Kazakhstan - Kindness and Natural Wonders

The drive across no-mans-land to the Kazakhatan border control took us past horses cavorting in the river. Theresa and I had to go through the passport control on foot (where the official was very straight faced) while the two Colins' took our vehicles through. The customs guys were very friendly - one sheepishly asked if we had any 'gifts', but his colleague explained that he collects coins so he looked very happy with a German coin from German Colin and a pound coin from us. Once through we had to buy insurance at a ramshackle hut, which also involved changing our remaining rubles into Tenge - at around 620/£ it's sometimes hard to keep track of how much things cost.

We split from driving with Colin and Theresa here, but agreed to meet up at a Park4Night spot a couple of hours down the road where there was a hotel offering P4N facilities with showers and a pool.

Some facts about Kazakhstan:

• It's the largest landlocked country in the world and 9th largest country (despite being landlocked they still have a navy)

• Covering 2.7m km sq it is larger than all of Western Europe combined

• The name Kazakhstan translates as 'Land of the Wanderers' which has delighted Colin, but may explain why they are not in the 2026 World Cup

• The world's first and largest Cosmodrome is based here, where Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, was launched from

• The country gave the world apples

• At a 2012 sporting event the Borat theme tune was mistakenly played instead of their National Anthem!

It was exciting to be driving in such a vastly different landscape - huge open flat desert scenery with very little traffic and just a few cows, horses and camels to look at, as well as the nodding donkeys drilling for oil. It took us a while to realise we needed to stop taking photos of every camel we drove past. We called in at a small town to pick up some fresh provisions. It's always good to find that the same staples are sold in all countries, so my worry that we wouldn't see jars of pasta sauce and bottles of kefir were unfounded. We visited a coffee shop in the town and were even more delighted to see Flat Whites on their menu - the only thing written in English. We were going to be OK in Kazakhstan. The owner of the cafe came over and asked where we were from and gave us both a bar of chocolate - how lovely.

When we arrived at the P4N place it was very obviously closed, so we followed Colin and Theresa down a sandy track to a nicer spot nearby by a river. I cooked up a pot of ratatouille which I'd been threatening to do since Georgia, but we had never got parked up early enough to prepare and cook it. We enjoyed a nice evening in Lolly chatting about our experiences of the last few days and about what lay ahead. We have a date to be at the Turkmenistan border on 6th May, so in effect had just 9 days to reach it. Theresa pointed out that there is a lot to see in the Mangystau region that we would be driving through. We have to admit that we're not very good at forward planning and with all our focus being on getting our Russian transit visa, we have to confess we'd not grasped the distances and road conditions that we would have in this leg of the trip.

We had planned to park up for the day to catch up on admin jobs, blogs, Instagram etc, but I think the distances had scared Colin, so by lunchtime we hit the road again to get some kms under our belt. The road continued as per the previous day - camels, roadside cemeteries, and the odd statue/monument. We were pulled over by a policeman who said we should be driving with our headlights on dipped beam at all times. We had been debating this, but as 50% of the vehicles didn't comply with this, we thought sidelights, which we always have on, should be sufficient. The policeman said we must have a fine, unless we had something for him. Colin called for me to find the Georgian chacha and he took it out to the very jittery policeman who was shouting for him to hurry up, and saying we should put it in a bag. He then panicked further when he spotted our rear-view camera, and sped off very quickly. I googled if the lights are a requirement, and the answer seems to be they are.

Early evening we pulled up a small town called Kulsary where there was a car wash which read we could fill up our water tank and there was a P4N spot by a football stadium. At the car wash Colin was struggling with having the right change for the system, and a local man offered some help and paid on a payment app for us. He got chatting to Colin, and said he had spent a summer in Oxford learning English, and said he loved England. He invited us to go to his house to meet his family, which of course we were happily accepted.

We had the most wonderful evening. His wife laid out a spread of food and cups of milky tea, and we learnt a lot about Kazakhstan history and culture. They had three children, the oldest being a lovely bright confident little boy. They came and had a look in Lolly, and we had to convince them we preferred to stay in Lolly for the night rather than sleep in their lounge - we hope we didn't offend them.

We were invited in for breakfast and then he led us out of the town, past the police control which we got past, but he seemed to be pulled over as he waved us off.

It was another long day of flat straight roads, camels and herds of horses. There are cardboard cut-outs of animals and police cars at the side of the road, and we have to say they do make you slow down and do a double take when you spot them in the distance. We stopped for a nice lunch break in a town of Beyneu

After our stop, the sky clouded over and there was rain in the air. We were reaching the edges of the Mangystau region and even got some slight bends in the road. As the light was fading we managed to park for the night next to a mosque in the town of Shetpe, still around 150km from Aktau city, which is the jumping off city to visit the main sites of the region. As we approached the city we saw signs for Turkmenbashy, out first destination in Turkmenistan.

