Our Silk Road Train Journey, Pt. 1: Beginning Alone In Almaty, Kazakhstan
We began planning this trip eight months ago, a two-week train tour of the Silk Road trade routes through Central Asia that would have us making stops in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, but as the date drew nearer, getting there for me was becoming a little more difficult.
Anna was attending a conference in New Delhi, India from April 2-6 and then our holiday would begin once we had flown from India to Almaty, Kazakhstan, two days before the beginning of our group tour, and I had tried to get on top of things well in advance, applying for my Indian visa at the beginning of March, the earliest time possible. We were in Taiwan from March 13-17 and before we arrived home I received an email telling me my visa application had been rejected, despite the fact that we had lived there before and were in Kolkata only 12 months ago, so I didn’t have a lot of time to sort it out. The Indian visa process is ridiculous, the application is nine pages long and the website has a tendency to crash frequently too. Not only are you required to state pointless information such as your religion, identifying marks on your body, and your parents’ occupations, but you also need to list every country you have visited and every city in India you have been to in the past decade, both having an unspecified limit on the amount of answers you can give, otherwise the page resets and you have to start again. On top of all of this, the occupation section was a drop-down menu from which you had to select and this was probably where the trouble all started.
After we had returned to Singapore I went down to an Indian visa centre in an awful mall, waited in a crowded room with only a pedestal fan for about an hour before being seen by a man who kept making up extra problems with my application; because I am a Singaporean permanent resident and we own our apartment here I put down our actual address, but that wasn’t deemed acceptable as I have an Australian passport so an Australian place of residence was required. I figured this was the only issue so I put my father’s address, despite having never lived in that house before, but the man kept combing through the application for more issues. Due to ‘Househusband’ and ‘Volunteer Teacher’ not being occupation choices I had selected ‘Writer’ and that definitely piqued his interest, grilling me about this blog, all of my social media accounts, and my Youtube channel to the point where he asked me to handwrite a letter to the Indian High Commissioner stating what I write about and list all of my social media pages and channels, however, when I was in the middle of this he was looking at my flight details and said they didn’t make sense, claiming that my flight was listed as having landed before it had departed and that I need to rebook my flights. Maybe he was looking at the date incorrectly or perhaps he just confused the information he was reading, but this was when I snapped, yelling at him that it was pointless, because even if I did change the flights, they’ll probably just reject my application again. When, ironically, he yelled at me to calm down, that’s when I told him I would rebook my flights, but this time to a place where I would actually feel welcome and that he should know that visiting India isn’t a privilege. Pretty poor form for a country currently trying to push a big tourism promotion. When I returned home we cancelled my flights and instead I was to fly via Bangkok, Thailand and then on to Almaty, Kazakhstan. Sorted.
Love those slippers
Sunday, April 6, 2025
I was up bright and early for my 7:00am flight, because I also needed to sort out some confusion at the airport concerning the terminal I would be departing from, but everything went smoothly in the end. I encountered some Russians in the lounge at Bangkok Airport bound for the same destination that were constantly counting their cash in the open (right), sat across from some awful, badly behaved, retirement-age American doctors on their way to a conference on my second flight, and then I collected my luggage, the driver was waiting for me, and I was soon on my way to our hotel in Kazakhstan:
Kazakhstan is the world’s ninth-largest country by land area and the largest landlocked country. Hilly plateaus and plains account for nearly half its vast territory, with lowlands composing another third; its southern and eastern frontiers are composed of low mountainous regions. Kazakhstan has a population of 20 million and one of the lowest population densities in the world, with fewer than 6 people per square kilometre (16 people/sq mi). Ethnic Kazakhs constitute a majority, while ethnic Russians form a significant minority. Officially secular, Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority country with a sizeable Christian community.
One thing that struck me immediately as I was driven to the Mercure Almaty City Centre was the sheer amount of car dealerships around, yet I don’t think I saw a single service station along the way. Anyway, it was about 4:00pm by the time I checked into the hotel, I was tired, but didn’t want to sleep, because I would just be wide awake again at a ridiculous hour, plus the air conditioning in my room wasn’t working so it would be difficult to fall asleep anyway. Instead I just decided to go for a wander around the neighbourhood and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw, but it would be more fun to check the place out properly the next day after Anna had arrived early in the morning so I just did the obvious in a situation like this — looked for a bar to pull up a seat for the night for a bite and some drinks. There was a British pub nearby, but there was only an older couple that were chain-smoking inside and the guy behind the bar only spoke Russian so I ordered a beer with Google Translate before continuing on. There was a ghoulish bar called Queen of the Darkness Bar, where the menu states, “We don’t have waiters. Orders are taken at the bar, and then the werewolves will bring everything to your table themselves”, but I didn’t want to be that creepy, middle-aged guy in a room full of young goth chicks, so in the end I found my spot in Greenwich Bar, chatting to the fluent bar guy, while trying a bunch of different Russian and Kazakh craft beers and meads, both on tap and in cans. I had eaten a bit in the lounge and another meal on the flight so I wasn’t particularly hungry, but I knew I had to eat something so I ordered the ‘Russian appetizer’, a dish that among pickled vegetables and cured fish, also contained raw white onions sprinkled with pepper. I liked everything on my plate, but trying to eat those onions without sneezing was a serious challenge.
