SE Tour Day Four - Wet and Windy Canyons (plus the first camel sighting)

Wednesday 20 September 2023

We were woken at midnight by the tent flapping furiously in the wind.  I was so worried I sent JC out to check the pegs (brave aren’t I?).  The wind dropped after a while and we slept until the rain started at 0430.  Fortunately that stopped too and when we finally awoke at 0800 the tent was dry.

And the view - blimey!  We were camped not far from the edge of the canyon and had a great view of it.

We packed up - narrowly missing the little scorpion that I nearly scooped up with the tent canvas - and breakfasted in a magnificent setting.  We even had coffee.

We then went to Bestamak Canyon and walked 1 km or so down to the river. It had started raining by now and after an hour Nurland drove down to collect his soggy passengers. The rain set in and wind picked up.

We drove to a view point to see the canyon but we could hardly stand up - the wind was that strong.  We couldn’t hold our cameras steady so just snapped a couple.  You certainly couldn’t face the wind as the rain stung your face.  It was really awesome.

Back in the car and we drove to Moon Canyon.  But not before we'd spotted our first Bactrian camels.  Apparently Kazakhstan is one of the few countries where both Bactrian, two humps, and dromedary, one hump, reside.  The dromedary love a hot climate but don't much like frosts (well that's something I have in common with a camel) so tend to live in SE Kazakstan, whereas you'll see Bactrian in more westerly areas.  

Yup, it was another big WOW moment as we got out of the car.  The rain eased temporarily and we were able to take a few shots although, as ever, a photo doesn’t adequately show the awesomeness of a place.  I know, a cliché thing to say, but it's true.  

We drove down into Moon Canyon.  Just after entering the reserve Nurland went to pay and found the ticket kiosk semi-built and empty.  As the wind was still blowing and the rain still spitting he set up a make-do kitchen and cooked us all lunch in the hut.  What a trooper.

Afterwards we had a short stroll, but the rain increased and it was getting too wet to be out.  So we bundled back into the car and left the Canyon Range.

We swapped cars and drivers as Nurland needed to be elsewhere, so enter stage right Mr M. Mr M is very different to Nurlan who said little. Mr M has an opinion on everything and everyone and once on a subject wouldn't stop, even if there was something more important going on.  We missed the Black Canyon viewpoint because he was deep in his monologue about the Nomads and Kurds.  But he did kindly spin around so we could see them.

Then we had his opinions on why Europeans got it so wrong in Kazakstan, why the Russians weren’t as awful as people make them out to have been, why Christians are hard to reason with, Mongols and how they think (or don’t), and numerous anecdotes about languages.  He is certainly a polylingual but once he started telling you, for example, the Russian for goalkeeper he told you all the other related words in Russian, Kazak, Turkish, German etc.  He thought my avoidance of gluten was a western fad.  His car also had no suspension - this would have been just as comfortable.

We drove past the Tien Shan Mountains which define the border between China (which was 70 km away at one stage) to the east and Kyrgyzstan to the south.

All very beautiful.  We arrived in our home stay in Saty and, thankfully, they ran a load of washing through the machine for us.  Hallelujah - saved me doing about 6 day's worth of washing by hand.  Supper was potatoes, that’s literally all I had as they hadn’t realised I was vegetarian, and an early night with smiles on our faces for how lucky we were to be in such an amazing place.