A Train Journey to Beat Them All: Ulan-Ude to Ulaan Baatar, Mongoliaby Randi / July 19, 2017
Our first stop and only city visited in Mongolia (also the only city in Mongolia, from what I saw of the rest of the country), Ulaan Baatar improved upon the food in the eastern-Asia part of our trip, continued the sad tradition of incredibly polluted air, and worsened the car traffic situation so far. It’s hard to say no to this city since it has so many Loving Huts and even better other vegan restaurants (I know! In Mongolia! So many!), but I think the annoying parts of it outweigh my ability to have good food. Luckily, we were there for Naadam, the national annual festival of the Three Sports of Men, dedicated to Genghis (pronounced Chingis here, and ya know what, I’m gonna call him Chingis because that’s the real Mongolian way) Khan. Naadam (for a separate post) was interesting and something big and fun to do. Without it, Ulaan Baatar is a dilapidated city with some temples and monasteries and museums but I quickly got tired of it. Exhausted, really. Maybe because I couldn’t breathe.
Chingissssss what’s up mannnn
After we landed in Ulaan Baatar at 6:30am, we DIDN’T walk with all our bags to our hostel! A first! We had a car waiting for us, thanks to the tour company we booked our countryside trip with. More on that shitshow in a later post too, but at least they drove us to our hostel. Of course the driver asked when he dropped us off if we had money to pay, even though he was from the tour company who offered the ride a perk of the package. We said no and he just shrugged and said goodbye, so yeah. That’s annoying.
He dropped us at the Modern Mongol hostel, which had a sign on the door saying check-in was from 2pm to 6pm, and reception opens at 9am-11am, some time in there. Um. You cannot have a SIGN ON THE ACTUAL DOOR be the only way you communicate to guests that there will be no one to OPEN THE DOOR. I was so mad I was ready it burn it down. Like they didn’t send an email or say on their pages on booking.com or hostelworld that this was the case. You need to make sure your guests know this information BEFORE they arrive. It was freaking 7am! We had to wait at least 2 hours for a person to let us in? Bullshit. Luckily, another guest let us in, and there was a big lobby sitting area so we set up camp, got out our toiletries and camping towels, plugged in our devices, and showered in the pretty big shared bathroom, all before checking in. (This place had many more showers than toilets. Not the right ratio, guys.) We didn’t even care about how we were making a mess with all our shit all over the place. You don’t tell us the details about checking in (not even checking in to the room! Coming in to the place just to leave our bags!) before we arrive, we don’t care about making the lobby our own. We showered so good. It was lovely. I mean it was a shitty hostel and none of the showers had functioning drains (always bring shower shoes) but still.
The day we arrived was Inauguration Day for Mongolia’s new President! We didn’t really see any of it besides this group of army doers in Sukhbatar Square, the main square in UB. With Naadam starting the very next day, it was a super exciting time for the country and capital!
Unfortunately, our beloved friend (and fellow lawyer/travel blogger) Sivani at Ever the Wayfarer was unable to join us for this Mongolia portion of our trip as planned, and we were very sad to not have her around to show us how to fashion a sink out of a twig and some fabric as we knew she could have once we were sinkless in the countryside. However, sorry Sivani but it’s for the best that you weren’t in Ulaan Baatar with us because our ‘triple’ room barely fit one person. We had to put all of our stuff on the bunkbeds because there was no floor space! You would have been sleeping with all my peanut butter and accidentally vegan cookie finds! (Actually that sounds amazing.) Also, we learned that despite appearances (of the lobby), this hostel was not great. It attracted all the crowds I despise: young teenage blonde girls who facetimed their boyfriends all night every night without regard for how much bandwidth they were using OR how loud they were being (so loud, heard them always); dirty older European backpackers who do their laundry in the sinks (despite their being a machine) as a GROUP ACTIVITY so people who actually need to use the sinks for regular usages are forced to stand behind them and give ‘are you kidding me with this?’ looks at them in the mirror as they take over all 4 sinks; older white female Americans who praise themselves for how liberal they are (while praising Bernie) while repeating the same story over and over about the one time they told a white man not to be racist (it was barely a story; do more, white women); and generic other yoots who have no consideration for how loud they are throughout the night. Oh and old Chinese men who shout at each other in the hallway in the middle of the night. Oh and people who play music in the common areas without headphones like they’re doing the rest of us a service. So, everybody I hate. Also, the wifi at Modern Mongol was so bad it was pretty much nonexistent (which is why we are now two weeks behind ughh I hate it I’m sorry). Hard no on a recommendation.
