Almatysing

The Uzbekistan golden smiles have continued here in Kazakhstan - clearly no shortage of the precious metal here though Ladas have morphed into Mercedes here in Almaty, and quite often the AMG version.

So, Almaty...

We have now been here nearly a week, having allowed ourselves some tolerance to liberate the bike from Kazakh Customs. According to the brochures we are in the Tourist capital of Kazakhstan that ranks in the world's top ten alongside Liverpool, Glasgow and Marseille as touristic destinations.

Our minds were elsewhere Monday to Wednesday and the word palaver comes to mind. Monday it was pretty obvious people were a bit unsure about what needed to be done with regard to a used motorcycle in transit. But we eventually saw the bike in its box in the bonded warehouse. They seemed to want to confirm that it was a bike and rather than uncrate it, they lifted it up on a fork lift truck. All because they didn't have a screwdriver and Paul was taking a bit too long with the travel variety he had brought with him. Despite being able to see the bike quite clearly through the slots underneath the crate,  they still wanted to put it through a large scale airport style scanner but it wouldn't fit. By this time it was almost going home time, so things were adjourned for the day albeit with positive feelings for the following day.

Paul and Tony returned to the customs depot without me on Tuesday morning only to find that the central Customs server had crashed. So they spent the morning in the shade of the smokers' shelter. After lunching they returned that afternoon and spent the afternoon as per the morning. Zero progress on Tuesday then!

Wednesday morning was promising - Customs computers were working. But there seemed to be an issue with us having a UK and not a Kazakh address and nothing to prove that we would be leaving the country with the bike. This was followed by a lot of head scratching and mobile phone calls between Customs officials about how to fill in the forms.  Shortly afterwards followed the issue that some of the responses to the questions wouldn't fit in the boxes on the form.  Therefore the form wouldn't print out. Where could that official stamp fit then? More phone calls and then a long wait until the IT expert turned up. They were clearly desperate for lunch but we blocked their escape route until we were given the required paper. Of course it needed two more stamps from another building where we managed the first, only to be thwarted by a locked door for the second. Lunchtime...

All this time both camera and penknife had  been confiscated: hence the lack of photos.

We paid storage charges after lunch and got the release certificate.

The bike in its crate was now ours. But it was on the floor of a bonded warehouse about four foot above ground level. None of the loading dock bays had scissor lifts or hydraulic platforms.

So we paid some van people hanging around outside the customs depot who had a lorry with an adjustable tailgate. They seemed to be allowed to go into the area to retrieve things. We pushed the crate in the back of the van and got it liberated. We then broke up the crate in the back of the van and managed to position the Harley on the tailgate and lower it to the ground.

A truly liberating experience! Heavy rush hour traffic back to the hotel from the airport, but the route had been memorised. Heavy traffic, but light heart!

On Thursday we explored as best as we could. Reading the road signs in Cyrillic alphabet proved to be challenging. We generally managed to head in the right direction and saw road rollers in the fast lane of a dual carriageway at rush hour and people going the wrong way down them at high speed - likely to be from Shymkent according to our hosts. We also saw rather scary road cleaning equipment equipped with water cannons. A cyclist literally threw her bike to the ground and dived for cover as she was about to be overtaken by the cleansing equipment.

Almaty lies in the shadows of some very impressive jagged mountains, the Tien Shan range. During our exploring on the bike,  we were spotted by an ethnic Russian Kazakh biker called Anton. He very kindly took us up to a turquoise lake called Big Almaty Lake, 900m above Almaty with some stunning Alpine scenery and twisty roads. Normally bikes aren't allowed on this road due to ecological grounds. It was nonetheless OK for rather smoky Ladas's, Volga's et al to pay their entrance fee and visit. But our newly found chum blagged us in. Thank you Anton! Paul did manage to wobble over, after stopping on a right hand hairpin once. Usual issue!  Anton also showed us a lovely place to enjoy a late lunch.  What a special chum he had been!

On returning to the Hotel in Almaty we found the other bikes had started arriving. In order to cross China we will be travelling as a group. Besides ourselves there are four Brits, two Thais, two Aussies and two Americans though one of them lives in Geneva. All BMWs apart from a Triumph and of course a certain Harley-Davidson... All the right sort of bikes for doing this sort of trip on dodgy roads apart from the ...

 

Francoise is not only the only pillion passenger in the group, but also the only female.

On Friday the others needed to service their bikes. As ours had air-hopped here it wasn't quite necessary. So we hit the tourist sites of Almaty. We congratulated a newly married couple in the wooden Russian Orthodox cathedral in the park; we visited the war memorial, the local bazaar as well as the Mosque. That was about it for the sites! All before lunch!

Food here has been fine. As well as the numerous varieties of meat on sticks, there are also a tantalising amount of Cornish pasty alternatives called mantis; some of them are mini versions, some flattened, deep fried or steamed. Prime meat is horse and in the top restaurants you can occasionally find pork. Broccoli, sprouts, cauliflower and spinach don't appear to be in season at present. Luckily fruit is more available than in Uzbekistan. We soon became the regulars of the local canteen for an average price of £2 a pop and somewhere else in the evening where we could practice our Cornish pasty, kebab, salad, beer and thank-yous in Kazakh.



Tomorrow Zharkent, Monday China. The fun (or stress?) on the chrome lady is about to start!

Paul & Françoise