Kazakhstan’s wild west

I arrived in Aktau by boat, sharing the 24-hour Caspian Sea crossing from Azerbaijan with a truck driver named Yirkin, who was hauling electrical equipment from Poland to China. He’d been driving for seven days, and had at the very least one other six forward of him earlier than reaching Ürümqi.

Wedged between our bunks, we talked about our houses — his metropolis of Aktau, capital of Kazakhstan’s Mangystau area, my Canadian prairie. He wished to learn about drivers’ salaries in Canada. I gave him a good evaluation. After a second’s nodding thought, he went to his bunk, curled up going through the bulkhead, and remained that method for many of the journey.

Canada, it appeared, was within the air. Dmitry, proprietor of the Mr Ponchik (Mr Doughnut) coffeeshop, the place I went virtually each morning the 2 weeks I used to be in Aktau, had tried to relocate there as a younger man. “Lovely,” he stated, “however arduous, very arduous to get in.” And one night, I dined with a lady who had studied in Vancouver and later made a profession out of advising Aktau youth on going overseas. “After all,” she stated, “once they go away, they count on a flowery, costly automobile is ready for them.”

There have been loads of costly automobiles in Aktau, nonetheless — shiny BMWs, Audis and Vary Rovers. Because of the oil and fuel business, Mangystau has among the highest salaries in Kazakhstan. “However everybody resides on credit score,” somebody instructed me.

Nonetheless, when it got here to my firm, not even debt might deter anybody from practising konakasy, the Kazakh custom of providing visitors an abundance of generosity. It’s a big-hearted tradition, and desires solely the barest introduction to supply a meal, a drink, a present. Even once I tried to pay for a taxi trip, the driving force batted away my tenge banknotes.

Youthful goals of a peripatetic life could be anticipated. Kazakhstan has all the time been a nation of nomads (this previous week the capital Astana has been enjoying host to the World Nomad Video games, a type of various Olympics with conventional sports activities involving archery, using, falconry and wrestling). It’s solely prior to now 60 years that individuals have lived in Aktau with any sense of permanence. For the nomadic herdsmen of the previous, Mangystau was a seasonal retreat, appropriate solely within the cool winter months — the identify means “wintering place of a thousand tribes”. In summer time, the blistering warmth can be catastrophic for sheep.

Starting within the nineteenth century, the Russians used this Caspian shore as a penal colony, Kazakhstan being their equal of Australia — distant, arid, appropriate for undesirables and troublemakers. The Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko was one such prisoner, and there’s a museum devoted to him within the dusty city bearing his identify, Fort Shevchenko, some 90 miles north of Aktau. A day go to was sufficient to persuade me of its suitability for exiles.

And like Australia, western Kazakhstan held unanticipated potential in its huge reserves of uranium, oil and pure fuel. After these discoveries within the mid-Twentieth century, Aktau was inbuilt such a rush that there wasn’t time for a centre to type. The result’s a suburb seeking a metropolis, every disparately geometric micro-district providing up avenue after avenue of high-rise breeze-block brutalism, punctuated by large, empty squares and gleaming procuring malls.

The most recent useful resource to be tapped is tourism. There may be, in Aktau, the year-round skating rink (inside a shopping center), the duplicate Arc du Triomphe that sits towards the desert and the Caspian promenade, lined with hotdog and kebab distributors. However higher are the pure wonders of higher Mangystau, which rival the best on Earth: the expanse of the Ustyurt desert, monolithic inselbergs, tiramisu-hued mesas and sufficient underground mosques to go to one day-after-day for a 12 months and never see all of them.

To achieve these websites — most of them situated a whole lot of miles inland from the Caspian, there are numerous native tour firms providing one- or multi-day journeys into the desert. A few of them appear affected by a wierd Soviet-style method, whereby strictness is gilded with a sure screwball insanity. A personal jeep can run to £400 per particular person per day, whereas shared, single-day van journeys are solely round £25, together with lunch.

In the future, with seven different sightseeing Kazakhs, I took a van journey to go to the canyon of Bozzhyra. I sat between Nurman, an engineer from Almaty, and Zhanara, an administrator from Astana. Nurman thumped his broad chest: “Kazakh nation good; Kazakh sturdy; Kazakh noble.” These have been statements, but in addition appeals to agree with him — which I did. There have been additionally three college college students from Aktau, every of them harbouring goals of going to Canada. One had a good friend who’d studied in Ottawa. “Oh Canada,” he stated. “It’s my dream.”