obviously a picture of the train station should be higher up the post but weebly just does notttt like the wifi here and it’s easier to type this caption than move a picture
Out in the city, I was immediately struck by how bad the air was. It was like how Siberia was very polluted, but the car and traffic situation here is more like Bangkok – long, long lights, exhaust blown right in your face by substandard unregulated engines no matter where you stand, and dangerous drivers. At least in Bangkok there are a lot of overpasses for pedestrians to use on busy streets. This was a bad situation. And despite UB being the coldest capital city in the world (true fact, though we haven’t gotten a clear answer about whether that’s due to extremely low winter temperatures or a low overall yearly average of temperatures), it was hot and dry and burningly sunny most of the time. I felt asthmatic the whole time I was there, like my lungs were screaming and I couldn’t get a deep breath. That’s so awful! It also meant pretty much every time I stepped outside, I was exhausted, not being able to get enough oxygen. I must get a mask for China. I hope all you republicans enjoy when your part of the world has air like this too.
It’s hard to ignore the air when we need that to live, but the city apart from that was okay, I guess. It’s really nothing special, and the best part of it is the various vegan restaurants which we will talk about separately (because there are so many!) It looks clearly third world, and so many city buildings (aside from the skyscrapers) are very dilapidated – and almost every single building in the countryside is decaying or straight up falling apart. Literally half of the country’s 3 million residents live in this city, with the rest spread over the vast open spaces of the countryside. With UB representing so much of the country’s citizenry and most of its wealth, it’s clear that governmental corruption and mismanagement has done all of Mongolia a disservice, to say the least.
Chojin Lama Temple
There are some nice tourist attractions though. We first went to the Chojin Lama Temple Museum, which survived the communist purge of all things religious by being a ‘museum’ of religion. It was really close to the hostel, so an easy first site. That also means it’s right in the middle of the city, adjacent to modern buildings and skyscraper-types. The juxtaposition of this super old temple with the sleek new office buildings was interesting, like how in London the Tower Bridge is like next to the Gherkin. I think I mean the Gherkin; it’s been too long already.
-OH OK – you know how in the Ulan-Ude post I talked about the lama in the monastery outside of town we went to and his body was embalmed for like centuries (or it was a ‘miracle’) but his head was papier-mache and I was like hey where’s your head? OKAY I WAS MISTAKEN. The Ulan-Ude shiny lama corpse was NOT papier-mache (you gotta say it the French way it’s funner) headed; he was fully intact just all head and body that’s been dead forever but still shiny. The papier-mache headed lama was HERE! At the Chogin Lama Temple. I KNOW, we are seeing SO MANY F-ING EMBALMED CORPSES that I’m mixing them up! It’s like I’m back in my internship at the D.A.’s office! JFC if you are mixing up your embalmed mummies you are seeing TOO MANY. And we have more to come in China! Sorry, I will try to keep them straighter but seriously how do you tell mummified lamas apart? (That sounds like the beginning of a joke.) Anyway, guess who has two thumbs and took a PICTUREEEEE? (imagine me pointing to myself with my two thumbs)
forgive me buddha!
The Chogin Lama temple was very pretty, and I enjoyed it because it was our first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. I was not yet very sick of seeing the same faded colorful fabrics and dingy Buddha statues and crazy scary demon sculptures. I would indeed get sick of all this very, very quickly.
Husband made me do a face hole in the temple grounds, as he always does, so here is my reluctant agreement.
We lucked out with the bright sunny weather for these pictures, but we quickly realized that UB, and Mongolia in general, heat and sun are not playing. They are serious, and they are intense. Coupled with the terrible air quality, the immobilizing burn of the sun was pretty miserable. It rained one day and it felt sooo amazing afterwards. There was actual humidity and I could breathe! It lasted an hour. Whoever talks about how dry heat is so great is making shit up.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
After the Chogin Lama temple, we went to the National Museum of Mongolian History, even though I was so f-ing tired and crankpotting and oh yeah, I think I kind of hate museums. It was interesting though. They had good stuff documenting the country’s long, interesting history, from the Stone Age to the modern change from communism to democracy. It’s very centrally located by Sukhbaatar Square, which I’m going to spell differently every time I type it I think, not on purpose just by default. I decided that I deserved to listen to music while museuming because I was still not in a bed and thus super sad about that so I put my headphones in and shuffled some showtunes. It took me until an old Mongolian woman glared at me to realize that I hadn’t pushed the headphone jack into the phone far enough and the current song playing, “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”, was audible to all in the room. I hope no one understood some of those lines. Actually no I hope they did.
