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| Sheep and cattle still in their night pens |
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| Still in China and passing fertile land |
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| Wheat crop almost ready to be harvested |
After a long night through the mountain passes from Urumqi in the westernmost province of China, we arrived on the eastern edge of Kazakhstan. In the train arrival lounge, I met a group of young students just returning to study after the holidays. One lovely young woman latched on to me. Her English wasn’t good but 200% better than my Chinese or Kazakh! We chatted as best we could and did the photo thing and finished with hugs. I think I remind the youngsters of their grandmothers and Australia seems to fascinate many of them. I ran into my young pilot again and it was like we were long lost friends. People have been so friendly and welcoming.
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| The bustling railway station at Khorgos in far west Xinjiang, China |
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| A little bleak but the rain had stopped as we waited for the bus |
Once we unloaded ourselves off the train at Khorgos (Huo'erguosi) near the Kazakh border and were bussed to the border where we spent the next 4-5 hours negotiating our way through two sets of immigration controls points to get out of China and into Kazakhstan. It was extremely slow but incident-free. Then we were finally in Kazakhstan. Callooh callay!
Our local guide met us after we had navigated through the border palaver and took us off to lunch about 2pm (some hadn’t even had breakfast at this stage!). Once fed and watered, we were bundling us into a small sleek bus for a 5-hour journey that would take us to Almaty via the Charyn Canyon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charyn_Canyon . From the border, we travelled further westward to the eye-popping Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan. (And importantly once we left China we were able to reconnect with the rest of the world!) We were ultimately bound for Almaty, once the capital of Kazakhstan where we spent a short couple of days.
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| Approaching the canyon |
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| After almost 7 hours we arrived at the canyon |
Finally we arrived at Charyn Canyon. We were pretty bushed after a long rattly ‘sleep’ so Lindsay and I decided against tackling the 200-odd steps down into the canyon but walked instead along part of the canyon rim - 5 km. After 4 hours ‘sleep’ and hours dealing with border control, we figured we didn’t do too badly!
You can google Charyn Canyon but just briefly. According to our guide ‘Charyn’ means ‘crack’ - formed by an earthquake. It is located close to the current Kazakh–Chinese border and is an ancient land feature with rocks dating back up to 100 million years. There are a number of canyons formed by the Charyn River as well as eroded by wind and ‘atmospheric’ erosion; we were visiting one of them - the ‘Valley of Castles’. The rim walk was really interesting. We saw a Great Gerbil and some of its burrow entrances and a Golden Eagle, but the area is teaming with wildlife – river otters, weasels, foxes, hares, wild boars, Long-horned Ibex, ermine, falcons. Persian gazelles, manuls (a small wild cat). And not far from the canyon is a relic forest of ‘Sogdian Ash’ (Ash Tree). This species is said to have survived since the last ice age.
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| Far below you can see most of our group in the canyon floor |
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| There were no barriers so woe betide anyone getting too close to the edge |
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| We walked as far as we could on the rim - to a shelter not visible (indicated by the red arrow) |
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| The end of the rim walking track |
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| There are yurts and cabins to stay in overnight |
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| People go out to the canyon to camp and raft through part of the canyon |
The sun had slipped below the horizon before we left the canyon so didn’t get to our hotel in Almaty until 10pm. It had been a long tiring day particularly after our overnight train journey and poor sleep. Nevertheless, we sat down and did justice to quite a banquet at our hotel.
Kazakhstan promised to be a big experience! The next day we were to explore Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital. Incidentally Kazakhstan is basically a tribal land with three historic ‘tribes’ which are not distinct ethnic groups but rather three large confederations of Kazakh clans. The history of this region is long, complex and to me almost bordering on mythical.
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