The Dutch turned out to be lovely. Their English was very good so we were able to chat and share travel stories. We drove to Aksu Gorge and alighted from the vehicles to have a lesson on the Kazakhstan tulip (which we’d had the day previously from the same guide). The tulips are wild and flower in April however we did find some dried versions.
Once at the gorge proper most of the ~20 of us walked down to a viewpoint.
It was slower going than usual as we walked at the pace of the slowest. Although it was nice being in the company of others it really does slow a tour down as you are waiting for people to get their stuff, go to the loo in the one and only drop toilet, sort their lunches, get their sunglasses etc.
After enjoying the view from about 200 m down 7 of us descended another 300 m into the canyon to see the river whilst the majority walked back to the top and drove off to see another viewpoint.
The river at the base of the gorge was beautiful and we sat and lunched down there.
JC had bought his tripod and water filter for the lens with him so he was happy as a kid in a sweet shop to spend 30 minutes or so photographing.
Meanwhile I sat and waited. And it assumed one of the Dutch ladies to photograph me watching JC photograph…
The Kazakh flag came out again.
Once back at the top we had to hang around about an hour for the other Dutch group to reappear. JC found an apple orchard so busied himself testing a few, and I amused myself by feeding a local horse apples. It then chucked it down so we scurried off to the minibus.
Our train was late evening and the guesthouse kindly fed us before we left for the station, Tyulkubas. Labelling/numbering platforms does not appear to be a Kazakh thing so we resorted to showing our ticket and asking questions in Russian using our app. I didn't realise but I'd actually been conversing with a policeman on the platform - I thought he was a station official and had not spotted the weapon on his hip. He was quite helpful anyway. It turned out that Tyulkubas only had one platform in use so we stood and waited.
An enormous goods train trundled through with 57 containers on 34 carriages - I counted the carriages and it turned out at the same time JC was counting the containers! It took a long time to pass.
Our train back to Almaty eventually turned up - we were told it was 50 minutes late then after 15 minutes it appeared - and we hopped on into our 2 berth cabin. And that was the end of the tour of Turkestan/Shymkent/Aksu-Zhabagly for us. The red spots show various places we wandered for 4 days before returning on the train for the 630 km leg to Almaty.
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