I liked this big statue of Chingis Khan (at least I think it’s Chingis…I mean it’s a statue and it’s in a museum in Mongolia, odds are that it’s Chingis) and a few ink drawings about his time, (1162-1227). The ink drawings were like recent, not from then, but still they were cool. Or I saw them in a brief moment of lucidity and that’s why they stuck.
lol right and left wise wangs
Later in our stay, we visited the Gandan Khiid monastery complex, which was kind of far from everything cool (like 45 minute walk from wherever you were, literally, no matter where, like everything in this city actually but worse) and actually not cool itself. It was whatever. Maybe I’m down on it because the bathrooms were locked and the one staff member on the huge grounds was the living embodiment of the shruggie emoji when I said hey the bathrooms are locked. Maybe I’m down on it because the name translates to “The Great Place of Complete Joy” and like no, if you’re not going to let me pee this is nowhere near even partial joy. Anyway, it’s home to the spiritual head of Mongolia, the Khamba Lama. So many lamas! It’s the most important monastery in the country, which I would not have believed looking at it. Originally, the monastery was built on the site in 1785, and newer buildings and temples have been built up since, though we couldn’t go in most of them. The ground is filled with stupas and little temples and shacks that were locked. I couldn’t really get a handle on the place. (I can’t get pictures to load because Weebly is awful and the internet here is too so imagine another temple/monastery.)
Over 800 monks live there, which is crazy because I didn’t see any.
We also visited the Bogd Khan Palace, which is down in the south of the city close to the Naadam stadium. Bogd Khan means ‘holy king’, and the palace is where the last holy king of Mongolia lived. The guidebook says it’s ‘full of ghosts’. The various small pavilions house statues of Buddhas of all sorts (who knew there wasn’t just a Buddha? Apparently anyone can become a Buddha, so we were told. Didn’t know!), lots of paintings of insane scenes of Buddha and friends and demons and all sorts of religious and wacky imagery, and random objects like musical instruments and, like, dishware.
There’s also a winter palace (like the Hermitage!) on the site that is a museum of the bog man’s personal possessions, like a lot of his furs and crowns and like, more dishware. Be warned, as I was not, that many rooms are full of bog stomper’s stuffed animals. I do not mean the cute fluffy kind that we all still sleep with. I mean real animals that were taxidermied. Rooms and rooms of them. All sorts. Big, small, birds, lions, polar bears, it was gross and unnecessary. Skip the winter palace.
Our last museum in UB was the unique Intellectual Museum, a private man’s shrine to puzzles. So there’s this genius but probably kookoopants man who the staff refers to as ‘the founder’ which doesn’t sound culty at all who has been making puzzles since he was a child, so he was like why not put all this in a museum along with all my weird baby dolls? A guide takes you around and shows you how to do a lot of them, and gives them to you to try. It will successfully make you feel like an idiot. They are impossible to do without knowing the tricks and stuff, but the guide will do them all in like 4 seconds and it’s hard to remember that it was her job to learn how. Anyway, there are all sorts, from secret boxes that open their compartments if you pull the right pieces apart, to those silver keys that slide apart if you twist them a certain way but your brain does NOT want to ever remember how to twist them, to strings of metal balls that when aligned properly make a sturdy pyramid (this one I can now do! so proud), to wooden rubix cube type things that will just drive you crazy. In addition, there is an entire floor of all the elaborate, and I mean elaborate, chess boards that The Master made. He either made or designed everything in this museum himself, btw. He is an impressive, prolific, probably socially awkward guy. The chess boards range from tiny marble boards with coral figures to gigantic (like 15 foot) wooden boards that are puzzles to make the table and board, and then each of the figures is its own intricate puzzle. I mean. Crazy. The museum offers visitors a few of these puzzles and chess players to try to put together for cash prizes. They range from $1,000 to $100,000, and I don’t think anyone has ever won, they are so difficult. I bet Sydney Bristow could do it but I am just not a spacial puzzle genius person.
