Kazakhstan

PART 1: ARRIVING

On Monday July the 3rd, our plane soared over a vast expanse of fertile grassland, the likes of which Genghis Khan would have once ridden across, and landed in the Kazakhi city of Almaty. Arriving at the airport in Kazakhstan was a slightly strange experience for me, because most people looked Asian - which they are - but were speaking in Russian. Everything was now in Cyrillic, and enthusiastic Slavic conversations filled my ears. Leh suddenly seemed very, very far away, as we were confronted with a Brave New World.

After cancelling the flight to Bishkek that our old itinerary had us taking, we looked around for the bus that would take us into the city. Immediately, my rudimentary baby-Russian came into play. It quickly became clear to both my mum and me that we would gain little purchase here with the English language, when bystanders did not understand even basic questions like 'Where is the bus to the city' or 'How much does it cost?' I fell back on the scraps of the Language of the Bear I had picked up from a year's worth of intermittent study. I'd had little to no practice using the tongue, and had scant idea whether what I was saying made any syntactical sense. But I found myself blundering through in it, as it appeared it was the only way.

We eventually made it onto the bus, which was jam-packed full of solemn Kazakhi commuters, and was not really ideal for our multiple large pieces of luggage. The bus trip was made no better by the fact that we had no idea where we were going, and nobody spoke any English to explain to us where we were. I managed to glean enough information through my hackneyed Russian to land us within a few kilometres of the hostel we'd booked. From there we ended up needing the help of a Kazakhi woman who could speak English to hail us a taxi to take us the rest of the way.

The hostel was about the most discreetly-located establishment imaginable to have made it onto Bookings.com. When we finally arrived at number 151 Kabanbai Batyr, we were confronted with a towering, grim-looking apartment block that looked more Soviet than Shostakovich in a gulag. After reconnoitering the perimeter, we were on the verge of giving up and finding another place to stay when we chanced upon a woman who happened to know the code to the building keypad. This was a start, at least. We got through the door, then she told us we were on the fourth floor of the building, which meant we had to lug our suitcases and packs up a dozen flights of stairs. We did not find the correct floor before accidentally summoning some random Kazakhi tenant to his doorway, and apologising profusely. Fortunately, when we did find the hostel, it turned out to be a nice place, and perfectly fit for staying in.

Impressions of Almaty

PART 2: STALKED AND SADDENED

The following day, we roundaboutly found our way into the city to do some touristy stuff. Before that, though, we went to a 'Supermarket' near our hostel.

I put the word supermarket in inverted commas because I don't feel entirely comfortable gracing it with that status. We walked into the store, and were immediately instructed in Russian to lock up our packs in the safes up the front. After doing so, we were allowed in to browse for our groceries. Immediately, we acquired a diffuse but extremely conspicuous band of surveiller-helpers, who either watched our every move for no good reason at all, or offered us unnecessary assistance to find every single grocery item we were after. Most spoke only Russian and Kazakh - some knew a few words of English. One young man was doggedly determined to help us find our desired supplies, as the other seventeen idle supermarket workers stood around and stared at us.

Besides the totalitarian vibe of this small-time grocery store, the offerings were meagre and bizarre. The joint lacked basic items such as bread and potato chips, yet it seemed to offer more cuts of meat than a Hungarian butchery. As well, half the store was not devoted to foodstuffs at all, but rather clothing, and other consumer products. It was impossible to make a comfortable escape from the store, as several staff members insisted on telling me where I might find a SIM card, and it was only by uttering multiple dismissive remarks in Russian, combined with physically walking down the street, that we were at last able to put an end to the creepy experience.

Alas, we had not escaped the unsettling feeling of post-Soviet totalitarianism yet. Our first tourist stop for the day was the city art museum, which apparently boasted an impressive collection of Kazakhi and Russian artwork. This was certainly true; the collection was more expansive than any I'd ever seen anywhere, and the paintings were gorgeous. However, the museum came with an unfortunate downside. In every single room of the museum, late-middle-aged stony-faced Kazakhi women stood sentinel, casting a baleful eye over every electrical impulse of our nervous systems, and periodically snapping at us in Russian when we broke some arbitrarily imposed museum rule. Once, as I admired a large, enrapturing Kazakhi painting, I took my drink bottle out to quench my thirst. I was promptly accosted by one of the self-appointed cultural policewomen, and ordered to put my bottle away. Another time, we attempted to enter a room from a direction that didn't precisely align with the labyrinth schematic internalised in the women's heads. Again, we were dished a telling-off in Russian, and pointed in the 'correct' direction. Fortunately, the band of menopausal post-KGB painting defenders was not offensive enough to totally spoil our visit. The artwork was superb, and we were glad to see it.

