Kazakhstan - A hitchhikers guide

17/10

With the prospect of a maximum of 2 weeks on this bloody boat, and a recent history of sinking with no survivors left, we departed the Baku port with some trepidation. So it was necessary to take our minds off the possible dangers and risks with activities and fun times. First on the agenda for Harros was finishing his book, The Mapmakers Wife, of which he only had 60 pages. But this occasion was momentous as this broke the T Harris record for books read in a 3 month period- a total of 2 books. Then our thoughts turned to learning Russian especially as we were entering the Russian Realm of Central Asia where English speakers may be hard to come by. With the recently acquired lonely planet phrasebook not only were we able to learn some useful phrases relating to food, drink and transport, we were then able to learn how to tell someone we were pregnant, that our companion was blind and that we enjoyed euthanasia. While odd, you never know when we may need these phrases- hopefully never! Then between cards we headed to the table tennis room to smash out a tense 5 setter that Harris won in 4; another novelty game that Harris won. But a second game was out the window as the 5 Azeri drug smugglers continued to demand our presence at various boat functions including tea drinking, random cars games and learning English conferences. The latter being one of the greatest highlights of the boat trip so far, where Niko, the primary Azeri drug smuggler, decided he would make use of the English speakers on the boat. With Harris’ note book in hand Niko first drew a police man and asked the name of this- obliging Harro wrote ‘police’. Then with a small arrow drawn he was onto his next picture, a donkey with which Harro labelled ‘donkey’. Then it started to become X rated and Niko was onto body parts, particularly a picture of a penis. With Niko asking Tristan to label it, he obliged and wrote ‘dick’. Then it was another arrow and another body part, this time from the female body. But after drawing the quite detailed female genitalia, and after he had labelled previous pictures, Harro had no choice but to oblige to label the most recent picture. And it was at this moment that Harro took the opportunity to teach the people of Azerbaijan some Australian slang. Labelling the picture, Harro wrote ‘muffler’. We had now completed the picture known as ‘Donkey Dick Muffler Police; so it was only right to get Niko to say this to the camera as we recorded it- as Matt Bilney would say: gold jerry, gold! (ps that mention was only so he would read this blog after his whingeing about its length!).

By the time we had finished with our English lesson it was time to disembark and touch down in Kazakhstan. As we jumped off we were met by a minivan which delivered us to passport control where we assisted the Azeri smugglers in filing out their customs form before we were admitted to Kazakhstan and on the road from the port to Aqtau City. At 11 pm in one of the toughest cities of Kazakhstan without a map from the port to the city we started to walk towards the bright lights. But with the prospect of a 5km walk ahead of us with 15 kgs on our backs after a 27 hour ferry we were unsure how feasible walking would be. It wasn’t long before we hit the main road though that a car playing serious Kazakh doof doof stopped, the door opened and a Kazakh man began yelling at us. But as he motioned to put our stuff in the boot and from what we could gather, ask us where we wanted to go, we said Aktau City Centre and we were off. Pointing to the hotel on the map we soon arrived at the Guns N Roses Bar, at the bottom of the Aktau Hotel in the centre of town. Thanking our lift we approached some Kazakh dude out the front of the GnR bar to ask them whether, first, they spoke English, and then where a cheap hotel was located close by. After they gave us directions of the cheap hotel they quickly told us that Aktau was a dangerous place at this time of the night so it was a better choice to settle in the Hotel Aktau instead. And that we did! Paying Kazakh hotel prices we headed up to our room and made use of the shower and toilet facilities before heading down to the bar for a beer. But what we were really after was some food. After making our choices at the bar for a couple of burgers we were quickly told that the kitchen was closed. That meant plan B; asking the hotel receptionist whether pizza delivery existed in this city. Like everywhere it definitely existed and soon we had a margherita and then we were in bed making use of a real bed with sheets and a doona

