Author: kcbenson

We had a pleasant trip back on Aeroflot. Long ride, but the food was good and the movies endless. We had plenty of time to explore the Moscow airport before we flew out. We flew back in over Nova Scotia and down the Hudson Valley and then completely overshot JFK and kept going out over Jamaica Bay and on over the Atlantic, looping back towards Monmouth Beach, NJ. From the plane we could see Normandy Road and Naval Weapons Station Earle with its superlong forked pier sticking out into Sandy Hook Bay.

For our last full day in Kazakhstan we rented ATVs with the intention of riding up to the glacier, but at the last minute our plans were foiled by an avalanche blocking a trail. Ania called Kanat, the taxi driver who found us the apartment, and he took us to the Shymbulak gondola station. There are three separate gondolas connected end-to-end. We were supposed to take the first gondola and meet the ATV guide, but we accidentally bought tickets for all three gondolas. We realized our mistake halfway up the second gondola and had to ride it back down to the top of the first gondola.

It was not ideal weather, there was a lot of fog, and then rain, but we had a good time riding ATVs anyway. We rode up to the top of Shymbulak, heard (but couldn’t see) an avalanche in the fog, and then rode back down and the fog lifted for a few minutes. We got to see the mountains we were riding in, and then the fog closed back in again, and we rode back down.

Today we walked to the green bazaar (farmer’s market) and visited Kok Tobe, kind of an amusement park on the top of a small mountain. You can drive to Kok Tobe, or you can take a cable car.

Today we went to Ile-Alatau National Park. We stopped at Big Almaty Lake, drove higher, and hiked to the top of Big Almaty Peak, 12,070 feet from sea level. Then we drove back down to the lake and hiked a little there before the fog rolled in.

Ania arranged the ascent through a website (http://almatyhiking.kz/), which turned out to be Azamat, a Kazakh mountain guide whose day job is in finance. He said he works two or three days a week trading and spends the rest of his time in the mountains. He drove us from the apartment up to the mountains and back again, with a stop on the way home for kumus and shubat (fermented mare’s milk and fermented camel’s milk) in a yurt, followed by another stop for dinner at an Uzbek/Kazakh restaurant.

We stopped a few times on the way up to acclimatize, stopped at Big Almaty Lake (where we found someone selling a chance to dress up with a live eagle), and then kept going up past Tien-Shan Astronomical Observatory, past a border checkpoint (very close to Kyrgystan), finally stopping before a gate in front of Kosmostantsiya, a research station where they study cosmic rays. From there we hiked through the station and up another 1150 feet to the summit.

The summit hike was gradual at first, and then straight up. There was still a little snow, so I was glad to use the trekking poles Aza loaned us. As we got closer to the top it was more of rock climbing than hiking. No trees, and very steep, so it was very important not to slip.

After we hiked back down to the car, we stopped again at Big Almaty Lake and walked there for about 30 minutes. Ania got some pictures of the first flowers, and then the fog rolled in, and we drove back down to the city.

Pictures begin with some shots from apartment windows, first the night before, and then in the morning. The building is a kind of blunted triangle shape with each apartment’s bedrooms at the triangle tips, so we have different views from three rooms: west, south, and east. In 2004 we got to see the mountains only from the hotel terrace, so close and yet so far.

Today we flew from Karaganda to Almaty. Last night in Karaganda it snowed, but this afternoon in Almaty it’s 70 degrees and everything is green.

The taxi driver advised us against the house we had arranged to rent (which was supposed to be an apartment close to the city center, but which turned out to be an old house in a bad neighborhood), so he made a phone call and got us a 3-bedroom apartment on the 19th floor of an apartment building right in the middle of everything. This apartment is bigger than our house and has a view to three sides. It feels way out of our league but still cheaper than the a single hotel room in Great Barrington. Kids are loving the big windows with incredible views of the city from the 19th floor. Living big in Central Asia.

The courthouse picture has no people in it because Ania took the picture from the car as we were driving away. Seryek, our taxi driver, took a picture of the four of us in front of Regional Court #2, where we formalized Kostek and Marlena’s adoption in 2004. But then a guard ran out of the courthouse doors and seized Ania’s phone and proceeded to not only delete the picture Seryek took, but even went to the Recently Deleted folder and emptied it. Very thorough. “No pictures allowed” was his answer to our pleading, even after we showed him the picture we took in 2004.

Only 10 minutes after putting our bags in the apartment in Almaty, we ran into Raoul, a teacher and tourist from Spain. We first met Raoul at the top of Baiterek Tower in Astana, when he asked us to use his camera and take a picture of him. He told us where we could buy train tickets to Karaganda. He also told us that he tends to see the same people in different places. A few days later we found him in City Mall in Karaganda. Today we encountered him on the promenade in Almaty. So this time we got a picture of him.

Today we visited the Karlag Dolinka museum, a depiction of the Soviet gulag. We spent some time walking around Karaganda before and after our trip to Dolinka. We walked in some of the same places we took our babies in 2004.

Dolinka is about an hour away from Karaganda, so we got a taxi to take us there. The driver, Seriek, toured the museum with us and drove us back to the city. He told us what we were seeing as we drove through the steppe. In the end, he took us to a shish-kebab restaurant that we never would have found by ourselves and helped us order. He’s going to take us to the airport on Thursday.

Today was a big day; we visited the orphanage.

We started with a walk downtown to shopping so we could buy some baby clothes to donate. After that, we got a taxi to take us to Shaphagat, the orphanage we know as Malutka. We met with the Director, Rosa, and she showed us around. We showed her some pictures from the old site, and she found Dr. Lubov, who is still working there. One of Marlena’s caregivers, Musabek, was also still working there. She remembered Marlena and us, and we spent some time looking at pictures. We exchanged hugs, words of praise. They were very interested in knowing how Kostek and Marlena are doing in school.