The museum doesn’t let you take pictures, but if you have extra time in UB it’s a decent place to visit. You could get the same idea from buying a few of those wooden puzzle type jawns and trying to solve it for years and years until you go crazy because you just can’t, but it was cool to see all the different kinds and all the beautiful chess boards Our Great Leader made. I would have called it just a puzzle museum though, because calling it the Intellectual Museum makes it seem like the ability to solve this puzzles is what makes someone smart when that isn’t the case you just need to learn the trick to it I’m not upset about it at all.
Taraji P. Park
On one of our UB days, we took a day trip (with Sunpath, the company doing our longer trip to the countryside) to see Terelj National Park, which I refer to as the Taraji P. Henson National Park, obviously. I think this was by far our best day in Mongolia – the best natural beauty in the country, fun sites, and none of the whole living-in-the-desert-and-not-showering bullshit. Taraji was beautiful (she is, girl) but the drive was a little hard. Haha, I would have killed for a drive that hard during our week in the desert. Coming soon.
With our teenage guide (they all are!), we hiked a nice hike to a meditation center slash temple that was pretty cool. On the walk, there are all these numbered signs with different sayings (of the Buddha I guess?), and at one point you are supposed to spin a wheel to see which saying you need to focus on. I got #41 (my favorite Dave Matthews song!), and this is apparently what I need to think about for the next year:
girl you don’t have to tell ME people aren’t clean after the month I’ve had
Do all the parentheses mean you can replace words with new words? like Mad Libs?
view from the meditation center
on our hike
Ger camp in Terelj, like the ones we lived in the folowing week
Taraji also included Turtle Rock, a natural rock formation that looks like a turtle. Cute! Our guide said we could climb up it so we did, which was a bad idea. It is a frightening climb up very steep staggering rocks. We didn’t expect such a challenging climb to be the result of the guide’s casual suggestion. At one point, you have to go through this hole. We watched a few people and then said hell. no.
see the turtle?
nahhhh
The best part of the day trip to Terelj was seeing the GIGANTIC CHINGIS KHAN STATUE! It is 40 meters tall, but seems bigger, with Chingis just freaking enormous and depicted riding a horse so the whole thing is just so flipping big and fun and hilarious.
took this from the horse’s head, which you climb up!
Inside the complex (very nice complex!), there’s a museum that not-so-accurately charts Mongolia’s ‘illustrious’ history, and there’s a boot. The biggest Mongolian boot in the world.
I highly recommend doing the day trip to Terelj and Chingis statue if you find yourself in this country for some reason.
As has been the case all over Asia, we saw some amazing signs, like this club dedicated to our favorite Nicholas Cage movie.
And of course we both immediately realized what our legal professions hold once we return to work:
na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na BAT LAWWWW
So, overall UB was okay. We had some good times, but mostly we were glad to be there for Naadam (next post) and some good vegan restaurants (actual next post). Really, we were excited to end our city time and go out for our week in the countryside and the desert, because we heard that that is where Mongolia really shines. Hoo boy. Next next next post. Stay tuned for that carnival of atrocities.
that’s wonderful dear!
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In Which I Spend All Day on a Train: Croatia to Bosnia
Over the river and through the woods, to Bosnia & Herzegovina we go!!!
One early morning, after enjoying a few days in Zagreb, I embarked on a pretty crazy day-long train journey to Bosnia. It felt important for me to spend quality time in Bosnia since for so much of my life all I knew about it was that Cher Horowitz thought it was in the Middle East.
I knew going in, from reading online accounts from other travelers, that the bus to Sarajevo was faster, had air conditioning, and prohibited smoking. But, it had no onboard bathroom and only made 2-3 stops during the 8-9 hour ride. Not ok! I had to take the train: Even if the bathroom onboard was a disgusting hole of %@*$, I needed it.
I felt pretty prepared for delays, the low comfort level, the disgusting bathroom, and most horribly the cigarette smoke. The ride wasn’t as awful as I prepared myself for, so I advise you to expect the worst and be rewarded with just pretty bad.