Aktau looked like a bit of a wild west town - there are processing plants around the edges and the air smelt of chemicals. Aktau began its life in the 1950’s when uranium and oil were found nearby and is the newest city in Kazakhstan.  While there isn’t much of tourist interest in this modern city, it is the jumping off point to visit the natural wonders in the Mangystau region. We parked up on the waterfront near the centre of the city. Everyone was so friendly - we had endless knocks on the window with people wanting to say hello and ask where we were from. We had a few jobs we wanted to do in the city - laundry and getting our letter of introduction for Turkmenistan printed. We also realised we wouldn't have time to visit the key sites in Lolly - there were long stretches of off road to reach the canyons and we had read many overlanders were getting stuck for days in the mud after the rains. We started looking at the possibility of doing an organised tour and found one that we could join in two days time, which over two days would take us to several key sites and allow us the opportunity to camp overnight at a desert salt lake.

After our visit to the central area to do our jobs, we had a walk along the seaside promenade and dined in a popular local restaurant.

The following morning before we moved on we had a knock at the window and a security guard from the building next to us was beaming at us saying a big hello. We invited him in and had a chat (assisted by Google translate). At one point he nipped off and returned five minutes later with a bag of freshly cooked baursak (like little fried donuts) which are delicious when warm and fresh. We made him a cup of green tea. After he returned to his work post we departed in Lolly, first to visit the tour company office to confirm and pay for our tour. We then visited the main bazaar in the town which was surprisingly quiet, but seemed to sell nearly everything. Colin still hadn't managed to source a halogen bulb that we need for Lolly, and was cock-a-hoop when he came out from a car accessory shop with a couple, although his joy was later crushed when he found they still didn't work.

We went to another Park4Night spot on the edge of town.

We had arranged a zoom call with the Oxendon Hall Management Team to discuss the year end figures and budgets for the new financial year.  While getting ready for the meeting we had some young boys who wanted to say hello, and asked if they could see inside the truck. A couple of them came in and said ‘wow’ which we thought was funny. One of them then commented (through Google translate) ‘it’s a bit cramped’.  We pointed out the bed pulled out and he said ‘oh – I thought one must sleep on the floor’. They disappeared for a short while, then returned with a bag of baursaki – we hadn’t finished the first lot of the day.  The only thing we had to offer in return was a bag of sweets which they gratefully received and asked if they could leave – obviously mission accomplished!

We took ourselves off for a walk before our zoom call to get some fresh air.  While we were out we got a message from Peter saying he was on-line.  We hoped he was too early, but then realised we’d set the meeting thinking we were 5 hours ahead of BST, when in fact it was just 4 hours.  We had to leg it back to Lolly.  During the call we kept getting knocks on the window with locals wanting to say hello.  Colin had to go out to one of them who insisted on giving him some meats and camel milk.  He made Colin try the camel milk which is definitely an acquired taste – a slightly rancid fizzy taste. We also had another group of young boys turn up – news travels fast, but we didn’t encourage them as we had no more sweets etc to hand out.  While I was cooking in the evening, Colin got a message from the guy who had given us the meats and camels milk saying he wants us to come to dinner and meet his family.  Colin made his apologies, but said maybe we could do it the following day, but the guy said they were all going away for the holiday weekend. After a full on afternoon we cracked open one of our Armenian wines which went down very well.

The following day we needed some exercise, so got our bikes out for the first time in a long while to cycle around the city. There was a cycle path for parts of it – not in the best condition, but we cycled up and down the waterfront, then cut into the city in search of a place to get a spot of lunch.  The main things of interest in the town were numerous WW2 memorials and an old Soviet apartment block that had a lighthouse built through it.  We had trouble finding somewhere for lunch and ended up in a hotel restaurant that overlooked a bay.  It was very blustery with a cool sea mist when we returned to Lolly and we watched some hardy kite-surfers on the beach.

We had to be up early the next day to drive to the hotel where we were being picked up for the tour.  We could leave Lolly there safely while we were away.  We were a bit peeved that they were an hour late collecting us, but eventually our 4x4 Nissan Patrol rocked up. There was just a young Japanese tourist in the front, but it soon became apparent that there was a second vehicle carrying a Chinese mother and daughter and a Japanese woman.

We finally hit the road out of the city heading to our first stop at Ybykty Sai Canyon.  There was only a short section before we arrived that was off road, and we thought we could have visited this in Lolly, although our need to drive slowly may have been time prohibitive.

The canyon is a limestone cliff which was formed between 66 and 40 million years ago, with rain, wind and earthquakes all contributing to the beautiful eroded honeycombed shapes and patterns seen now.  We had half an hour to wander around and view if from different points.  Another guide who was there told us this was ‘nothing’ compared to the other sites we were visiting which was good to know as we were pretty impressed with what we were seeing.  Our guides spoke very little English, but they brewed up for us for morning tea/coffee break with snacks.

