camp as a row of tents

As often happens when you have no job or regular timetable, once in a while one forgets what day of the week it is. Awaking to the sound of Russian shouted out across the lake we quickly realise that we had awoken to Saturday morning and a fair number of Almataa-ites arriving for a weekend in the countryside. This initially shattered our idyllic break, but turned into a blinder of a weekend. Around lunchtime a group of about 8 young Kazakhs turned up at out little camp soit armed to the teeth with strong booze and a bucket of shashlik*. They very politely apologised for disturbing our camping spot but promised to make it up to us by innebriating us and stuffing us to the gills. Sasha, Jamilla, and Staz all spoke excellent English and it unfolded that they were all Air Astana employees on a bit of weekend getaway. They had come seriously prepared. A shashlik grill appeared, as did 8 kilos of meat, 3 bottles of whisky, tequilla, beer, salad, bread etc. which was forced upon us - obvioulsy that took some convincing. We both awoke in our tent unaware as to how we had got there, feeling a little bit sketchy. I do remember the guitar coming out at some point and songs being sung in English, Russian and Kazakh. Fortunatley more shashlik and whiskey was at hand to take the sting out of our hangovers.

It was so good to speak with people our own age and get an idea of how people live here. Not so differently to us in Europe if you're from Almaty anyway.

It was genuinely sad to see them go the next day so I helped them back to their cars with their mountain of gear and sent them off with warm hugs and high fives all round. At least though we had our tranquil spot back. Holls nad I spent the next few days doing basically bugger all but the odd walk and eating the mountain of food our new friends had left behind for us. We arranged a young lad to come and collect us on a horse when it was time to go which saved our bodies any more punishing walks.

In typical Kazakh style we waited 2 hours until someone agreed to give us a ride back to Saty. We then flukily happened upon a homestay which was really reasonsable. Our host cranked up the Banya(sauna) which was just the answer to 5 days of unwashed grime accumulated by the lake. We then sat to a sumptious meal and chatted - attempted to anyway - with the family for a few hours toasting regularly to everything under the sun with a bottle of Kazakh vodka.

As luck would have it our hosts neighbour was off to Almaty the next day so we brokered a deal which had me and Holly dropped back off in Almaty centre the next lunch time. Result.


*quite possibly the tastiest creation available throughout Kazakhstan, shashlik is basically skewers of meat (usually mutton, though chicken and pork too) grilled on a bbq and then doused in vineager and eaten with slices of raw onion. all washed down of course with ice cold beer:)