Visiting the orphanage was emotionally draining. We left by taxi again, and found lunch. Everywhere we go, Ania gets a conversation going. She talked with the woman running the restaurant, who told us we were shopping at the expensive mall, and told us to take the yellow bus to the Tair Mall. We stuffed ourselves on the bus and Ania talked to the bus conductor. She told us in English “I have no idea where we’re going”, and the bus driver, from behind a curtain, began speaking in English. “Tair Mall next stop”, he said. He was using Google Translate while driving the bus. Before we got to the mall, names had been exchanged, and we learned he was practicing English for an upcoming visit to the U.S. After we got off the bus, we could actually see him through the windshield. He waved goodbye and tooted the horn. People here don’t smile a lot until you talk to them. Everyone we’ve interacted with has been friendly and helpful. On the street we met a woman who asked us for directions to the medical building. Ania answered, “I’m sorry, we don’t speak Russian.” The old woman looked directly at Kostek and said “Not even you?”

The weather changed last night, much colder, rain blowing sideways. We tried to get into two museums, both of which turned out to be closed. We visited Hazrat Sultan Mosque, the largest mosque in Central Asia, and then retreated to the hotel and called Muktar, the driver we found at the airport. He took us to the Expo Center, which was also closed, and then to the Aquarium, which wasn’t. According to Muktar, “Everyone goes to sleep on Monday. Nothing’s open, and it’s too early in the season.” We had our bags packed, and after the Aquarium he took us to the train station and helped us get on the train to Karaganda. If anyone ever needs a ride or a guide in Astana, let us give you Muktar’s number.

We had a sleeper cabin and took pictures from the window. The train was a new electric train, Talgo. It’s two hours on the train from Astana to Karaganda, riding through vast areas of emptiness, occasional Stalin-era collective farms, a few small villages. As we left Astana we were alongside a freight train for a few minutes, an old electric double locomotive pulling. A few minutes later we got up to 135 km/h.

We arrived in Karaganda about 7, quick taxi ride to the hotel, and then had dinner in the hotel restaurant, and a quick walk after dinner to Lenin Square. It’s now after 11, and I should be tired, but I’m still on the wrong time.

More pancakes, coffee, walking around the city. Another beautiful day.

We’re amazed at the beauty of the architecture, the vivid colors that we don’t see anywhere else, gold and turquoise glass everywhere. Beautiful, huge parks along the river, not many people out yet. Construction seems to be going on everywhere.

Things are cheap here. Breakfast cost 8000 tenge, about $21. The ride from the airport cost 5000 tenge, about $13. The extra zeroes make things look crazy expensive, but there are no decimal amounts. Once you start picturing the last two zeroes as cents, prices begin to look more understandable.

Today we rented bikes.

I know, that wasn’t much description. I had great plans to write all about our day, but then we got tired and slept from 9 pm until almost 11 the next morning.

So here’s what we did: This weekend in Astana has been unusually warm. Everywhere we can see that it was just winter here yesterday. The ground is dry, but the cars all have dried mud on them. The sidewalks are still dirty from the trucks that must have been plowing snow only a little while ago. They have a bike-sharing arrangement here, but it doesn’t actually start up until next week, so there are all these bike racks, ready to rent bikes, but no bikes.

Ania asked, and we took a taxi to a little bike shop, where the owner rented us his own bike plus three more and a couple of chains with locks on them. It’s super flat here, so biking is pretty effortless. The roads are wide, and the drivers are pretty careful, and it seems to be okay to bike on sidewalks and in parks, so we just rode everywhere. We locked up the bikes so we could go to the top of Baiterek Tower. No helmets. The big danger here is watching out for holes, unusually high curbs, cut-off bolts sticking up out of the pavement, exposed wiring, big drops with no railing. Basically, watch where you walk, watch where you ride. Not a lot of lawyers here making money off slip-and-falls.

A tourist from Spain in Baiterek Tower told us we could buy train tickets from a travel agency in the mall, so Ania got us tickets on a Monday afternoon fast electric train to Karaganda. Then we rode to another mall, Ania and Marlena shopped for awhile, and Kostek and I rode around. After the mall, our five hours was about up, so we rode back to the bike shop, returned the bikes, got something to eat at Coffee Boom (seems to be a chain), and walked back to the apartment.

Ania is having fun exercising her Russian, which gets mixed reactions. A lot of the people we’re interacting with in this very mixed and tolerant city speak some English, and sometimes Ania’s Russian is better than their English, sometimes the other way around. Often it’s a mix, and transactions that start out all business always end in smiles and some emotional connection. Ania keeps getting the question “How do you speak Russian?”

In April 2004 we adopted two lively babies from far, faraway Kazakhstan. It was a 7-week adventure that still defines our lives. While we were there we documented our journey with a website (https://www.pegtype.com/adoption). Fifteen years later we are beginning our journey back to Kaz. We made it to the JFK airport and so far all is well. Our layover is Moscow.

We’ll be travelling for 11 days, about a day of travel on each end, and then about 3 days in Astana, 3 days in Karaganda, and 3 days in Almaty. We wanted to visit Astana because it’s a brand-new city, the new capital of Kazakhstan. Karaganda is the city we know the best, because that’s where Kostek and Marlena are adopted from. Almaty is the old capital of Kazakhstan, and we spent a few days on each end of our original adoption trip there. On the way in it was just a place to sleep for the night until we flew to Karaganda the next day. On the way out, it was where the embassy was, and we were there for two days. We were very busy with babies and doctors and passports. This time we should be able to actually see Almaty.