I knew going in, from reading online accounts from other travelers, that the bus to Sarajevo was faster, had air conditioning, and prohibited smoking. But, it had no onboard bathroom and only made 2-3 stops during the 8-9 hour ride. Not ok! I had to take the train: Even if the bathroom onboard was a disgusting hole of %@*$, I needed it.
I felt pretty prepared for delays, the low comfort level, the disgusting bathroom, and most horribly the cigarette smoke. The ride wasn’t as awful as I prepared myself for, so I advise you to expect the worst and be rewarded with just pretty bad.
Zagreb’s train station
The train journey actually began with an hour-long bus to Sisak train station, which was delayed about 40 minutes because we waited for a train from Germany to arrive. (This is a good thing – those aboard the train would have otherwise missed their only ride to Sarajevo.)
Smokers’ Alley
Bosnian trains have carriages that are mostly little rooms off of the main aisles, and the little rooms have cushioned benches that seat about 3 comfortably (for a total of 6 comfortably in each room…though we had 8 for one portion). Thank goodness the little rooms have a window and sliding doors you can close, because the aisle is Smokers’ Alley, nonstop for the whole ride. It was horrible!
We stopped about 4 times, for at least 30 minutes each, for border crossing and passport checks. NB: It was frightening as hell when one patrol officer took our passports and left our carriage. Luckily, it was just to get them stamped in the little office off the side of the tracks, but before he returned them to us I had already imagined the train leaving, the renegade Bosnian selling two American passports,
This is where my passport went
someone taking over my identity, getting me on a government watch list and the no-fly list, and my name being sullied forevermore. I imagined arriving in Sarajevo, finding an English speaker, getting to the nearest U.S. embassy, explaining what happened, and being berated for being stupid enough to let your passport out of your hands. It didn’t come to that. Hooray!
If punctuality is important for your journey, I recommend taking the bus. The train stops not only for the border and passport control stops, but for stray cows or workers crossing or I don’t know a barrel of hay blowing by. Overall, we arrived about two hours late.
If punctuality is important for your journey, I recommend taking the bus. The train stops not only for the border and passport control stops, but for stray cows or workers crossing or I don’t know a barrel of hay blowing by. Overall, we arrived about two hours late.
My train picnic!
Thankfully, I made a fantastic little travel picnic, seen at right.
Oh, Zagreb cherries! Seriously, they are incredible. And of course I had bread for the soy pate (which you can find in groceries in Zagreb), I’m not a savage. Also, ginger chews are my #1 recommended snack for travel of any sort. It helps with nausea. And I always travel with pouched baby food. I love baby food and this just makes it great for travel. It’s not weird.
For the final third of the trip, it became standing room only, with people stuffing the corridors and squeezing extra people onto our bench. So, if you don’t have to pee all the time, you are probably thinking of definitely taking the bus. However, the train has better views – like insanely better:
Oh, Zagreb cherries! Seriously, they are incredible. And of course I had bread for the soy pate (which you can find in groceries in Zagreb), I’m not a savage. Also, ginger chews are my #1 recommended snack for travel of any sort. It helps with nausea. And I always travel with pouched baby food. I love baby food and this just makes it great for travel. It’s not weird.
For the final third of the trip, it became standing room only, with people stuffing the corridors and squeezing extra people onto our bench. So, if you don’t have to pee all the time, you are probably thinking of definitely taking the bus. However, the train has better views – like insanely better:
Entering Bosnia & spotting our first minaret
If I can stand the delay and the smoke, you can too. It’s going to be a long journey anyway; you might as well see the best views of this region by taking the train!
From Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan: In Which I Get in an Unmarked White Van And Live to Tell the Tale
After our 10 or so wonderful (well, like six were) days in Kyrgyzstan, we were due to find our way to Kazakhstan. If you’ve been following along this adventure for the past three months, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Oh they’re gonna take another train! Hah I hope this one is clean!’ Bitch I WISH there was a train! I wish we could cross the next few borders on our agenda by train instead of figuring it out ourselves when we don’t speak the language and the locals are insane! But no no no, Kyrgyzstan DOESN’T HAVE TRAINS. Didn’t you find it odd that I haven’t written about trains in a while? I know I miss it too. Well there aren’t any so deal. Our options for getting from Bishkek to Almaty were: private car (too expensive), private car shared with other tourists (still a bit expensive; hard to find other tourists willing to do this; hard to negotiate with the driver when we don’t speak the language well; we hate strangers), or marshrutka (the unmarked white vans perfect for kidnappings but instead used in this region for public transit mm okay). Well gird your loins because we chose the latter option.
