Why I love Mondays

Budakofka Waterfall, trolls and pixies

Another hiking expedition this Monday, and with the sun bursting the sky, 21 people turned up to sample the delights of the Kazakh countryside. We walked through Budakofka national park which is just outside Almaty town. Drive up Dostyk Avenue towards Medeu and Chimbalak and turn left at the large blue sign which says Budakofka in Russian. Follow this road along until you come to the park gate where you have to pay a small fee to enter the park. Continue up this road until you see a large riding stables on the left hand side (you can tell it is a riding stables as there are horse heads in the pattern of the fences around the development (and often quite a lot of horses around as well! ha ha)), cross the little river and park. The track then heads obviously up the hill.

After a shortish hike up hill, we took a small footpath to the left and then followed it over a small river and started clambering up a load of large, easy-to-climb boulders which are actually a sort of rocky stream bed, all the way up to a pretty waterfall. One of our hike leaders told us that it is absolutely stunning in winter when it is frozen solid. And as an easy hike (it only takes an hour to get up to the waterfall) it is completely suitable for families with kids our age, so watch this space for some snaps in winter. On the way down, with everyone chatting together in little groups which was fun, we passed a load of grazing horses in the photos below. These shots are so typical of time in the hills around here and I still find the landscapes magical. I feel that if only you could climb past the next mountain you would find a land of elves, pixies and trolls!

But it turns out that there are plenty of trolls around these parts, it is just that the trolls around here are the gossips of the expat circuit, who should really know better than to say some of the things they say! Big Beluga can obviously divulge no more, suffice it to say that her eyes have been opened recently to the capacity of some people here to spread absolute nonsense about other people here. Rumours which are based on nothing but their own sick imaginations and, occasionally, even dreams! Amazing! And pretty scary.

Fortunately though, I think that on balance there are enough happy pixies and good fairies around to keep our mountainous kingdom a mostly harmonious one (boo to the trolls...).

Monday hiking resumes/ Joy to the world tra la la

This morning, the hiking club reconvened after a long summer break. We drove up to Chimbalak ski resort in the mist and rain, which then became sleet, and then turned into a full-on snow storm and all piled out next to the smelly farm at the top of the track. The smelly farm's little yurt tent outside was all covered in snow and looked very 'Lonely Planet does Central Asia'. 

We walked down towards the absolute torrent that is the stream there at the moment, crossed on the metal footbridge and then walked back down the valley, not a single uphill burn of the legs required. This was a brilliant walk for all the unfit summer thighs, wobbling away under our plastic trousers - sorry, not a nice image! 

The snow was falling thick and fast, and we scrambled along the valley over bracken, under fallen trees, ducking beneath branches and slipping all over the place until we reached another metal bridge with a drop of about 100 feet below it, that we needed to cross to get back to the cars. It was a good no-messing group of girls (unfortunately none of the guys came today), and even though some people were crapping themselves with vertigo and the quite real fear of crossing an untested metal bridge over a raging stream in the snow in Kazakhstan (we could not see the condition of the bridge for the snow cover), everyone managed to pull themselves together and make their way across. I think it was a classic case of (very genteel) mob rule, for I am quite sure that some of the gathered would never have made it, were it not for the general consensus that it would probably be alright. 

We made our way back home, soaking wet and freezing cold (my aged fake North Face jacket is officially no longer waterproof) to thaw out in hot showers. And now, two hours later, the sky is glorious blue and the mountains are magnificently white and clearly towering over the city in all their majesty. What a brilliant day. 

It sounds rather over the top, but the hiking in Kazakhstan has been one of the most uplifting things I have ever done. Quite honestly, the scenery year round is breathtakingly beautiful and changes weekly.  I love the fact that I am able to walk through it in good health, in the company of interesting pleasant people, feeling so alive and lucky to be doing what I am doing. I love seeing eagles soaring overhead. I adore walking past silent mountain streams in the winter because they are frozen solid and milky white, or skipping across them in summer as they race over the rocks beneath making happy, rushing, babbling brook noises. And I love doing this on my own, without my family, just me. I take my husband and kids to the places I find with the hiking club at weekends, but Mondays is my time and I truly savour every second of it. 

Way back when, a November hike

Another Monday and another fabulous hike. I nearly didn’t go this week, as Sasha had been complaining of a sore tummy all weekend and then had a very slight temperature on Monday morning. I was looking forlornly at the snow-topped mountains out of the window while she happily coloured in some Balamory print offs at 9am when Allia the nanny arrived.

