If travel is in your blood, you just want to go places ... a while back Fiona and I set our minds on Kazakhstan for a few reasons, and we arrived here late last night.
When we would tell people that we had planned a trip here, the first response we would usually get was - Why?
The inspiration to travel comes from a lot of different sources - curiosity, adventure, wanderlust, and to experience different cultures, sights, language, food, and music. In this particular case, I had been looking at an old magazine with a story and pictures about Kazakhstan, and it looked like a really fascinating but unknown place.
So I walked in the other room and said to Fiona, "I want to go to Kazakhstan", and she replied "Me too!" She was reading a book about the place called: Apples are from Kazakhstan.
Apparently, apples are said to have originated in Kazakhstan, and tulips too. Not completely sure on this topic, but hey, who are we to argue the point. Why not go there and find out!
So we flew here and landed late last night, arriving at our hotel here at about 1:30 in the morning, and it was raining hard. It's thirteen hours different than Oregon, so as I write this at 10:00 on Friday morning, it's 9:00 Thursday night at home.
Today's Geography Lesson
Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world, with a population of 18 million. It's one of the "Stans" - you know, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and a few others. Considered to be mostly part of Asia, it is a former Soviet Bloc country, but has been independent for about thirty years.
It is a country rich in natural resources, with a lot of oil, making it one of the more prosperous in the region. Almaty is the capital, a fairly large city, surrounded by mountains. There are remnants of the Russian influence here, but the people speak Kazak and look like a combination of Middle Eastern, India, Mongolia, and China.
I took this from Wikipedia: The name "Kazakh" comes from the ancient Turkic word Qaz: to wander - reflecting the Kazakhs' nomadic culture. The name "Cossack" is of the same origin. The Persian suffix "-stan" means "land" or "place of", so Kazakhstan can be literally translated as "land of the wanderers".
At one time, the Silk Road ran along here
We stay here until tonight, when we take an overnight train to Turkestan, an historic city some 560 miles away. The history of this area runs back to ancient times, when the East and West would trade spices and tresures on what was known at the Silk Road. It's how Marco Polo made his way to China. Genghis Khan conquered a lot of this territory back during his empire in the year 1200.
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The southern border of Kazakhstan is formed by the Himalayas, and the city of Almaty is tucked up against the mountains (shown in the picture below). There are some pretty spectacular views here.
This is a huge country and since we only have a few days, we will not be able to cover much except across the southern region. Kinda of like taking a train trip from Los Angeles to Dallas. We will see some parts of the country, but much of Kazakhstan spreads out to the north and becomes a vast expanse of farm land, like the great plains.
So far we've just spent some time in the city, but it seems mellow with tree lined streets and pleasant people. I took this picture below when we went for a walk this morning.
And I will leave you with one amusing note: We grabbed a tourism pamphlet and were leafing through it when we came to the following statement, shown in the picture:
"Almaty is now in the top 10 most attractive cities in the world as far as tourism is concerned ... blah, blah ... sharing this recognition with (places such as) Rio de Janiero, Sarajevo, Liverpool ... Glasgow, and ... Portland!"
Hey man, they even know about Oregon in Kazakhstan!
Tomorrow we will be on the train all day, so probably no blog post. But there seems to be some really interesting sights we will encounter and I look forward to sharing.
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