Posts for September, 2024

As you can see from the first photo we arrived in Yining early in the morning. Even this little insignificant town has a grand railway station. The town was noticeably different to the other Chinese towns we have visited. More signs of Islam, different food, and a general air of "more broken down". In any case from here we started the 1-2 hour drive to the border and the town Khorgas. Along the way we travelled mostly on a very modern dual carriage way road, saw lots of agriculture include sun-flowers, and as we approached Khorgas, many many massive warehouse buildings, yards full of new trucks and new cars.

Today was a long day of driving. The first stop of the day after 2-3 hours driving was a National Park called Charyn Canyon, which as you might expect is a large and picturesque canyon carved by the Charyn/Sharyn River. Nina and I visited this site in 2013 and since that date it has acquired a boom gate to ensure visitors pay the entry fee, a number of accommodation buildings, and a "main" facility that includes a cafe. None of this improves the natural experience of the place. But Kazaks like Australians cannot go anywhere without a cup of latte.

Tonight at 23:00 we boarded an over night train to the Kazakh city of Taraz so the days activities were intended to entertain us until that happened. First up was a visit to some of the cities iconic tourist attractions, starting with the Ascention Cathedral. This is a magnificent all wood building that during soviet times was used for a variety of public purposes, being returned to the Russian Orthodix Church in 1995. Its current good condition is a result of extensive renovations during the period 2017 to 2020. Near the Cathedral is Panfilov Park and The Statue of Panfilov's Heroes. The somewhat intimidating statue celebrates the 28 Almaty soldiers under a General named Panfilov who resisted attack by German tanks during the battle of Moscow.

From the train this morning we could see a vaste grass plain, almost treeless and extending flat to the horizon in every direction; at least every direction we could see from the various train windows. The plain is dotted with occassioal herds of horses and every now and then a village passed by; they looked poor and very soviet in style with blue framed windows and the ever present yellow above ground gas lines.

Again this morning the scene from the train window was grass land as far as the eye could see. Our destination was the town of Turkistan, it has a history dating back to at least the 4th century and in 2021, it was proclaimed by the Organization of Turkic States as the "Spiritual Capital of the Turkic World".

Before getting on to the activities of the day I wanted to introduce the young man that was our guide in Turkistan. He is pictured with me in the first photograph. His name is NurSultan and to our surprise he does not live in the town of Turkistan but in the town of Shymkent which is about 170km away. I wanted to say thankyou to NurSultan for being our guide and helping all of us get a better understanding of the history of this part of Kazakhstan.

Our 6:30 arrival into the town of Aral was the start of a very busy day. A quick trip to the hotel and checkin followed by breakfast at 8:00 got things off to a quick start. We got a little break after that as the days activities started at 10:00 with a walking tour of the town. Just down the street from the hotel we visited a park with memorabilia and memorials to the towns fishing days, then a WWII memorial park with an astoundingly long list of the names of those from this region that died in the war.

This entry covers the 8th, 9th, and 10th of September. The 8th started in the Kazakh town of Aral where we caught a 9:00am train with a destination of Aktau a port on the Caspian Sea. That train journey lasted until 6:30 on the 9th. There is not much to say about the train journey. It was comfortable enough as Nina and I shared a 4 berth cabin and hence had space and privacy. The scenery continued to be flat dry steppes as we have seen on our previous Kazakh train rides. The East to West traverse across Kazakhstan is really a long journey and feels much longer than the Indian Pacific Train journey across Australia. In case you are wondering Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world by area.

The plan for today was that we would leave the hotel in Aktau at 00:15 (thats right 15 minutes after midnight) to head to the airport for a 2:55 plane to the city of Baku in Azerbaijan. However the plane was delayed and did not leave until 5:00 which deposited us in Baku about 5:00 Baku time. To get to our hotel our minibus had to cross the city which turned out to be a difficult process because Baku was in the throws of preparing for their annual F1 race which was scheduled for the 13-15th of Sept. So streets were blocked off, and police were everywhere directing traffic; even at 5:00am.

