Look at those mountains – Wow!
Yes – I do look smug – not because I climbed them (because I didn’t) – but because I am somewhere I never dreamed I would be…
The mountains of Kazakhstan – and it was AMAZING!
I was scheduled to be in Kazakhstan for just a few days – and had only one day off. It wasn’t even a whole day, when you consider I arrived in the country at 2:00 am and got to my hotel after 3:00 AM. I still didn’t want to waste it.
Thanks to the generosity of a colleague – I didn’t.
Almaty is Kazakhstan’s largest city (but not the capital) and it is dominated by these magnificent mountains.
It’s a long way north of the Himalayas, but from what I could guess looking at a map, part of the same block of mountains – just on the other side. That’s my guess, you understand. I am no expert on such matters.
The people of Almaty love their mountains. They ski there in winter – but summer is just as fabulous. To get there, they have built a cable car. It runs in three sections – each steeper and a little less sturdy-looking than the one below it.
And the first aid station did not inspire confidence.
The cable car ends at about 10,000 feet – where there is snow all year round. The air is thin – but the view is to die for.
On the way back down we stopped for lunch at the lowest of the cable car station – and ate our food on a terrace overlooking the mountains, while a band played a really… interesting… cover version of Hotel California
From the cable car, we spotted quite a few grazing horses. Horse meat is a dietary staple here – but out of respect for the ponies I loved as a girl, I declined.
That’s not to say it’s a poor country – or not all of it. . There’s a lot of oil money around here – as you can tell from the sparkly new ski chalets that seem to be springing up.
But wherever I am in the world – some things never change. Many a boy has carved his girlfriend’s name on a tree trunk – but how many would do this?
This is taken from a height of a couple of hundred feet – so it is pretty big. That’s a lot of rocks to move. I guess they really were in love.