Marshrutkas, little white vans used for public transport, are how everyone gets around in these parts. It’s all the rage! No it’s really the only option. We’d used them before in Mongolia and I want to say some places in Russia but those were to get to tourist sights outside the city centers, not to cross into other countries on fully day-long trips! I would have to pee SO much. But alas, it was the best option: tried and trusted according to other crustier travelers we met, cheap, reliable. Reliable as far as getting you there, I mean. Not reliable like having any sort of respect for departure times, oh no, perish that thought.
Our hotel in Bishkek, the Futuro Hotel, offered free transfers from Bishkek to the Kyrgyz side of the border, about 45 minutes away, so we were happy to at least have that leg taken care of, even though it’s the easiest bit. Of course, a different staff member informed us, like, the day we were leaving that that freebie is not for guests staying there through their tour companies (NoviNomad had booked our stay). So that’s a big old pile of bullshit; someone remind me to drag them on TripAdvisor. So instead of our plan of freeing it to the Kyrgyz border point (called Kordai, which is super close to how you pronounce Kodaly, the name of Gavin Creel’s character in ‘She Loves Me’), we could pay for a taxi there and then get a Kazakh-only marshrutka or taxi the rest of the way to Almaty, or we could taxi to the Bishkek bus station and get a marshrutka from Bishkek all the way to Almaty. We didn’t like the thought of getting across the border at Kordai and then not having our transport figured out for the Kazakh leg – the cars and vans waiting on the other side could charge extortionate prices since we had no other choice. Thus! Marshrutka the entire way it is! This is where I would use that emoji of the face with the eyes bugging out all scared and what not.
After I cursed out the staff at Futuro for being stupid (just kidding I’m so polite irl), a taxi took us to the bus station in the center of Bishkek, along with another guest from the hotel. This other passenger was a Russian man probably mid-20s or 30s. We figured it’s a short ride and we might as well split the fare. How bad could it be? Guys it was so awkward. He asked where we were going and where we were coming from and we sort of said the long and short of being long(ish)-term travelers, and you know what his response was? “Are you rich?” I almost cracked up but come on who says something like that? I wanted to be like, “What are you, American? Only Americans think you have to be rich to travel” (because they don’t get any vacation time) (also hey soon Russians might all be given American citizenship for funsies so I guess I was right) but we just kind of said um no…? like…we’re normies but also that’s an inappropriate question? He was kind of scary though (are all white youngish Russian men??) so we didn’t say that last part. No etiquette lessons given today!
Once we got to the bus depot (it was for sure a depot and not a station, just like a mess of a parking lot with vans and cars jutting out in all directions and PEOPLE EVERYWHERE), we found a ticket window and bought two tickets to Almaty. I think it was the 10am marshrutka we bought tickets for. We were pointed to one of the white vans, which had about 6 little rows of seats (2 on one side of the aisle, 1 on the other) plus 4 seats across the very back. So this is a SMALL little van and there are seats for more than TWENTY passengers. Also the windows didn’t open and it was hot. Erma. We boarded (luckily this minibus situation had a little compartment in the back for luggage, not like our Lake Baikal shitshow) when there were about 10 people already onboard, and most of the seats up front were taken. I almost choked on the fear that we’d have to sit in that dreaded back row (girl I will THROW UP on you) (by ‘girl’ I mean ‘whoever is sitting in front of me in a slightly better seat’) but then I noticed two seats about three rows back that I thought were taken but had just a water bottle on it. I said omg let’s sit there and if anyone comes be like what water bottle I didn’t see anything (I know I’m a monster). Luckily no one claimed it.