Work them cotton fields!

So much Kazakhstan, so little time

Our last stop for the day was the Kok Tobe, a hill in the central city that offers hard-to-beat panoramas from the summit. After catching a cable car up the verdant mound, we arrived at the top, where an attempt at a theme park is laid out across the hill. Indeed, the Kok Tobe is known for offering a number of carnival-style rides or game booths, where Kazakhi children can live out their Disneyland dreams, all against the leafy backdrop of Almaty city. What we experienced, however, was not enchanting, but rather sad.

What first stood out to me at the Kok Tobe was the relative dearth of people. It was a weekday, to be sure, but such temporal trifles should not have left the hill looking so threadbare as it was that day. Sparse groups of locals wandered unjubilantly around the park, seldom availing themselves of the rides and games on offer, or exhibiting any signs that the Kok Tobe was contributing positively to their existence. In the meantime, mum and I sought out icecream, and were turned down two separate times by shops that sold it, once because the icecream machine was 'broken', and the second time because the person serving icecream was 'not there.' Thus, I gradually began to pity the park, and soon afterward laugh at the overwhelming sense of pathos it exuded. After snapping some pictures and eventually finding a café icecream, we said our goodbyes and caught the cable car back down.

PART 3: A TRIP TO THE KAZAKHI COUNTRYSIDE

A few days into our stay in Kazakhstan, we booked a trip to Turgen, a town some fifty kilometres from Almaty proper. Twenty kilometres further from Turgen was a campsite that served as a popular getaway for city-slickers, and was to be our accommodation for the night.

It took a taxi and a bus from the city, followed by another taxi from Turgen, to reach our destination. Our Turgen taxi driver was a gruff, very stocky, fifty-something Kazakhi man from the country. I plied him from the street as he shot me sympathetic glances from afar. It was just as well I spoke a bit of Russian, as he knew not a word of English. Deciphering his responses was difficult, as a foreign Slavic language and a rough rural accent combined to produce a perfect storm of incomprehensibility. Nevertheless, we made ourselves understood eventually, and soon mum and I were on our way to the Kazakhi countryside.

The campsite was situated in the midst of a truly bucolic landscape. Lush, grassy hills flanked us on both sides, and a crystal-clear river roared down the valley in an endless series of rapids. Butterflies and other heart-warming insects fluttered through the air, attracted to the flowers and pollens that filled the environment. Our accommodation for the night was a pre-pitched tent divided into a small vestibule and a bedroom with two surprisingly comfortable camp stretchers. Around the corner was a large dining tent, where meals were served thrice a day. Overall, the camp was very pleasant, and we were blessed with good weather to enjoy it.

On the day we arrived, I ventured out to get the lie of the land, and search for some trails to hike up. Regrettably, there were few established trails, with most being only vague quadbike tracks long since overgrown with grass. I tried a few of these, and in each instance was forced back by the excessive length and thickness of the vegetation around my legs. Still, they were enjoyable diversions, and it was nice to find myself in such poetic terrain.

The following day, mum and I set out to walk the site's main track, which leads to a giant waterfall. After the first hour, mum peeled off and went back, while I pressed on for the remaining hour and a half. When I arrived, I became absorbed in the awesome waterfall, and it in turn became absorbed in me, via the steady spray produced by the impact of the falling torrent against the lake at the bottom. I whipped out my phone camera and took some pictures as water droplets planted themselves on the screen. Looking at photos of the beast is not the same as experiencing it in person, but I had to create some record of the moment.

After the fanboying was done, I turned around and began walking back across the bridge that had led up to the viewing point. As I was walking, two young Kazakhi men who were sitting on the ground eating their lunch waved at me, and ushered me over to them. I was ever so slightly wary, on account of my poor Russian, but I complied nevertheless. When I reached them, I immediately asked whether they spoke English - to this they both replied 'not much', in Russian. So once again, it seemed that my beginner-level Russian would somehow, miraculously, come into its own.

My two new Kazakhi buddies were very friendly, and offered me some tea as well as biscuits and fruit. I sat down with them and partook of their lunch as we exchanged cursory information about ourselves. They were friends, here for the day. One of them had a wife and a son, the other was unattached. I made use of my offline English-Russian dictionary to fill in the seemingly infinite gaps in my lexicon, and used gestures wherever possible. My companions were very understanding, and we ended up spending a pleasurable three or so hours together as we hung out at the waterfall, and then wandered back down the track to the campsite.

