A driver collected us from our hotel and took us to Zhabagly, 100 km east of Shymkent. Aside from the fact that he was driving at 180 kph at one stage, we noticed on the other side of the road a truck carrying an enormous cooling tower part (or similar) stuck under the carriageway. We'd seen a few of these pieces of infrastructure on the back of lorries and I suppose, if you don't measure your height, you eventually clip a bridge? (sorry, no picture).
We dropped our stuff, met Dasha our guide, and hopped into a 4WD. We were off hiking in the Aksu-Zhabagly Nature Reserve to find the Kshi Kaindy waterfalls. It was a lovely alpine walk up.
I was intrigued by this structure, which turned out to be a snow gauge. I didn’t get close enough but think it’s 3 m high and marked off in 20 cm intervals. And JC was fascinated by the rain gauge, the likes of which he hadn’t seen before and took a photo to share with his colleagues.
We walked on enjoying the views, and passing evidence of wild pigs (the ranger showed us where they'd been foraging) and bear, in the form of poo. I've never seen wild bear boo before.
The waterfalls were indeed lovely but we were a tincy bit sad we weren’t able to climb down to them.
Our guide whipped out a Kazakhstan flag from her back pack - she did this with every group she escorted (spoiler: see tomorrow's blog) - which was just a great idea!
Such beautiful views everywhere. It's a very seasonal tourist industry as, by late Autumn, this is snow covered (remember the snow gauge?) so off limits to the casual day hiker.
Back in our guest house our happy holiday peace was interrupted by a minibus full of Dutch guests arriving. Apparently they are to share our walk tomorrow. Boo. We like having the spaces to ourselves!
We wandered off for a short explore of Zhabagly which didn't take long. I found more ladas and acknowledge that I had a strange obsession with photographing them when in an ex Soviet country.
We also found the obligatory concrete animal sculptures which were kitsch but strangely likeable. 
As we walked back to the hostel a cow cavalry arrived and marched through the village. It was amusing to watch the cows veer off into gardens and driveways and the herder not minding too much, presuming they eventually meander down to where they are meant to be.
The evening meal at the hostel was a bit dire as the Kazakh version of gluten free vegetarian is just to remove the chicken and tell me not to eat bread: eg the gluten and meat is removed but not replaced by anything. They’d made me a nice lunch of rice, hard boiled egg etc so I was cheesed off they couldn’t manage more than a portion of rice and half a tomato for supper. There's always tomorrow...
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