We were told we had about 10 minutes so I went to the bathroom, stretched my legs, and tried to be okay with how dehydrated I was in preparation for at least five hours in a crammed minivan without fresh air. I was doing an okay job at calming myself but then I noticed that we were not leaving. We didn’t even have a driver visible in the vicinity. More and more people kept boarding – it got full. Twenty minutes past go time and still no driver. This one girl got on and off, on and off, talking to someone who maybe worked there but maybe was just a drifter? She was wearing a Mickey Mouse ear visor and we of course started imitating the Russian model on “New Girl” who said “why don’t you get in your spaceship like Mick Mouse” and that helped for a minute but then MORE TIME KEPT PASSING and we KEPT NOT LEAVING. Then two more people arrived and they were apparently this girl’s parents. I’m saying girl but she was like our age it’s not like this was an abandoned child (despite the visor). I was like well they’re not getting on our van anyway, it’s full. But no there was a thingy up by the driver’s seat that could be clamped down to make one solid row so the three of them crammed in next to the driver, who finally showed up. I was livid that we had apparently been waiting for 45 minutes (THAT’S RIGHT) for random people who could have just gotten on a different marshutka (there were like 1000!) instead of delaying ours that long but okay breathe. The driver backed out of his parking spot and pulled around to the main section of the lot, where you are supposed to drive. But instead. Instead he got out.
And he smoked.
I could cut a bitch.
Finally he got on and we left, about an hour late. It is very, very difficult for me/anyone who cares about anything to deal with this sort of chaos in things that could clearly be better organized. Z tried to calm me down by reminding me that our last train of this long trip would be going to Berlin. GERMAN TRAINS. That shit’ll be so on time it’ll blow your mind! Helped a little.
The ride to Kordai wasn’t too bad. The van dropped us off at the start of a long pathway towards the customs building. At one point on our walk, there was a counter with little forms to fill out – our customs declaration, I guess. I say I guess because it was in several languages but not English, so who knows what I signed off on. Fortunately a kind Greek person who does this route a lot (I don’t know) helped us fill out our forms. We had to do Kyrgyz exit customs first, which was very simple and straightforward. We got in the ‘Not locals’ line. Then we got into the main hall, where I witnessed two incredibly disturbing things. One was the giant welcome sign in the hall that read: “WELCOME TO KAZAKHSTAN. GOOD LUCK.” what the EVERLASTING TUCK?? good luck? why do we need luck? what’s going to happen to us!! So, so disconcerting. The other was the state of the hall itself, which was the site of one of my probably top 5 most distressing attempts at queueing. There were tons of windows with agents, but people didn’t know how to spread out so that you could join all the various lines. There were just mobs of people up at the front of the hall, and then there was so much line cutting and it was hard to see where to go omg it was a messsss. We got in a particularly bad jumble masquerading as a line but it was near the Greek person in case we had an issue so we stayed. It was easy though; we made our little ‘we’re just poor hungry tourists’ faces and got stamped through. On the other side was Kazakhstan! But more importantly – a toilet!
I really was only about 50, 55% sure that the mashrutka – with our bags – would be there when we got out but there he was! About 15 minutes after we got out of the building, all our fellow passengers were out and we were ready to drive for hours through Kazakhstan to Almaty, the best city that used to be the capital but it got too crowded so they moved the capital thinking that people would want to go to there but of course no one did because Almaty has STUFF and good stuff at that and Astana like doesn’t. Literally Astana was an empty pasture when they made it the capital in the ’90s. I’m sure now they have like buildings and roads but Almaty is still better. So I’ve heard.
Oh man I was thirsty! I am so eager for regular life when I can drink all the water I want and then have access to toilets. We had a stop about halfway through, somewhere between 90 minutes and 2 hours. It was this big Kazakh version of a rest stop, with a restaurant, shop, and public (paid) toilets. One Kyrgyz girl from our van paid for my toilet! I didn’t even know and then the lady motioned to say it’s taken care of. How nice is that?! Sometimes people are nice! There is no better gift you can give me than the gift of a bathroom break!
Almost everyone went into the shop and bought ice cream bars – it was hilarious, like we were on a school trip. Mick Mouse saw we were clearly not Kyrgyz or Kazakh and ORDERED us to try this one kind of ice cream, her favorite. I was like oh I don’t eat dairy Mick Mouse. Mick Mouse started talking to us and not just ordering us to buy things and it turned out she lived in Berlin! We love Berlin! We told her as much. She said some other things but I was distracted with how badly I wanted ice cream and how fitting it was that I probably wouldn’t be able to find vegan ice cream until we indeed get to Berlin.