Along the way, the younger man of twenty-four pointed out and explained several different plants to me, one of which was poisonous and itchy. My buddies collected some berries from the sides of the path, and offered me a few, insisting they were both safe and delicious. With some reluctance I acquiesced, and sure enough ended up enjoying the small fruits. Later, they filled their bottles with water from a small stream flowing beside the path, and bade me do the same. Again with some reluctance I agreed, and drank the water, which according to them was 100 per cent pure, untainted by the evils of the city. It tasted damned good, I concede.

Later it was time to part ways as I returned to camp, and they to their dwelling. It had been an enjoyable afternoon all said, and it was somewhat bittersweet saying goodbye to my Kazakhi buddies and the campsite all at once. Mum and I packed up and departed the area, having acquired a lift from a kindly couple who were also driving back to Almaty. Thus ended a memorable chapter of our time in Kazakhstan.

PART 4: RAIN AND REFLECTIONS

After one day back in Almaty where we visited such attractions as a park, a church, and a folk instrument museum, we departed the city once again for a nearby resort town called Medeu, with the resort itself named 'Shymbulak.' Ski resort by winter, hiking getaway by summer, we descended upon the little village in the latter season, and were greeted by pastoral, rollicking hills and still pretty-damned hot temperatures, with only a light mountain zephyr to stop the warmth from swallowing us whole.

Firstly, some preliminary exploration was in order. Once we had got set up in our rather small hotel room, we donned our sunglasses and hats and walked out into the resort village. On our way was a modest-sized swimming pool, where mostly Kazakhi men and women were dowsing themselves to escape the sun's wicked rays. Later, mum and I would do the same. We dodged children riding on rentable buggies, passed a chained-up raptor bird, and examined the ski-lifts/gondolas that ran up the mountainside. Tomorrow, we said, we would catch a gondola up to the next part of the mountain and do a hike up there.

Unfortunately, in the evening, it began to rain somewhat, and the following morning it rained again. These periods of rain in what had otherwise been an almost exclusively sunny holiday came as something of an existential shock to our systems, and reminded us that precipitation existed. I took the time to work on writing this blog post, which took far longer than you would care to imagine, as well as download the DuoLingo language app, which I've been very conflicted about in the past, but whose pervasive influence I have finally succumbed to. With the rain temporarily bringing our Kazakhi dreams to a screeching halt, this seems a good time to mention some aspects of Kazakhstan that have not yet come under examination in this post.

Firstly, the Kazakhi people. Mum commented soon after arrival that the Kazakhis did not exude the same overt contentment as the people of Leh did. Indeed, these Central Asians' countenances are not quite as tranquil as their Ladakhi counterparts', though this is the case in most of the world, and certainly applies to my own visage, so it is not entirely remarkable. Anyway, Kazakhi people are very willing to help you if they speak English, and sometimes even if they don't. Unsolicited assistance is surprisingly common here, and as the totalitarian supermarket attested, at times it can be too much. It might also be said of the Kazakhis that they can be rather direct and serious at first blush, a manner I had already encountered in Germany years before. At times I wonder whether it really counts as serious if eighty per cent of the world behaves the same - as Syndrome from the Incredibles says, "When everyone's super, no one will be." In sum, many Kazakhis have that head-down Russian flavour to them, but I haven't found it to be unpleasant, except in the case of the Orwellian art gallery.

Secondly, the confectionery. Nestle, Hersheys, Haribo - close up shop now. It's over. After a week of indulging in Kazakhi candy, I've determined that it is chemically impossible to trump its form and deliciousness. I knew it already on the flight over to Almaty; we were served airplane sweets that came in a delightful assortment of pure, gorgeous, fruity flavours that seduced the palate before steadily intensifying in taste and then finally, for the climax, exploding into a river of sweet goo. The lollies had a better narrative structure than a Christopher Nolan film. And this supreme sensory satisfaction was conferred not just by those particular candies, but by every single different sweet we tried in Kazakhstan. The world might have a lot of work to do on climate change, hunger, and attaining global peace, but on the confectionery front, it's game-set-match.