Quickly we have been cresting a plateau, and had a view over the flat basin we’d simply crossed: a world of desolation, dominated by salt pans. Inside Aktau, a heavy distribution of safety cameras implies that drivers are comparatively sedate and cautious. Past metropolis limits, nonetheless, issues have been totally different.

The flat, gold-on-green expanse that made up the huge steppe appeared to shake one thing unfastened that the town suppressed. We have been transferring at appreciable velocity, the van swaying as we switched lanes to overhaul slower automobiles, buffeted by the whump of different autos going the wrong way. Not one of the different passengers appeared fazed by this. If something, they appeared bored.

En path to Bozzhyra, we made a quick cease on the holy shrine of Beket-Ata. “That is the Mecca for Kazakh Muslims,” Zhanara stated. The mosque is constructed into the rock of a mesa, the inside partitions whitewashed and easy, the bottom lined in balding sheepskins and carpets. In a small antechamber, an imam sat beside the tomb of Beket-Ata. With ladies to 1 aspect, males to the opposite, he spoke his prayer, his voice hoarse with repetition.

Afterwards, over a picnic of plov, camel-milk sweets and tea, Zhanara instructed me she had been shaking. “It was mystical,” she stated. As we walked again to the van, a camel, its entrance legs shackled, grazed with shuffling steps.

We sallied forth throughout the steppe, bouncing on a tough and winding filth observe. When the good chasm of Bozzhyra got here into view, no matter sense of calm our driver had managed to cling to was deserted. He turned the radio to some ear-splitting heavy steel, and steered with speedy intent in direction of a slender peninsula jutting into the abyss. I appeared across the van, and noticed glee on the others’ faces. Have been they insane? Had I by accident boarded the Jonestown Categorical on its ultimate voyage to the desert? Had the go to to Beket-Ata been to arrange our souls for the afterlife?

I wasn’t prepared for this. I used to be sweating. We have been on the peninsula, dashing proper alongside the sting of the canyon, only some metres from a 250-metre drop. We veered away, solely to start turning a decent circle that simply narrowly cleared the drop on the opposite aspect of the cliff. The music blasted; the others danced of their seats. I questioned if the tea had been spiked with MDMA. Nurman sang, in falsetto, what gave the impression of a special music. “Dance!” he stated, prying my hand from the seat again.

Within the rear mirror, I might see mania within the driver’s eyes. I couldn’t die now, slipping off a cliff like a twit. There was an excessive amount of to dwell for: pink wine! Hashbrowns! The cool aspect of the pillow! I’d by no means learn any of the Brontës!

The driving force did one, two, three doughnuts, the van leaning as we span in circles, the others screaming in ecstasy. Lastly, we got here to a halt, the mud settling round us. 

I used to be first out of the van, my palms damp with sweat. It was my flip to shake, however with concern somewhat than mysticism. Even in that state, I needed to admit, Bozzhyra was a sight.

The size of it can’t be captured on movie. It’s the historical ground of the Tethys Sea, and have been it stuffed with water, the underside can be past the purpose of sunshine, a spot of freak-fish and boat carcasses. The monolithic buildings — ship mountain, fang mountain, yurt mountain — seem nearer, and due to this fact smaller, than they’re. Trying to the underside of the valley, one would possibly estimate the scattered boulders to be human-sized, till a camel sidles close to them and is dwarfed compared.

The rock itself was crumbling, like strolling on 200-year-old Parmesan. The others both didn’t discover, or didn’t care. They have been virtually skipping to the cliff edge, as if top — and the chance of smashing to the bottom far beneath — have been utterly unfamiliar ideas. They draped themselves within the Kazakh flag, pulling poses on the edge of oblivion.

The Kazakhs had proved themselves to be a individuals of unbelievable tolerance. Tolerant of financial change, of foreigners, of even the prospect of demise. They have been optimistic too. As we piled again into the van, Nurman noticed an eagle excessive above us. All of us appeared up, shielding our eyes, looking for the circling determine. Lastly, I noticed it, a pinkish type towards the blue. “A great signal,” Nurman stated.

“Possibly it means I’ll go to Canada,” stated one of many college students. “What sort of automobile do you drive?”

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