I thought it was going to be just another quiet Sunday night, but at around 11:00pm the place filled up and one of the cooks went out the back and grabbed a plastic bottle of bright red moonshine with a handwritten label and started pouring shots for everyone, but I’m proud of getting to my age with perfect eyesight so I politely declined my little swig of rocket fuel. No wonder this joint had an eye chart on the wall. Once I had returned to the hotel I mentioned the aircon to the person at the desk and I was met with a response that it wasn’t working in the enire building and wouldn’t be for a few weeks more. Strange.
Landing in Kazakhstan, a glimpse of our hotel and the view from the balcony, strolling around the neighbourhood, and finally Greenwich Bar:
Monday, April 7, 2025
Anna had arrived early in the morning so after a sweaty sleep-in in a rather warm room it was time to check this town out properly! The only problem was that our only knowledge about this part of the world had come from Borat and the TV series Ambassadors. Also, I had to take advantage of this moment, because when we were in Wyoming, USA a few years back for another of Anna’s conferences there was a cowboy-themed dinner and I needed a shirt. Proper cowboy shirts cost a fair bit, but I found a hideous stars and stripes number similar to Borat’s in a discount bin that fit perfectly so I bought it for the dinner, however, when we were home and it was washed, I stuffed the shirt in the back of the cupboard stating that I would never wear it again unless I was in Kazakhstan and I’m a man of my world, although I couldn’t fit a cowboy hat in my luggage.
So who wore it better this time?:
Anyway, we weren’t here for a shirt war, we were here to explore Central Asia, beginning with the city of Almaty:
Almaty is the largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population exceeding two million residents within its metropolitan area. Located in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains in southern Kazakhstan, near the border with Kyrgyzstan, Almaty stands as a pivotal center of culture, commerce, finance and innovation. The city is nestled at an elevation of 700–900 metres (2,300–3,000 feet), with the Big Almaty and Small Almaty rivers running through it, originating from the surrounding mountains and flowing into the plains. Almaty is the second-largest city in Central Asia and the fourth-largest in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
I chucked the shirt back in the luggage so I didn’t offend anyone or lead them to believe I was an American, put on some comparatively more appropriate attire, and we hit the street, the first stop being coffee. The great thing about being in a predominantly Muslim country is that there is no shortage of coffee shops and cafes and we had a fantastic one across from our hotel so we dropped in for a latte and a pastry. It also didn’t take long to see that barber shops and dentists could both be found on almost every block of every street, but the reason for the latter of the two would become clear later on our train journey.
There were a few stops we had planned for the afternoon, the first being the Ascension Cathedral:
The Ascension Cathedral, also known as Zenkov Cathedral, is a Russian Orthodox cathedral located in Panfilov Park in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Completed in 1907, the cathedral is made out of wood but without nails. It stands 56 meters tall, and is claimed to be the second tallest wooden church in the world.
We passed a squirrel as we entered the park and not only were we struck by how beautiful the cathedral was, but also in disbelief that a wooden structure so large could stand for almost 120 years without containing a single nail! On this occasion we weren’t allowed to enter so we just wandered around the park, taking in the allure of the building while apple-shaped horse-drawn carriages passed by the Bauyrjan Momyshuly monument, us now navigating an enormous maze of some of the most stubborn pigeons known to mankind:
On our way to the cathedral we had seen a few KFCs, but nothing much else in the way of junk food except for what appeared to be a bizarre McDonald’s knockoff called ‘I’m’. This place piqued my curiosity so I entered and the menu looked suspiciously familiar too, it turns out that McDonald’s had rebranded to I’m in Kazakhstan, most likely due to Russian supply chain issues after the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine.
Anyone (both of you) who reads this blog would know that Anna and I both love checking out vintage stores and there were a few near one of the major universities, this school primarily for Medicine. Anna found some rings that she liked while I looked through a ton of Russian bootleg records and soon we were back on the street again. As I mentioned earlier, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into on this trip, but it didn’t take long to discover that Almaty is a very modern, cultural city with many theatres and museums, yet still has a ton of interesting-looking Soviet-era buildings. It’s also a very green city with surprisingly great infrastructure, especially trolleybuses, which is definitely needed as we inhaled a blast of exhaust fumes every 15 minutes or so, because this city was ranked ninth in air pollution in 2008. We spent the afternoon walking through parks lined with apple-shaped decorations due to being known as the City of Apples, as well as other more metropolitan areas of the city, encountering some of the steepest wheelchair ramps I’d ever seen in one of the markets, and some buildings adorned with extravagant murals, before heading back to the hotel to rest for a bit.