Thirdly, Westernisation. If Kazakhstan is a Eurasian country, then nowadays it seems much more European than Asian. Restaurants specialising in Western cuisine abound, with a Burger King, McDonalds or Pizzeria never being too far away. Kazakhis drive through town in nice imported cars and listen to English language electronic music on their radios, even as they have no clue what the singers are saying. And Kazakhi women walk around with more exposed flesh than a nudist at an abattoir. It is difficult to find a presence of traditional Kazakhi culture in the city, and as urbanisation continues, the level of Westernisation seems only likely to increase.

So much, then, for reflection. The rain cleared, and we were able to ride up the gondolas and do our hike in the bucolic mountainside. There, the air was thinner and the breeze icier, and we at last escaped properly from the heat of the Asian sun.

EPILOGUE: LEAVING

The following day we packed up and left Shymbulak, having mostly enjoyed our stay at the charming, if somewhat sleepy resort. We had a half-hour taxi ride back to Almaty, carried out by a fast-talking young Russian-looking man with an affinity for Western pop music, before checking in at a new hotel for our last night. Things were coming to a close for us in Kazakhstan, as the following day we would depart the fine republic for a different one. On our last afternoon, we went for a swim in the hotel pool, ate out at a restaurant with a 90-page menu, and lounged around in our unusually spacious room snacking on sweets and enjoying the Kazakhi air-conditioning.

Kazakhstan has not always been easy to love, with its vast intra-city distances, haphazard bus routes, 10 per cent surchages and clueless taxi drivers. But every time we bite into a candy, get unsolicited assistance from a kind passer-by, or look at the mountains, we realise it isn't so bad after all. As we leave the country and press onto our next destination - Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - I'll wistfully look out a bus window and remember all the quirks that made this republic a fine stop on our Central Asia tour.

До свидания

Leh

PART 1: MOUNTAIN BLUES

After something-teen hours of flying on China Southern Airlines, from Auckland to New Delhi via the industrial wasteland of Guangzhou, followed by another flight out from Delhi, we at last arrived in Leh. Leh is an ancient city that was historically a popular stop for traders moving between India and China, and with a population of just 30,000, it’s still a fun-size little desert metropolis in an area dominated by big-poppa mountains.

Leh lies at an altitude of 3500 metres, which is precisely high enough to cause altitude sickness, while being too low to brag to your peers about. Almost immediately after getting off the plane, the unwary sea-level dweller is met with some combination of a racing heart, dizziness, and shortness of breath, and not because he’s in love. The reduced oxygen level is responsible for these annoying symptoms, and the body takes two to three days to achieve a functional degree of acclimatisation.

The advice of Ladakhi administrators is clear: rest for the first day. You should not exert yourself, but should sit idle in a guest house or hotel and wait for the body to register what the hell you’re doing to it. On the second day, you may undertake some light activities – not lying supine all day, for instance. By day three, you should be able to get on with your life. It’s a pity my mother and I ignored the advice, and did lots of walking the first day. Whilst we felt all right during the day, if rather breathless, we paid dearly for our exertion the day after.

My mum was beset with a grisly combination of nausea and headache, while I found myself dizzy, out of breath, and slightly queasy. After a few hours of fruitless resting, we decided to go to the hospital. The taxi we had called from our guest house deposited us at a dusty, run-down complex that had somehow been billed as a viable healthcare facility. We wandered around the grounds in the 30-degree sun, trying to find someone who could point us in the rough direction of a lab coat or a stethoscope. Eventually, a plump Indian man with a white beard directed us toward a dim corridor, which we followed along until we ended up in what I can only suppose was the ‘emergency room.’

It is difficult to articulate how chaotic this medical room was. Devoid of any semblance of triage or order, the only way to see the doctor was to physically push your way into his office, and wave your summary form in his face. That’s if you could maintain your proximity, without some other patient sidling in around you. To be sure, others in the room seemed to have worse ailments than I. A grim-looking African man with an eyepatch sat opposite me, and the room was thrown into further disarray when a barely-conscious Israeli with skin the colour of condensed milk was rolled in on a wheelchair. But eventually I decided to push my way into the doctor’s quarters, in the knowledge that if I didn’t, I would be there all day.

Both my mum and I were directed to inhale oxygen for two hours, an activity that is almost impossibly boring. Never mind that my oxygen was already at 93% before I ever got on the damned machine, we were prescribed the paint-by-numbers therapy. The oxygen helped mum, while I was left no better than before – perhaps worse, as now my legs were stiff from sitting on a bed. Still, perhaps it conferred some secret benefit. The following day, I was feeling much better, and ready to take on the world.

