More Cups of Tea, Plates of Meat, and Lack of Sleep Than I Can Count: My Family Arrives!

Family Reunion: Almaty

My family arrived at 5 AM.  We went back to the apartment to take a short nap.  They liked to say that I let them sleep an hour after we got to the apartment.  That is not true; I gave them a solid hour and a half.

After that long sleep, we walked around the city, starting Panfilov Park and the Green Bazaar.  Four days before, I had been on the same path with the Tufts students, this was like round two.  Particularly with my family, it felt as if I were sharing a story with them.  They had read and heard so much about this place and now were there and it was new for them, but part of my relatively regular spectrum of activities.  From the Green Bazaar, we went to the Peace Corps office and met Victor, the PC doctor.  Then, back to the center and lunch with Sherali at a tasty little place across from the Bazaar.  We walked the same street back and forth from our apartment to the bazaar so many times that day that they knew it as well as Maple and Orchard.  Then, an afternoon siesta.  I really wanted to visit Bayan in Talgar, but we were unable to get in touch.  After the afternoon siesta, we went to Glen Pub for dinner.  A wonderful Scottish restaurant in the middle of Kazakhstan.  It makes perfect sense.  The lamb chops were great, though I particularly liked the horse goulash.

The next day, we started with seeing the Jewish community offices and meeting with members of the Jewish community.  After our brief Jewish tour and a review of my last week, with much cooler temperatures, we hiked Medeu and drove up to Chimbulak.  We decided to eat lunch before heading up to the glacier but when we finished lunch it was raining and the temperature had dropped to 11C.  Chimbulak is a ski resort up in the mountains, but 11C is still really cold, especially when three of us were wearing shorts and t-shirts.  We manage to grab a taxi on its way down, who took us all the way to our apartment across town, avoiding more rain.

That night we met my friend Diana for dinner and an evening tour of the city.  She took us to a wonderful Uzbek restaurant.  It was a whole dance, song, and acrobatic show.  We ate in traditional Uzbek robes, watching a high wire act, and lots of singing and dancing.  I liked the girl dancing with a goat carcass, followed up by a guy jump-roping on a high-wire without any safety.  The plouf and shashlich complimented the show well.  The nighttime tour of Almaty was beautiful after dinner, although I think the 10-hour time change definitely started to catch-up with them.

The next day was our first “out-of-city” experience: Charyn Canyon.  Kazakhstanis bill it as their “Grand Canyon”.  While not as large as our chasm of the States, the Kazakhstani version is absolutely stunning.  The silence adds to the beauty.  Only around 250 km outside of Almaty but barely any other tourists walking through the canyon.  My friend Alina arranged the minibus and we went to the canyon with some of her volunteers from her volunteer center and some friends from Almaty.  One of them, Rustan, had been to the canyon many times.  He was sitting in the back of the bus and as we got closer to the canyon, we passed a sign noting “Dangerous For Life”.  This seemed like a good sign, particularly as we could not see over the next hill of the road.  We all thought, including Rustan, that the driver would slow down.  He did not.  After a stressful five more minutes of driving, we stopped a couple meters from the edge of a big drop.  Beautiful.

After a solid hike through the canyon and no one falling off the unguarded edge, we had a nice classic Kazakhstani picnic lunch: chicken, potatoes, nuts, eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, water, and more.  There are a few main differences between how KZ national parks are managed and the American version.  In America, there are guardrails along the edge of cliffs.  There are usually lots of signs detailing the danger of getting to close to the edge.  There would be a ranger station at the entrance with a high entrance fee and rangers who can answer questions.  And lots of tourists.

In Kazakhstan, guardrails are as elusive as a Starbucks in the steppe.  There are signs, but not nearly as many in the States, and with much less instructive information.  The entrance to the park was “guarded” by a building that looked to have less sturdy walls than a Dodge Neon and with two guys in military fatigues who did not seem to be brimming with knowledge about the park.  The entrance cost was around $2.00 per person.  There were less tourists at Charyn while we were there than students on a slow day of a senior seminar.  I loved it.  That evening we had dinner at “Kosher”, the first Kosher restaurant in Central Asia – very tasty and apparently growing in popularity among the general community.

Arbus and Kumis: Shymkent

The next day we took an early flight to Shymkent.  Fortunately, our Southern apartment had air conditioning and, unlike our Almaty apartment, there was a vent in the bathroom so it didn’t turn into a sauna every time you closed the door.  After getting settled, we found our way to Turkestan, one of the holiest Muslim sites.  Kazakhstani and Central Asian Muslims consider three pilgrimages to Turkestan to equal one Hajj to Mecca.  In Turkestan is buried a holy Suffi sage in a huge and grand mausoleum built by Timur.

