We pottered around Shymkent today. JC had been keen to travel to Sayram to see some mausoleums but we couldn’t figure the buses out, and a local tourist office wasn’t that clear either. We (OK, I) didn't have the energy to just jump on one and work out if it was the right one or not. JC would have happily tried, but was OK with just wandering around Shymkent as I needed a day off without a car/taxi/train.
We went down to the bazaar which is massive and a hangover of the days when Shymkent was on the Silk Road trading route. As expected, there were aisles of footwear, clothing, haberdashery, spices, vegetables etc.
There were piles of dried cheese, looking like bonbons but most definitely not sweet. And the meat section smelt awful so I avoided.
We wandered up to Independence Park which was inaugurated in 2011 in celebration of 20 years of independence. It had 96 steps up (trust me, I count these things), an enormous flagpole and a large trophy like statue made of 137 bars to symbolise the 137 nations of Kazakhstan.
We were looking for a MiG (like you do) but failed to find, however we found a tulip, a tractor and a phone box. Apparently the tulip was super hot to lean against!
Back down to the main city and we found Ken Baba Ethnopark where we lunched. It was a strange place as it had lots of odd statues and models of Kazakh architecture set on plinths. Plus a small waterfall and shark attack.
We wandered more around the city streets and we fell into Abay Park. This was an unexpected delight as we stumbled over the MiG we’d been looking for in another part of the city (guidebook wrong?). Anyway, this was certainly hard to miss and part of a large and sobering war memorial containing 100,000s of soldiers who died in the Second World War.
There was another area of the park remembering those who died in Afghanistan along with a row of tanks and guns.
And we finally found the Shymkent tulip.
We ate out at a slightly upmarket restaurant where, for once, my usual three side dish order (rice, grilled veg and one other veg) arrived on a single plate so I really felt like I was having a grown up meal at last.
No comments:
Post a Comment