PART 2: THE CITY

Bright-tailed and bushy-eyed, on day three I was ready to get out of the guest house and go explore the city. Mum would be ready to do the same a day later.

            Leh has none of the trappings of a developed, Western city. There are no skyscrapers, corporate franchises or neon lights that exist solely to look cool. Stylishly ancient-looking façades line the main bazaar, which is pedestrian-only. Individually-owned and run stores hawking pashmina shawls or dried fruits form the backbone of the city’s economy, which incidentally operates entirely in cash. Once you hit the shops, the only thing your visa card is good for is preparing a line of coke.

            Wandering down the stone or dirt streets, idle shopkeepers quietly profile your skin colour and stature, and use anything more than 0.25 standard deviations from the Ladakhi mean as a reason to greet you, ask you where you’re from, then try to lure you in to buy a product. Mum has been the subject of this more often than I have, admittedly. She cannot mutter the word ‘scarf’ under her breath without some fabric store owner three stores down whipping his head around, locking eyes, and breaking into a sales routine. It’s all good fun though. I’ll reply ‘julee’, the local greeting, if it is levelled at me. Ladakhi people on the whole are very laid back and not aggressive, which is probably at least partly to do with the Buddhist culture.

            Indeed, Leh is a Buddhist city through and through. Nestled in surrounding mountains are dramatic white monasteries home to schools of orange-robed monks with shaved heads and sneakers. Mum and I visited several such monasteries over the course of our stay, each offering peerless views of the mountains, valleys and green pastorales of the region. After taking in the vistas, we would proceed into the monastery interior, navigating through clouds of scented smoke and musty corridors to find shrines, where offerings, prayers and incantations were made to massive statues of the Buddha. Wall art added further interest to these sacred rooms – full of symbolism, various paintings depicted historical or dogmatic elements of the Buddhist faith.

The influence of Buddhism is felt in all aspects of Ladakhi society. Smoking is uncommon, consumption of alcohol practically non-existent. Crime is low, with stealing being a non-occurrence. And most local dishes are vegetarian, with the exception of chicken, which gets a free pass, though farmers are not supposed to kill poultry inside of the Leh-Ladakh province. Even confectionery is barely touched by the locals. Notions of intoxication result in all these things being shirked by Ladakhi society, though increasingly locals are taking up smoking, and several Leh birdies have told me that things in the city may be gradually taking a turn for the Western.

            All in all, I have come to feel rather affectionate towards Leh, even as its lack of worldly pleasures is sometimes trying on my Western soul. The unbreakable peacefulness of the people has proven a refreshing change from home, where irate property investors are induced to fits of road rage by split-second delays.

So much, then, for Leh city. On day six of our stay, mum and I embarked on a trek.

 PART 3: THE TREK

The trek had been a long time coming. Truthfully, it was the main reason we came to Leh. After meeting with a couple of different tour agencies, going over options, and getting quotes, we eventually settled on a three-night four-day trek to Sham Valley, which was considered to be the easiest trek in the region.

            We walked to Adventure Studio in the morning, and took an overly sugary tea as we waited for our guide and porter to arrive. The porter, Lobzang, arrived first. A slight young man of nineteen, he had no trouble at all carrying our fifteen-kilogram pack, and over the course of the trek would prove to walk far faster than mum or I. The guide, Stanzin, arrived some time afterward. A friendly, outgoing man, we would talk to him a lot over the four days.

            Our crew having arrived, we set off down the road, which was in terrible condition, and met up with our driver. From Leh it was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive to the part of the Sham Valley where our trek began, but we kept ourselves busy by taking go-pro clips of the passing mountainscape, and chatting with Stanzin, whose English was decent. We arrived at the start of the track sometime after midday, wolfed down a ‘hot lunch’ that was predominantly cold, then set off on our journey.

           

Day 1

The first day of the trek saw us hike through a desert landscape that boasted less greenery than a fossil fuel company conference. As we marched over sandy foothills and through plunging valleys, I asked Stanzin to give me a Ladakhi language lesson.

“I want you to teach me some basic phrases,” I said as we ascended an arid knoll, causing me to suddenly feel like a nineteenth-century anthropologist. Stanzin was only too happy to oblige. We started with ‘hello’, which is julee, then ‘how are you’, rendered kamzang in na le, then a slew of other phrases that later proved useful in the homestays we slept at. I found myself trying to analyse the grammar, but soon realised that, with a vocabulary of about fifteen words, this was likely to be futile. Still, it was an enjoyable diversion for part of the day’s trekking.