18/10

As we awoke we quickly got dressed in order to head downstairs to make the most of our included breakfast. Then it was onto packing our bags and readying ourselves for what was shaping up as a long day of travel; through Kazakhstan to the Uzbek border. The first stop on the agenda was visiting the travel agency to check if there was a train to Kungrad, Uzbekistan. After being told that there was in fact no train which left us brainstorming other ways to get there. Under the guise of Tymek, the crazy pole, we headed to the truck stop in the hope that we could hitch to the border where we could then jump on some more transport and head to Kungrad. But as we got to the truck stop we quickly discovered that there was no possibility of hitching and that train was the only option. But with no train today, we were unsure what would be our next step. So we headed back to the hotel, and in the hope that the travel company had made a new train, we headed there. And in the true soviet way, a new train had appeared, leaving in an hour from the train station. So with tickets in hand we headed to the train station and jumped on board with 15 minutes to spare. Harris and Raphael were stuck in one carriage, Tymek in another and myself in another carriage, affectionately known as the Kids carriage. After 7 hours on a train, packed full of Uzbek migrant workers returning from Russia for the winter we arrived in Beyneu. In the dark, in a small town in Kazakhstan we were unsure of where we might stay the night but it wasn’t long before a middle aged lady with the customary gold teeth asked us whether we were after and room. And in the need of a room we obliged and 4 of us headed to the lady’s house where we headed up the stairs to her 2 room apartment. Setting up the lounger room with our bedding we indulged in some piroshki and pickles before jumping into bed.

19/10

We woke up to the sound of a child and realised we were in a Kazakh ladies house with her three year old child being entertained by Raphael, random… Beyneu was the cross roads for Tymek who was headed deep into Kazakhstan and we were headed to the Uzbek border. So we said our goodbyes hoping to meet him in China and found a taxi to the border. This sounded easy except that our car as we soon found out was a bomb. We drove 30kms before we heard a funny noise and the driver pulled over and we got out and saw that both front wheels were flat. Thinking this was a large problem given that we only had one spare tyre our driver went to the boot and pulled out a 100 year old bike pump and told us to start pumping. Although we didn’t think this would really fix the root of the problem we went ahead and pumped the tyres up successfully and hopped back into the car and drove a further 3kms before the front left fell flat again. As Raphael pumped this up again I looked under the car and saw that the fuel line had snapped and fuel was pissing out everywhere! Panic stations! I flagged our driver and he jammed the line back together which started spraying petrol in his face. Blinded he was yelling at us in Russian (probably cos he eyes really hurt) holding the line together. After washing his face with some water he still wanted something. So we flagged down a passing car and they quickly took the battery leads off and our driver calmed down. The fuel line was fixed and the tyre was pumped so we hopped back in and got another 2kms before the front left went flat again. Getting out it was time to put the spare on, but low and behold we didn’t have the correct size spanner to get the nuts off. Nice. This meant we went through the sequence of; pump the tyre up, jump back in the car drive 2km, get back out to pump and repeat for 10km till we got to the border where someone had a correct sized spanner for our man.

At the border we were confronted with a scene that resembled a refugee camp with about 2000 people and a line of 40 trucks trying to get into Uzbekistan. We thought this could be a long wait but as we approached the crowd a large military officer with an automatic rifle came up to us and said “where are you from?” in a stern voice, we said “Australia & France” and he smiled and said “Kangaroo!” and took us to the front of the line past all the people and we went straight through into Uzbekistan with no problems and a few signatures on our touchball by some Kazakh military police.

Stoked to be in Uzbekistan we decided to change some money, which is for any tourist a novelty. In Uzbekistan you should not withdraw money from ATMs because their currency (The Som) has a two tier exchange rate; the official rate is 1 USD : 2000 Som while the “Black Market” rate is 1 USD : 2600 Som. So if you withdraw money (if you can find an ATM) you lose 30% of your money value. Therefore every tourist brings all their spending money in USD into the country and exchanges it on the Black Market. Additionally the largest note is 1000 Som or about 40 cents turning one $100 note into two hundred and sixty 1000 Som notes. This makes any tourist feel like a drug dealer. Exchanging some money we then negotiated with a cab driver to take us to Moynaq. Moynaq is an old fishing village on the Aral Sea which is now pretty much dried up due to the soviets diverting all the water to the cotton fields. Hence now you have a fishing village in the desert. Checking into our “hotel” which had no heating (it was 0 degrees), running water and plus it looked like something out of the movie Hostel. We convinced the lady there to make us some food and after a delicious meal of potato with sweat chili sauce and chai we all rugged up and went to sleep.