 

“Aren’t you going hiking today?” she asked

“Well, you know, Sasha is ill and I sort of thought I ought to stay at home with her’”

“It’s a lovely day today. Klassnaya pagoda (classy weather),” said Allia

“Yes, I know, fantastic weather for a walk,” I said.

“Oh, go on. I am an old woman and I can’t go, you go up there and have a blast. We’ll be fine.”

 

I didn’t need much encouragement and 10 minutes later I was fully kitted up and running out the door to meet the hiking group at the Gorny Gigant rendez vous point.

 

And what followed was my favourite hike so far. We drove past the ski centre at Chimbalak and further up the track, about 5 kilometers on snow and ice. Stopping by some unfinished chalets (surprise, surprise, nothing in Kazakhstan seems to be finished) with one guy mixing cement at snail’s pace, or should I say credit crunch pace we parked the cars and headed up a track. The beauty of this walk as that it was not too steep but looking all the time along a fabulous wide valley, the sun rising through the sky all the way. At one point we took a short cut through the snow walking up a steep incline on our way towards a massive rock face. We passed an RIP sign to some guy who had probably met his maker there, or perhaps who had also loved this spot so much he had chosen to be laid to rest there.

 

Then we walked up to a dam built apparently to stop avalanches from crashing down into town, and water from racing down the valley. A very quick lunch as it was v cold, then a brisk walk back down to the cars.

 

On the way down, friend L and I chatted about various things including currency fluctuations and the credit crunch (even the house wives are at it now). We commented, as we floundered about how many Tenge there were to the Euro and what the Pound was at, and therefore what was best to buy where, at how glad we were that we were having this discussion on our own, walking down a mountain and without our supposedly financially-astute husbands listening to the gobbledegook and utter nonsense theories that we have both developed! 

From Glorious to Gopping Heights

It has been a good day: my first outing with the Almaty International Women's Association hiking group (not the same as the invitation-only ladies walking ensemble) for a bracing stroll through stunning scenery only 20 minutes drive from town. 

We were a mixed bunch of me and my mate L, American group coordinator ("only because everyone else left"...), French lady who knew this route, a Venezuelan lady, two guys from Zimbabwe and a Swedish man, some more french ladies, a Dane and a Romanian. And we all got along very nicely, using our multiple languages to fill in the gaps when someone could not quite remember the word they were searching for in a story. 

We set off in a convoy of 4WD cars, two or three hikers to a vehicle, and drove out of Almaty on the excellent road up to Chimbalak, the nearest ski resort to town. Passing the Medeu ice rink (the world's largest outdoor ice rink) on the way, we soon pulled onto a short, rough track and stopped. We were next to a tiny small holding, and there was a track leading into the magical landscape. It is spectacular, and it was very exciting for me, after all these weeks of looking at the mountains, to be finally walking on them.

We began with a short, sharp ascent, but then moved onto a nice smooth and steady uphill stretch with a stream running down one side, and wide expanses of scenery in front of us (an area known locally as The Sound of Music). Pottering along at a nice gentle pace, we stopped from time to time for water or take a group photo and let people get their breath. After crossing a stream, we came to a small but pretty waterfall, where there was enough bouncy moss to make a million Christmas wreaths. It misted over while we were eating our sandwiches and we quickly got cold, the temperature must have differed by about 10 degrees in under a minute when the sun vanished. 

Two and a half hours of pretty scenery, nice exercise and interesting chat, and we were all back with our entourage of cars and drivers, ready for the quick drive back into the city and the afternoon school run. 

As we drove in, we passed the end of the road for a house that we recently viewed. We had a bad phone call on Friday when our estate agent phoned to say that the landlady on the house for which we have been trying to sign a contract for nearly a month, has decided to include a clause giving her the right to raise our rent more or less when she wants (we had already agreed with her in person that she would fix the rent for a certain time period). We are not really prepared to accept this, since we are already agreeing to pay her a whopping amount of money every month, and don't really want her to raise our rent in a year's time, for us to either pay, or suffer the inconvenience of moving again. 

So we had started to re-consider some of the places we had previously viewed. One of which is this place, now christened Gopping Heights (because it is genuinely one of the most outrageously unattractive dwellings you have ever seen) but which we have not written off because despite its aesthetic, and let's face it, quality drawbacks, it does still fulfill many of our criteria for a house: large, big garden, view of mountains, enough bedrooms, roof etc etc! 

I had described it to L before we went, and I wanted her opinion on it. She later told me that she thought I had been exaggerating about its lack of looks before we arrived, but soon realized that I had been pretty straight. The question now is if we can embrace its vulgarity in an "ironic" way, and "make it work for us"... I think Gopping Heights may be a step too far.