   

      

The searing hot sun, combined with a mostly uphill gradient, eventually left mum feeling less than good. I was not too fazed, as I rather enjoy the heat. Alas, a plan had to be made. We found shelter in the shade of a few trees on the roadside for a while, mum not being sure she could finish the day’s trekking. Two hours or so remained, and it was still mostly uphill. Fortunately, sometime afterward, a car drove by, and mum was able to hitch a lift up to the destination village of Yangthang. Stanzin and I pressed on by foot, as I was still feeling zesty enough. Oh, and Lobzang? Hours ago he too had decided to catch a lift to the village in a car that was driving by. Fair enough, I guess.

            Stanzin and I arrived at Yangthang at 6pm, after a long descent from the mountains. We met up with mum and Lobzang, and then found our homestay. It was a quaint, if minimally-furnished little house, perched near the village stream. Our room contained nothing more than a large mattress on the floor, which was harder than an Egyptian stone pallet, but it was nevertheless sufficient for our purposes.

            Dinner was served at around 7pm. The room where Stanzin, Lobzang, mum and I ate was separate from the area where the family ate, which made it feel more like a guest house than a homestay. But the food was quite tasty – some combination of dal, lentils, and rice, totally vegetarian. The family seemed pleasant enough, though since they didn’t speak a lick of English, our interactions were limited to whatever Ladakhi phrases my capricious memory had decided to retain. I must have sounded somewhat obsequious to them, as I kept saying “ma zhimpo ragh”, which means ‘it’s very delicious.’

            The four of us played cards after dinner – rummy. Playing cards was to become an evening routine for us over the course of the trek. Sometime later, we headed off to our hard mattress bed.

Day 2

After devouring some breakfast chapattis, we set off on the second leg of our trek. Today’s leg consisted of a gentle couple of hours to the base of a pass, followed by a decidedly less gentle slog up that pass. We took it slow, of course, and eventually made it up, though we were overtaken twice, first by a sinewy quinquagenarian carrying a saddle, and second by an Indian-American woman on a day trek. Lobzang had gone on ahead once again – we found him at the top of the pass, where he had been waiting for quite some time. At the summit, we also encountered a solo German trekker who had apparently nearly had heat-stroke after taking a wrong turn the previous day. The perils of the mountains! We then had a descent to the next village, called Hemis Supakchen, and arrived in the early afternoon. 

            Up until now I have declined to mention Indian toilets. The reason for this omission has been a combination of disgust upon recollection, and ambivalence about the necessity of elaborating on it. However, such was the base condition of the toilet at the homestay in Hemis Supakchen that I cannot but speak out.

            It is bad enough that latrines across India are holes in the ground. Rather than call them what they are, which is ‘long drops’, Indian sign-fitters euphemistically and insolently call them ‘toilets.’ So I was not expecting a pristine, flushing lavatory in this far-flung village locale. However, in other locations, I had at least been graced with a square for a hole – an orifice with a decent area in which to ‘deposit the goods.’ Here, the toilet was a mere slit – a pitiful rectangle whose width could not possibly allow for tidy work to be done. So base and poorly conceived was this toilet that my mum and I literally dreaded using it.

            Were it not despicable enough already, it was located up a flight of uneven stone steps, which required the utmost care when navigating in the dark. And perhaps most disgustingly, the toilet floor was crawling with large black beetles who only became more frenetic and haphazard under the light of a head-torch. Suffice it to say I could not, drawing upon every ounce of my creative juices, contrive a toilet so repulsive and degrading as that which I encountered at Hemis Supakchen.

            The homestay was great though! The husband and wife who ran the place were exceptionally welcoming and interactive, even as they spoke almost no English. Much human communication takes place by means of gesticulation, and by the end of the evening I had apparently become a professional mime. This time, we played Hearts, a more challenging game than Rummy, and so channelled the last of our energy for the day into counting cards.

Day 3

This was the last trekking day of our trip. It was also the most challenging, and left us wondering why the Sham Valley trek had been billed ‘the baby trek.’ After a fairly easy ascent from the village to the top of a hill, we were confronted with a steep descent down a narrow and uneven mountain path. This was difficult to negotiate for mum, so we went down slowly holding hands. Stanzin was apologetic, though he perhaps didn’t quite comprehend the difficulty, being a local with a heart like Superman. After what must have been an hour of this, we eventually reached a flatter section of track, which was nonetheless not much wider, and certainly no more even. Stanzin recounted a ghoulish anecdote about a young Israeli woman who had died on a nearby section of track not long ago, due to falling boulders from intensive construction work higher up the mountainside. We shivered as we carefully negotiated the sketchy path, and after a while reached the true challenge.

