A quick update: from Turkistan, we continue our train journey 1560 KMs to the city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea.
The Kazakhstan stations we’ve seen have been traditional, as opposed to the sleekly modern ones in Uzbekistan.
Unusually for Kazakhstan Railways, our train is half an hour late. But hey, we’re going to spend 36 hours on board, so what’s a mere half-hour?
Finally, our train pulls into the station.
It’s 1560 KMs of almost unrelieved flatness. After spending many weeks in the high mountains, this takes some getting used to.
For a day and two nights, we read, chat, sleep, or watch the countryside roll by. It’s very relaxing – for us, that is. Some people would find it boring.
We see isolated small towns and groups of camels. (The one-humped kind.)
Aktau is as far as you can go before the getting wet in the Caspian Sea. It has beaches, but they aren’t really inviting. At least around Aktau, there’s lots of industry.
Even Maria barely dips her toes in. This doesn’t stop the locals from gathering on a Saturday afternoon.
We see the Aktau coat of arms on all kinds of city furniture, like these park benches. We recognize the salute to the oil & gas industry, the local uranium mining industry, and the shipping industry. Not sure what the bottom right corner represents – looks like a garden gnome with his hat pulled low.
Speaking of city furniture, another mounted fighter jet looms over this particular park.
It’s a MiG-21. Apparently the USSR produced over 10,000 of these.
These fish probably come from the Caspian. We see them at the Sary Bazaar.
…which has all kinds of stuff. Like these musical instrunents.
(I still haven’t found a camel bell.)
Some things we notice here in Aktau – English here is practically non-existent – which results in a lot of amusing lively dumbshow and fumbling for Google Translate on the phone.
Also, there are a lot of Georgians here. (From Tblisi, not Atlanta.) Not sure why, besides the poor state of the Georgian economy since they decided to go back to being Russia’s sidekick.
One nice feature of Aktau is the Skal’naya Tropa, a scenic boardwalk by the sea.
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