Today proved to be a long day of driving and sightseeing.

Today we spent half the day driving West from Baku to the mountain resort town of Şeki (pronounced Sheki). Appart from its beautiful mountain location this town is famous for the Palace of Shaki Khans which is renowned for being constructed (in 1762) without a single nail and for the colored glass windows which are constructed without nails or glue.

Today we said goodbye to our Azerbaijani guide and driver and ventured into Georgia; and I am pleased to report that the border experience was simple and fast - thankfully. Inside Georgia our first stop was the village of Telavi where we learned about the making of bread and a style of desert called churchkhela. The significant thing about the bread is the style of the oven in which it is baked. It is round, almost a cylinder, standing with an opening at the top and a fire at the bottom. It's a bit like a large Indian Tandoori. The dough to be backed is stuck to the internal side of the cylinder. Some of the photos will explain better than my words can.

There is not much to say about today as it turned out to be simply a travel day in which we would drive from Telavi to Tbilisi. Before getting underway Nina went on a bit of a photo expedition around our hotel and captured images of the old fort across the road as well as some of the well-worn infrastructure of the city. There after the group did a quick tour of the local market before we undertook the 4-5 hour drive to Tbilisi. For reasons that I could never work out our driver took a very indirect route between Telavi and Tbilisi.

Today was always planned to be a long driving day as we were to travel the Georgian Military Road north from Tbilisi to almost the Russian border. Although the drive was under 200km in each direction, the round trip took just on 12 hours and along the way we saw

Another day another country, at least that is what it sometimes feels like. This morning our Georgian local guide and driver took us south to the Armenian border, where we joined a long queue of other tourists to complete the immigration processes to get us out of Georgia and into Armenia. With a new local guide and driver we were set for another day of sighseeing.

There were times today when it felt like we were trying to circumnavigate the entire country of Armenia in a single day. That was not really the case but regardless you will see in the images below that we did cover a lot of territory.

Yerevan is a very old city with parts of the city being inhabited as far back as 3000BC, and the fortress of Erebuni (from which maybe the modern name of the city is derived) being established in 782BC. The following link Yerevan will give more details on the history of Yerevan.

We spent most of yesterday (Sept 20th) in Yerevan with a late checkout before catching another overnight train. This one would take us back into Georgia, through Tbilisi and onto the Black Sea resort town of Batumi. The border crossing back into Georgia hapened around 22:00 and between Armenian exit processing and Georgia entry took a couple of hours and was all done either with officers boarding the train or at a small office beside the train.

This morning a short bus ride from Batumi deposited the group at the Georgia-Turkey border along with a few hundred locals and maybe a hundred other tourists. So the crossing, which consisted of much pushing and shoving, was a little time consuming but not complicated. Once in Turkey we met our new local guide and driver and started a long slow drive of approximately 300km to the city of Kars. This was a spectacular drive. It was a mountainous road for almost the entire length. Initially passing some impressive dams and hydro power plants and then later, villages used by shepards (of sheep, goats and cows) during the summer months. In keeping with the entire trip however, because there were no temples/mosques/churches to see we did not stop for photographs but just kept driving. As you might guess that will be a point of feedback when this trip is over.

In Kars at 8:00am on the morning of the Sept 23rd we caught a train destined for Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. This would be the longest train leg of the journey so far covering something like 1446km and lasting 26-27 hours. In some regards it was a boring journey, just sitting in a train compartment listening to Audible books or looking out the window. But on the other hand it was also interesting. The entire length of the journey we passed through, was bare mountainous agricultural land. We also saw many villages where the basic living standards would later contrast markedly with the cities of Ankara and Instanbul.

Today we entered Europe. From Ankara this morning we caught a highspeed train to a newish station (named Söğütlüçeşme) in Istanbul on the Asian side. Thereafter a traffic intensive bus ride took us across the Bosphorus to the area around the Blue Mosque.