            Looming above us was a tall mountain which we needed to pass over. Lobzang had long since conquered it, of course. He sat watching from the peak as we dawdled up the narrow track that was etched into the side of the mountain. Below us, a cliff that might as well have been sheer plunged down into the valley. An agoraphobic would have been appalled. The extra altitude, topping out at 3850 metres, made the ascent harder, though admittedly the weather was merciful, as it was drizzling and quite cool. We must have taken over an hour to climb up the pass, and were certainly glad to put it behind us, as exhilarating as it was.

            The remainder of the day’s trekking was an easy downhill, passing through a village called Ang, before reaching the destination village of Thimosgang. Ang was bizarrely difficult to get through. There seemed to be no way through the village that didn’t involve deep mud, strange inclines, or walking through crop fields. In the end we encountered all three, but eventually made it out, and then had an easy walk to Thimosgang, where we found our last homestay.

           

Day 4

On the fourth day, we drove back to Leh, though we made a significant diversion to see a monastery at Lamayuru, an unsurprisingly remote mountain village. After that, I certainly felt that my monastery quota had been well-fulfilled. The only thing left to do was don a robe and embark on my path to Enlightenment.

            No, we were enlightened enough by the trek, which in spite of its difficulties had been very enjoyable, and afforded us some of the most spectacular views we’d had in the region. Stanzin and Lobzang had been good company, and had given the trek another dimension that enhanced the whole experience. While something was definitely amiss with the track billing office when they called Sham Valley a ‘baby trek’, all has been forgiven, and we don’t regret doing it.

PART 4: WINDING DOWN & A RANDOM ANECDOTE

Returning from our trek was like entering purgatory; we’d done the main event of the Leh leg of our trip, but two full days remained until our departure to Kazakhstan. I now consider those two days to have been ‘winding down’ days, akin to the last eighth of a story after the big climax.

The day after we returned from our expedition, we booked a taxi to take us up Khardung La, a mountain pass that happens to boast the highest motorable road in the world. With a peak of 5359 metres, this behemoth is as incredible as it is dangerous. Many a motorcyclist and driver have run into trouble up in the pass on account of the altitude, and some have even died. It was seemingly for this reason that when we arrived at a police checkpoint some 4500 metres up the mountain – the checkpoint where the authorities review your passport and visa – we discovered that the road had been closed in our direction. There was too much traffic, explained our driver, so it was not safe to keep the road open for us. Alas, c’est la vie. We managed to snap some pretty decent photos on the way up and down, and in the grand scheme of the universe, our missing out on the extra thousand metres was about as important as the ingredients list on a bottle of cooking oil.

I would like to finish with an anecdote that I could not find space for in the other sections. The story starts and finishes at a downtown money exchange.

Now, as I explained earlier, Leh’s economy operates pretty much exclusively on cash. You just can’t pay for anything with a card. The city’s various tour companies are no exception, and so when mum and I came to booking our trek with Adventure Studio, I was politely informed that the company only accepted cash.

“OK,” I said with a forced smile, as I signed the waiver, or whatever the form was. It shouldn’t be ridiculously difficult gathering 35,000 rupees in cash over the next two days, should it? 700 New Zealand dollars is no mean sum, but neither is it particularly enormous.

            Mum and I both knew that individual ATM machines in Leh imposed 24-hour withdrawal limits of 10,000 rupees. According to a local source, the reasoning for this involves cracking down on tax evasion, though I won’t bore you with the details, especially since I only half understand the train of logic myself. So then, we thought, we would simply visit different machines, and take advantage of the two days we had to amass the cash. How dismayed we were to discover that all the ATMs in town were closed for the next two days, because they had literally run out of cash. Yes, that’s right. The state ATMs and the international bank ATMs had all run out of cash, and would not reopen until the day we were due to leave for our trek.

            Zoinks, Scooby! Things were looking bleak. We were on the verge of cancelling the trek, and trying our luck with a different company. But, all was not lost. Amid the urban squalor of downtown Leh, a shining beacon of hope caught our eye. A money exchange! Surely such a seedy banking racket would be strapped with enough paper to meet our needs. So we strode into the joint and informed the staff of our request. We needed 35,000 rupees in cash, and would pay for it with a visa card. The chubby, materialistic-looking Indian man behind the desk was only happy to help. It would be simple. We would pay him 37,000-and-something rupees, and he would get us the cash. A tidy commission, but at least he had the greenbacks in his office.