There are multiple ways to get to Turkestan from Shymkent: taxi, bus, marshutka (minibus), or train.  We opted to take a marshutka there, especially only being a two-hour ride.  I thought it would be a good experience for us to experience this common mode of transportation.  We managed to find one that was just getting full.  My parents and sister got the three seats in the back and I struggled to retain my aisle seat right in front of them.  A father and his 3 or 4 year old daughter on his lap sat next to me in the window seat.  They started off quiet and uninterested in me.  Then, about 30 minutes into the ride, we shared our gum with them.  After the father handed a half piece to his daughter, it started.  The tickling did not stop for another hour and a half.

She immediately exploded.  All I tried to do was protect myself without hurting her.  I would have tickled her back, but she had the unfair advantage of sitting on her father’s lap.  If I tickled her, we were all so close that I would basically be tickling her father as well – and I did not want two against one.  The whole time, he just sat there, smiling shyly to himself.  I am sure he was more than happy that his daughter found another preoccupation after finishing her ice cream rather than him having to entertain her.  Finally, she stopped.  I turned around to talk to my family and suddenly hands are again jutting to my sides and all over my face.  It apparently is particularly fun to stick one’s hands in someone else’s face and try to get them in their mouth, after failing to win sunglasses and a hat.  We took a taxi for the way back.

The next day we traveled to Aksu-Jabagly to spend two nights in a small village.  Danny, another PCV, arranged the home stay with his old host family, as well as our excursion into the Natural Reserve, a particularly difficult feat.  Kazakhstan has an extensive system of natural reserves that are generally closed to the public.  These reserves are in place for conservation purposes with only limited opportunity to hike into them.  Yet, the government is also trying to encourage more natural tourism.  It’s an interesting dynamic and one we saw first hand.  To get into the reserve (zapovednik in Russian), we needed direct permission from the Director of the zapovednik.  Danny had arranged it all ahead of time, but even with that, there were issues.  The Director told us we would have to take a local guide with us, even though our “guide” only went to the reserve maybe once a year.  Then the Director informed Danny that he would have to pay.  Then the Assistant Director told Danny he could not come with us.  Then, the Director changed his mind and told us Danny could go for free and could come.  In our small off-road jeep, we fit 7: the driver, my dad in the front, 4 in the back, and me in the narrow jeep trunk with the arbus and dina (watermelons and melons).  The hour bumpy, hilly drive wasn’t too bad, especially because we stopped at a small village on the way up the mountain.

The village has a population of likely only around 200 people.  In the winter, the only way to get out is by horse, if they can even make it through the snow.  We delivered the fruit and were then invited in for kumis and nan.  Fresh horse milk, fresh bread, and a fresh milk cream for the bread.  We were invited in to sit around a low table and the hostess brought in the bucket of kumis.  Asking for a small amount of kumis didn’t accomplish anything, our hostess served each of us a full cup of the horse milk.  While we drank, she scooped and churned the milk.  Kumis lasts for about a day; it tasted fresh.  Our driver explained it as the “Kazakh beer” and the dried yogurt and salt balls curt as the “Kazakh beer peanuts”, due to the alcohol in the kumis from fermentation.  It was very comfortable to hear our driver explain about the alcohol content in the kumis as he’s drinking his second cup of “Kazakh beer” and we still have to drive the rest of the way up the twisty road on the mountain.

The zapovednik is beautiful and the challenges to get there were definitely worth it.  A much different canyon from Charyn, nobody besides us, and absolutely stunning.  Our host family in Aksu-Jabagly was wonderful.  The food was very tasty and they were very kind.  The last night in the village, we all had dinner together: beshparmak with kanina.  After a few days in Kazakhstan, we all agreed horsemeat is the tastiest.  As is traditional for beshparmak, my sister and I ate the oily noodles, onions, and meat with our hands.  My parents decided to retain their cutlery.

We returned to Shymkent the next morning and took the cross-town bus to go to a big bazaar on the outskirts of the city to go souvenir shopping with one of my local friends as a guide.  On the way back, my mom was confronted with a conversation about the Iraq War from the guy sitting next to her, in Russian.  She seemed to think it strange that he continued to talk to her in Russian after she clearly did not understand.  As I’ve learned, total language barriers are no barrier to international relations and foreign policy discussions.