SE Tour Day Two - Aktau and Katutau Mountains (and an old willow tree)

Monday 18 September 2023

Breakfast today was the best way - al fresco with coffee, eggs, bread and cheese.  JC found some photographers to chat to - but turns out they weren't very chatty.  [The yellow rectangle is a tourist thing for photo taking, we saw and ignored quite a few].

Then we walked with Nurland up one of the spines of Aktau range.

We gasped and gazed as we ascended and marvelled at the awesome geology opening up before us.

At the top we drank it all in, took lots of photos whilst Nurland sat on a rock and watched a film off his phone.

We were fascinated by the different types of quartzite up here.  There were seams that broke as they surfaced but they splintered in different ways: some in larger crystals, some like matchsticks and some small, giving the impression of hashing paper.

Someone's leg.

I was also intrigued by the plants who appeared to be struggling against the arid sandy environment the whole time.  Once through the crust some managed to keep going and grow leaves whilst others turned literally to dust.  I think this is Nanophyton erinaceum which seems about right checking with Kew.  

A photographer reluctantly walks off the range. As does his partner in crime.

We then drove to another key set of mountains, Katutau.  Again, our guide cooked whilst we trekked.  

To be honest, this wasn’t quite what we’d signed up to. We'd been expecting an English speaking driver and guide.  His English wasn't great - as in he couldn't really talk much without his translation app (not too bad but no way we could chat when he was driving) and he didn't guide us much at all.  He was far more happy driving/cooking and setting up camp for us (which was very welcome!) but not showing us where to go - except random pointing.  We didn’t know which way to go and what to look for.  

The few other tourists we saw drove up, took a photo of the main lava lump, maybe climbed a small hillock for a selfie, then departed.  Admittedly it's a very nice lump, and quite Gaudi like, but why travel '000s of kilometres to do that?

Before lunch, for an hour, and after, for two hours, we explored.  We found more lava lumps, red striated rock, lots of horse poo (sadly no horses), a long snake and a hare.  For some reason I thought it important that JC hold this plant up.

This lava lump looked like a turtle approaching a beaver - in my head at least.

Lunch was delicious too by the way in case you were interested.  It's a very Kazak 'thing' to have sweets on the table for each meal.  Every homestay we stayed at did this.

Katutau was lovely but felt a little anticlimactic after Aktau which certainly upstaged it.  We did like the weird offering-stand we saw by the road on our drive out (the stand is about 2 m high).  However, both mountain ranges were certainly more awesome than the 700 year old willow tree we were driven to, which is also a key tourist attraction of the Atlyn Emel.  Maybe an old willow tree isn’t really a big thing for a Brit.

We overnighted in a lodge in Basshi.  Shower yay!  Electricity yay!  Proper toilet yay!  No wifi.  No worries.

Tour of SE Kazakhstan - Aktau Mountains

Sunday 17 September 2023

We started a 6 day tour today - deserts, canyons and glacial lakes were on the menu.  As an idea of scale the height of this map is 200 km.

First was a 2 day visit to Altyn Emel.  Our driver/guide, Nurland, collected us and we sped first north then east around Lake Kapchagai (the big lake on the map above).

The road deteriorated for ~10 km for one stretch whilst we navigated the construction works which was very dusty!

But otherwise the roads were pretty empty and straight and as long as you didn't run into a horse/cow/goat/donkey you were fine.  We saw our first glimpse of the Altyn Emel mountains.

We entered the National Park at Basshi and drove down to the mountainous area. 

First up were the Katatau Mountains which required a stop of the car and a photo op.

Then the white and red of the Aktau Mountains came into view. Amazing. We set up camp at the southern edge of the Aktu range and headed off for a walk.  Truly awesome geology here!  The colours were amazing: red, yellow, amber, burnt orange, cream with sparkles of quartz and limestone

We headed up the gorge - instructions from Nurland, who set up camp and cooked whilst we walked, was “just walk up the gully”.  And so we did. 1.5 hours up and then a return walk.  The scenery was breathtaking and it was hard to absorb it all.  It felt like a mini Grand Canyon. 

We walked up towards the white mountains. I loved the dried gorge bed and the way the mud had cracked into millions of jigsaw pieces.  Sometimes you could peel the top few centimetres off.  Other times you could wobble on a piece and look down the 10 cm gap to see some sparkly quartz below.

We did see a very weird hedgehog like thing. We rolled it over and there were no dead legs inside so we wonder if it was a large teasle - but googling so far hasn't enlightened us.

Without a map we felt like explorers and kept thinking “it’ll open out around the next corner” but it didn’t - but the stripy white mountains were awesome.  We shared them with no-one - it was still and awesome.

We turned around in order to get back to the orange stratified rocks for the ‘golden hour’.  This photographic term describes the hour before sunset when colours turn richer and deeper.

And we were perfectly placed to see Aktau’s hues change as the light faded.  And found out that we weren't alone after all.

Back at camp Nurland had cooked us supper of rice, carrots, pepper with fried mushrooms (for me) and tinned beef for him and JC.  Once the sun set the bitey things came out to play - sadly on us.  We watched the stars blaze away in a way you rarely see due to light pollution and we even saw the SpaceX chain of 22 starlink satellites go past.  That was very weird!  It looked like a slow motion shooting star which didn’t fade.  JC weathered the bitey things longer than I and took photos of the Milky Way.  Then it was an uncomfortable night on thin roll mats with the added bonus of outdoor drop toilets for the night time toilet stop. [If you don’t know what they are, it’s basically just a hole dug in the ground with a plank or two to stand on - quite hygenic actually but I had to remember not to wear my sunglasses on my head in these as once dropped you'd never retrieve them].