            Mum swiped her visa card through the machine. This was it! Finally, we would be able to get the cash we needed. At long last, after our fruitless wandering around town, we had found the answer to our woes.

            …The machine didn’t work.

The Indian man smiled nervously, and asked us to try swiping again. We did so. It did not work that time either.

“It’s OK,” he said, the magical spirit of avarice in his countenance scolding him. “Sometimes the machine doesn’t work in here, because of bad reception. We can go down the street – I know a corner where it works.” OK, so we were going to walk down the street with the banker and do the transaction down there.

            We got about halfway down the road before mum informed us that she was too tired. It was the end of a long day, and she was understandably not in the mood to participate in this farcical vignette. And yet, we needed the cash. So I offered to do the transaction on her behalf, asking her for her PIN number to do so. There was seemingly no other way. The banker and I said our farewells to my mother, and continued down the bazaar.

            After what seemed like an eternity, during which the banker engaged in brief and random conversational exchanges with acquaintances of his on the street, we arrived at the end of the main bazaar, the fabled location where the visa machine would work. He told me to take a seat on the ground, an instruction I was reluctant to comply with, seeing as there was a never-ending stream of pedestrians walking through that piece of terrain. But I acquiesced, and he took a seat next to me on the asphalt.

            “Now,” he said, queuing up the machine, “How much was it again? Thirty-seven thousand, two hundred and something. Two hundred and…” I stared at the banker vacantly as he struggled to recall his own rate.

“Let’s say forty.” Great. I was pleased that the money-man had settled on a random integer for his commission, which would then be charged to my mum’s card. His stocky fingers depressed the appropriate buttons to line up the transaction, and he then passed the machine to me, asking me to enter my mother’s PIN. I did so.

            …The machine didn’t work.

“Let’s try again,” he suggested, ever the supplier of good ideas. So we tried again. The outcome was no different. The banker remained calm.

“OK, I have one more idea,” he said. “I have another shop back down the bazaar. It has a visa machine. We’ll try it there.” Excellent.

            The Indian money-exchanger and I stood up, brushed off our pants, and set off back down the street. As we walked, he held the machine in one hand, my mother’s visa card sticking out of it. This seemed totally unremarkable to him.

“Here, try again,” he said, passing me the machine as we walked down the bazaar, where hundreds of other people were moving around in close proximity. I numbly entered my maternal parent’s PIN again, as the banker waved at an acquaintance.

“It didn’t work,” I said, passing the machine back to him.

“OK,” he said, “We’ll wait till the shop.”

            It was quite a long walk to his shop, which wasn’t his shop at all, but another man’s store that sold expensive-looking shawls and jewellery. By this point, I was doubting whether anything would come of this wild goose chase. We walked into the upmarket joint as a falsely earnest looking Ladakhi salesman explained the integrity of some gemstone to a smartly dressed Indian lady. The banker greeted his fellow racketeer and retrieved the visa machine from behind the counter, before queueing up the transaction once again. He seemed to be clearer on the details of his commission rate this time, which sped up the process somewhat.

            “OK, here you go,” he said to me, passing me the machine for the umpteenth time. I sighed internally, then proceeded to enter the PIN.

            …The machine worked!!!

The cash-man and I shared a laugh as we celebrated the success of the transaction device.

“OK, now we’ll go back and get the cash.” And so, once more, I followed the banker, utterly sick of his silly gait, but relieved nonetheless that the last half hour had not been completely wasted.

When we arrived back at the main store, one of the banker’s co-workers opened up the till and began counting out 500 rupee notes in front of us. After counting out seventy, she recounted, then passed the notes to the banker, who counted them himself. I silently audited his arithmetic as he deftly passed each note into the other hand, looking impossibly stereotypical for his profession. Fortunately, the two of them had got it right, and having cross-checked the amount about five times, we at last took the wad of cash and the receipt, and got the hell out of there.

In sum, Leh was a better-than-expected destination for us. From mountains to monasteries to dusty streets to rural idyls, Ladakh supplied us with plenty of anecdotes and experiences to recall with varying levels of affection in the years to come. We now journey to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where some actual ‘stories of the steppe’ might unfold. I hope that when I can finally be bothered writing an entry about it, you will read it as faithfully as you have read this.

Ya julee