among impressive rock formations, you see some huge rocks seemingly ready to be tipped down by the next gust of wind – it is an exciting display of natures forces. Some say that the big creator has done a particular good job in creating this part of the world – seeing that Moshe, Ali and Peter would have a hard to even agree on who the big creator I’d say thanks to the River Charyn and nobody else!
Impressibe rock formations in the so called Valley of Castles, a relatively narrow part of the canyon. The whole canyon is approximately 150 km long (almost 100 miles for the non-metric folk), but the Valley of Castles is the most impressive part. So I have been told. And impressive it is.All the way down Charyn Canyon you’ll see the river which carved the structure out of its surroundings. A very pleasant and relaxed place – you’ll find plenty of people there who enjoy the tranquillity of this place. Except there’s not much tranquillity left with all the enjoyment. Still, it is pleasant and relaxed.
This has been a very enjoyable day, crowned by the spotting of a bird of prey (something in me wants to believe that it has been a golden eagle, but something else says: you have no clue of birds, so stop pretending.) circling over the canyon. The way back was uneventful, but 8 hours in a bus in one day is a lot of time.
An eagle circling over Charyn Canyon. Well, I think it is an eagle. Looked impressive enough to me. Anybody who can identify the bird – please comment!
Who's been here? 