Before long it was time for dinner and as usual Anna had her finger on the pulse for where to go, however, the second we walked out of the hotel lobby a torrential downpour began and we didn’t have an umbrella so we’d have to opt for somewhere in our immediate vicinity. Luckily for us Lion Brew, a brewery and restaurant, was just across the road and they specialised in a local delicacy, horse meat. I have always liked to adopt the “When in Rome…” attitude when it comes to eating overseas and genuinely have a propensity for trying strange food while traveling so a horse t-bone it was, with a side order of horse bone marrow, topped off with some soup and pickles, but we skipped the cigarette list at the back of the menu. To be fair, horse doesn’t really taste a whole lot different to beef, but the bone marrow was fantastic, more solid than the buttery beef marrow. We dined while listening to a weird remix of Eye of the Tiger followed by a seductive female rendition of Metallica’s The Unforgiven and when dinner was done and the rain had stopped we looked for somewhere to hang out for the evening. Most of the nightlife seemed to be in another area of the city and appeared to close relatively early, but there was one place nearby that we knew would be open and that was Greenwich Bar, so I found myself there again with Anna in tow, trying more local brews and meads while being occasionally assisted by Google Translate to chat to a different guy behind the bar. Fortunately nobody busted out the rocket fuel this time, wrapping up our first full day for the both of us in Kazakhstan.
In some other areas around the city, dinner, and back at Greenwich Bar:
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
After another humid night we would be checking out of our hotel and into another, hopefully one with air-conditioning, where the rest of our tour group would also be staying, however, we wouldn’t actually meet them until the following day. This gave us plenty of time to do more exploring, but first Anna had found the perfect spot for lunch, Navat on Abylaihan. We didn’t want anything too heavy to eat, but that wasn’t an issue, I think Anna was mainly there for the decor. After we were led to our table we were immediately greeted with a shot each of fermented horse milk, a beverage that had a similar taste to Yakult if you added a drop or two of battery acid. We would be having a clear soup that came with deep-fried dough balls that would hopefully cleanse the palate in the wake of that shot and then after taking a photo with one of the staff members it was time to get walking again.
The first stop would be another market, this one significantly larger than the one we had visited the previous day, but among the dried fruit, fish guts, and large blocks of animal fat there wasn’t much that was any different inside. The outside just had the standards that you find at all markets, knockoff goods, fake shoes that would give you blisters, and random stalls selling remote controls for every device possible so that was our sign to move on to somewhere more interesting.
The restaurant and the market are still worth a look though:
We continued on for the afternoon, looking around different areas of the city, passing a place that did the weird combination of shisha and sushi, before we had to collect our bags and get to the new hotel. We stopped off for a cheeky drink so Anna could make the most of the facilities while she searched for some more spots to explore, finding more vintage stores in one of which I bought possibly the world’s greatest Christmas sweater, an ironic purchase here, and Anna did a bit more clothes shopping before it was time to stroll back through the parks, passing more statues, apple sculptures, Abay Opera House, and more murals along the way, some of them good, others not so much.
Before long we had grabbed our luggage and were driven across the city to a completely different region, one that appeared to be surrounded by other hotels, conference centres, and not a whole lot else, eventually arriving at the Rahat Palace Hotel, where our entire tour group would be staying. It looked nice upon entry, but we soon realised it was quite dated, from the elevator repairs that continued into the night to the scuffed carpet from which Anna gave me a massive electric shock when she touched my arm as we approached our sixth floor room. Once we entered the room we were beginning to notice a pattern; it was stiflingly hot and humid inside, moreso than the previous hotel, and the air-conditioning wasn’t working. We freshened up and went back down to the lobby to ask about it while guessing which people could be on our tour and it turns out that all air conditioners across the country are blocked until the season changes, not just the hotels we had been in. Looks like another sweaty night.
There was an itinerary in the lobby and it showed that we didn’t have to be up too early the following morning, most likely due to the later arrival of some of our other companions so we had a beer before deciding on a nearby restaurant for a pretty average feed of lamb chops and sausages before walking down to WL13, passing a sculpture that looked eerily like David Crosby on the way there, to settle in for some live music while a security guard blocked an extremely drunk homeless couple with half a bottle of vodka each from entering. On that note it’s worth mentioning that necessity is the mother of invention and this place had an ingeniously innovative installation that I’m amazed I haven’t encountered in any other bar around the world — A padded headrest above the urinals for patrons who need to pee, but are too pissed to stand up properly.
We went home early in anticipation of the following day’s events, but besides getting into the wrong car with an extremely similar number plate to the one we had ordered, confusing the driver with his limited English until he just canceled his customer and rebooked a ride for us, we also managed to accidentally Borat him twice. Firstly, when he asked where we from, Anna told him Singapore and I mentioned that I was Australian, but lived there too. He seemed a little baffled so I pointed at Anna and said in a clear voice, “My wife”, sounding suspiciously like Sasha Baron Cohen’s character. He then asked what we thought of Almaty to which Anna replied, “Is nice”, causing us both times to give each other sideways glances and burst out laughing, confusing our driver even further. If you’ve seen the film or just the Borat segments on Da Ali G Show, you probably just read those quotes in his voice . Anyhow, we topped off an amusing night by me zapping my hand on the door handle with another electric shock when we arrived back at the hotel before showering and trying to get some sleep in our stifling room.
Our afternoon in Almaty, our new hotel, dinner, and drinks:
That would be the last day that would be just the two of us, because in the next post we’ll be joining our tour group, going to the snow, hanging out with The Beatles, and finally boarding the train.
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