It was a May holiday weekend for the locals and a group were setting up camp and cooking facilities for the weekend. They invited us to join them, and we got the obligatory Baursaki prepared. They also wanted us to drink some dangerous looking spirit, but we were all too scared to have more than a sip, with a long day still ahead of us.

From here we had a short drive to the Karaman Ata Underground mosque.  There were centuries old gravestones surrounding it, and it is a popular holy site for the locals.  We went into the underground mosque, but it was a shame our guides didn’t have good enough English to explain its significance.  They did manage to nickname Colin ‘Grandad’ though.

They took us to some other buildings where we saw ladies preparing food for the pilgrims, and we were invited into a room where a huge spread of food was offered to us. We assumed this was our lunch for today, but one of the others pointed out that we still had a lunch stop to come. We tried the meat, bread and a soup which were quite tasty.

We then had quite a long drive to the Tuzbair Salt Flat where we were camping for the night.  We did have another stop for lunch, but Colin and I only managed to share a small plate of dumplings. Our driver had shown us a clip of an English guy that he'd met who has walked all the way from Stratford-Upon-Avon and will be continuing on to Vietnam. We spotted a group walking on a sandy track parallel to the road and pointed them out to the driver who screeched to a halt. The group consisted of Luke (Chubbytrekka), his partner Sophie who had walked with him since Istanbul, their dog Belle, and two cyclists who were walking with them on this stretch (Shaun from London and Callum from Ireland). For us it is just mind-boggling doing these vast empty distances on foot or by bike for that matter - requiring not only incredible physical strength, but mental toughness. We're finding these distances and road conditions challenging enough in a vehicle.

We eventually got onto dusty tracks with magnificent views of weathered cliffs. The tracks took us down towards a lake bed We did a double-take at a beige Land Cruiser parked out of the way by a cliff and asked our guide to drive over to it. It was Colin and Theresa, who popped their heads out probably cursing this tour vehicle impeding their idyllic park up spot, but gave us a nice welcome.  They’d been here for a couple of days.

We left them in peace and drove on a little further to our camping spot. There were already several groups set up, so I wondered why we were being set up so far from the discreet places to have a pee. With our tents set up, and the guides preparing dinner (we certainly weren’t going to go hungry on this tour) we took in the beautiful scenery with the changing colours as the sun was setting.

Dinner was Plov – the national dish of the Stans. It is rice cooked with carrots, onions, spices and meat (chicken in this case).   We were all pretty tired after a long day on bumpy roads, and it was pretty cold in the valley, so we had an early night. 

It was pretty windy and surprisingly cold through the night, and when we woke in the morning, the clouds looked very threatening. The guides had eggs cooking for breakfast, but the rain started and we were all asked to pack up quickly so they could get the vehicles out to higher ground before the tracks became too muddy and impassable.

The vehicles were fish-tailing nicely trying to find our way out of the lake bed.  Once we were on higher ground we pulled over for breakfast – no sign of the eggs now though.  Theresa and Colin drove past, obviously having the same thought about getting stuck.

We had a long bumpy drive this day, with the guides having to make several stops to ask locals which was the best route to take. We eventually stopped at the junction town of Zhanaozen where the drivers refueled and picked up lunch boxes at a roadside restaurant.  We then drove on to Kyzyl Kup, also known as Tiramisu Canyon, due to it’s formation of colourful layers of coffee, cream and pinks. It is just spectacular. The pinks come from crustaceans in the rock, and from the corals on the seabed that was originally here.  There were other overland vehicles parked up here and we felt a tinge of regret we weren’t here in Lolly, but at least we had found a way to experience it.

After having our lunch we continued on to two different viewpoints over the Bozzhyra Canyon. Here there are giant cliffs where natural forces have created incredible rock formations. Again the views were just staggering.

The second viewpoint had views over the ‘Dragons Crest’ a very Instagramable site – while Colin and I had taken our usual handful of photos, the rest of our group spent nearly an hour taking selfies and drone footage from every possible angle. We found a rock and enjoyed taking it all in with our own eyes.

We didn’t get back into Aktau until around 10pm, where we drove Lolly back to the parking spot on the edge of the town.  

We had a long journey on reportedly bad roads to cover the following day to reach the border with Turkmenistan, so we got ourselves up and away early.  We had to retrace our steps from the evening before to the town of Zhanaozen, which is where the road to the border deteriorated, making it very slow progress.  We decided we needed to be parked for the night right at the border, so we could be at the front of the queue when it opened in the morning.

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Not the most scenic spot to have to wake up on my 60^th Birthday but we were very excited at the prospect of spending a week driving through one of the most closed countries in the world.

We’ve loved our 10 days in Western Kazakhstan. The people have been amazing and the Mangystau region is spectacular. We will be returning to Kazakhstan in mid-July to explore the Almaty region before heading to Mongolia.