Finally we got to Almaty, at about 4:30pm. Oh man I was so hungry. The station was under serious construction so we were dropped off kind of far from the actual entrance, which was not great because obviously I had to go to the bathroom as fast as possible. And just as fun, once I got to the station there was no sign for the toilet so I had to ask this random babushka in a cafe and she said it was around the back of the station and underground. Not a great start, Kazakhstan! Then we had to find a taxi to get to our hostel, Sky Hostel, our first in a while but one with strong ratings. Also every hotel in Almaty was weirdly expensive (it’s very surprisingly cosmopolitan!) so this hostel was our best doable option. With our packs and all our crap, we walked up and down the street asking cab drivers how much to go to the hostel neighborhood, and they all said WAYYY more than we were told it should be, because why wouldn’t they, we were ignorant tourists with all our luggage who needed a ride! Extort! We went up and down, back and forth in the heat and our state of exhaustion and each driver we found gave a higher price than the last. Finally we said f this, f it all, because guess what we found out?
Almaty has Uber.
I KNOW!
Yes Uber is problematic (worst board of any modern company?) and I would never use it in regular life if I had a choice, which I can’t imagine not being the case, but when we were stranded on the side of the road during our first hour in Kazakhstan and it was cheaper than the cabs were asking? Yes please! It was a super nice car that came, too.
The hostel was a little weird – Sky Hostel is located on the 11th floor of a regular building. Like you have to go in and take the ONE TINY BARELY WORKING elevator to reception on the 11th floor while regular workers and other citizens are using it too to get to whatever else was in that super shady building. So ridiculous. Luckily the hostel itself was fine. The girls (seriously children) working reception were completely inept but we were used to all that by now. Our room was on the 10th floor so we had to walk down the flight of stairs to get to it – the stairs that didn’t exist in the lobby and don’t actually take you to the lobby. The stairs are just from like floors 10-13 for the hostel use and blocked off below and above! So weird. Luckily the room was fine but the view from the 10th floor landing, hoo boy:
Such a lovely city! We were excited to go explore.
Okay, not really that night so much for exploring. We were exhaaaausted! But we were excited to finally eat that day. There was a promising Georgian restaurant with several locations, called Daredzhani. We went to the closest one to the hostel, about a half hour walk away (felt like hours). You know how we feel about Georgian food! It always saves us when we are in random locales and super hungry. As a vegan, I can count on finding interesting dishes at Georgian restaurants, including plenty of vegetables (always important when traveling) and amaaazing bread! Georgian fluffy breads are the bee’s knees. Well, Daredzhani kept up the tradition. SO good! The staff was incredibly friendly and the hostess spoke perfect English. We asked if by chance they had an English menu and she was like, um yes of course we do this is ALMATY. So things were definitely going to be a lot easier and more comfortable here than we expected when we planned to visit Kazakhstan! Almaty reminded us most of London than any other destination of the summer had.
But we will talk more about the city itself in the next post. The rest of this one is just going to be about our fantastic dinner!
I don’t normally like to drink anything that isn’t water, but Daredzhani had really fun lemonades on the menu. We tried the green and the red. Ha I don’t remember the flavors but they were good! But the food is where it’s at! As we are known to do, we ordered WAY too much and it was all great.
My favorite thing was the salad – they said it was spinach but it was stronger, like kale, which I loved, but I guess that’s just spinach in Kazakhstan maybe, with a tahini-like dressing I think made from walnuts, plus scattered pomegranate seeds. Such a perfect and simple dish! The vegetable soup was also simple and good, nourishing in a basic way rather than exciting, but we needed some of that! But the cauliflower dish in the background was the shizzz. I don’t know what that sauce was, but it was magic. I think it was nut based, as many Georgian sauces are, and it was like spicy but not hot and I don’t know it was sooo good. It was a chef’s special that night and I wasn’t going to order it because cauliflower is les boringles but Z wanted it and I was like fiiiine and then it was the best ever.
I adore how well they used nuts. This eggplant dish above had a walnut paste and pomegranates. It was great! Another staple we always get is lobio, a kidney bean dish served hot or cold. This one was hot (so the better option) and nice but needed some salt. I mixed it with some of the magic cauliflower sauce and it was phenomenal.
And of course the bread with its perfect rip-off handles. My fave.
So we didn’t really see any of Almaty on our first night but we had a wonderful dinner after an all-day ridiculous adventure crossing from one stan to another. After we get some much needed rest, we’d have two days to see all the sights in this promising city.
