I quite enjoy being laughed and stared at. I don't know why but I do, maybe I just like to see people smiling, but lately this has become a great advantage with respect to my choice of footwear. Having sent my boots (and indeed my sleeping bag) back home many months ago, and having also become quite stingey, I have journeyed across Zinjiang with its ice and -15 degrees, up and over the beautifully jagged Tian Shan mountains, and arrived safely in Kazakhstan's snow-bound cultural capital Almaty in my sandals. This has drawn crowds of incredulous Uyghurs, Chinese, Kazakhs and Russians all of whom now have me down as very simple-headed, and I'm afraid I have done little to dispel the image of English eccentricity. It has been, if you excuse the pun, a great ice-breaker, I still have both feet , and have proudly maintained my reputation for being as daft as a brush.
The journey here was quite interesting - 24 hours on a sleeper bus over the mountains, jam-packed with Kazakh traders and their wares who were carrying so much Chinese booty over that many of the bunks were full of goods. Consequentially our beds, the last 2 available before a 3 day hiatus for Women's Day festivities, and which were part of a row of 4 unseparated mattresses at the back of the bus became a communal space for 5 of us, which was cosy to say the least. All good fun, much laughter, and somehow eventually we arrived; as a bonus one of the traders very kindly got her son to drive us to our destination - a lovely couple (Yulia and Andrey) from HC that Ellen had organised.
Because of the festival we have more time in Almaty than we expected: both the OVIR office for registering the Kazakh visa and the Uzbek embassy for applying for our next ones observe the festival, as do all official organisations across Central Asia. This gave us time to explore the town at our leisure, and I'm glad for it - it is a delight: Almaty is a corruption of Alma Ata, meaning Father of Apples, as all apples in the world originally came from a forest on the Kakazh/Uzbek border. Although the town as it stands now is relatively modern, having been built largely in 19th century, it must be incredibly green in summer as the planners chose to plant a forest here at the same time: there are plenty of gorgeous parks dense with trees; every road is thickly lined with oaks; every district is as if set in woodland and as a result the entire place feels very natural.
The people here are roughly a 50/50 mix of Kazakhs and Russians, all very friendly although because of our hosts we have spent time almost exclusively with Russians which has been wonderful: I often reflect on how good the Russian part of the journey was and its been nice to revisit it in some small way. Russian hospitality is legendary and in the few days we have been here we've been really well looked after by out hosts, feasted on local specialities at Yulia's cousin Lena's apartment along with 2 other Russians, a Romanian and a Slovak (much cognac flowed), been taken up the mountains that come right down to the city (trickiest challenge yet for the sandals), driven around and been assisted enormously in our dealings with the typically Russian and mostly pointless bureaucracy. Its so good to be able to access Hospitality Club again, with real life experiences, home cooking, and a little domestic stability, especially as Almaty is a surprisingly expensive city that would otherwise have destroyed our budget.
Today we hope to apply for our Uzbek visas, and if they are processed in good time we shall be in Uzbekistan by the weekend where we face the most challenging, but final, bureaucratic hurdles: applying for first the Iranian and then the Turkmen visas. This process is unpredictable at best and may well lay waste to our careful plans to be back in Bruniquel for 3rd May. But who knows: its true that our luck at every turn has been incredible so far, and each time we meet fellow travellers we realise what an easy time we are having.
Addendum: it seems our luck is holding out. We reached the embassy this afternoon and despite their reputation for being autocratic, bureaucratic, officious, corrupt and generally painful we had a thoroughly pleasant time. Everyone was incredibly kind and helpful to us, efficient, and more to the point processed our visa while we waited for no extra charge. This is absolutely unheard of from what I gather, as it usually takes a week as standard which can be optionally shortened to 2 days by paying vast sums of money. As it is we now have our documents and are back on schedule to reach Uzbekistan on 15th March - hurrah!