After spending night in Dubai getting shocked with the sheiks and everything-is-the-biggest-the-best-and-about-consuming-Dubai, I arrived to Almaty Kazakhstan with surprise surprise Toon. After spending the past months in Myanmar, India and Nepal where everything is possible and people are more than happy to help a lost tourist in every situation ( also when you don't really need-or want to be helped), Kazakhstan felt in the beginning...well...different or even opposite.
Since the unorganized style of traveling, I hadn't downloaded the map of Almaty beforehand neither we had checked the guesthouses, currency or anything else about the country. I believe it's the Nepali effect combined with the trust that everything will work out just fine anyways. Instead of figuring out all the damage that my bike had gotten during the flight, I decided to take a bus with Toon to the city center. After few hours we finally managed to jump into the bus ( the buses are running in time and there is no excuses to wait for two minutes) and got to meet first angry Kazhak. The bus driver wanted price of six people for taking the cartoon box into the bus. I think I made the driver even more angry with calling him from sir to brother (that's how I have called men in India and Nepal). After some angry shouting and negotiating the price went down to one person price and we sat confused in the bus.
After this little shock we made it to the city ( while I was watching the views passing by, I thought I must was back in Eastern Europe ) where the friendly people helped us with everything, they even took us to a guesthouse and negotiated the price and envied us for a drink ( ah, there is alcohol =vodka again!). Once again it was good to trust that everything will end up just fine. The next shock came in a food shop: we were able to buy absolutely everything that one can imagine (and this shop was small, the next day I spent three hours in a supermarket with all temptations to buy everything that was something similar from home, they even sell Finnish coffee and oats there!). The third shock was the electricity, wouu suddenly there was nonstop electricity and working wifi, no more power-cuts and unpredictable availability of electricity. How clean, green and organized everything was!
How weird everything felt, woman having high heels and small clothes, my clothes were far too saggy and colorful, people didn't smile no matter how much I tried to smile them. Comparing two different places to cope with new surroundings is such a human thing to do. It's weird to be a western woman and get cultural chock when coming back to the western world (that's what I thought I was in). I don't know what I expected from Kazhakstan, but Almaty was just like being in Berlin, or anywhere in East Europe. Street cafeterias, bars, wide and big streets and everything one can imagine. I don't think I would agreed that Almaty is like Europe, if I came straight from home to Almaty.
As Toon says expectations are future disappointments. I was not disappointed, because I never imagined what Kazhakstan is alike, but I was certainly having a cultural shock and I so appreciated the fact that I didn't need to go through it alone. We were both amazed with basically everything, even the cars were quiet and as Toon said, they were not smelly cars (most of them do have some sort of filtering system for the pollution! I believe that to cross borders with my bicycle is a lot smoother than with an airplane, even though sometimes there is big difference between the two border countries. By now, one thing I have learned is to give time for myself, not to take anything too searious, because feelings will pass. Whenever I will be ready to be here in Central Asia I will feel good again, so I decided to let the time pass and try to bring myself to present moment when ever I found myself flying into the future or back to memories in Nepal, India or even all the way back to Finland. Hard, but isn't present situation where I some years ago found my happiness?
In our guesthouse we had a lovely housekeeper who reminded me like one specific creature from Finnish cartoon called Moomins. No matter what we did we were not allowed to do it. The best one was when Toon went to buy laundry powder and she sold it to him happily, she even showed where the laundry machine was located. After few minutes, she told us that we are not allowed to use the laundry machine. I found all this hilarious and could not stop laughing, she was my sunshine with her njet njet ( I am sure she also had laughter in her eyes!)! There were so many things we were not allowed to do, for example, not allowed to whistle, walk barefoot (I was cooking in the kitchen and had left my flip lops next to the table next to a table where I cut the vegetables), sit outside on the balcony after 9pm and the list just goes on and on.
We spend few days in Almaty, I had a problem with the gears of my bike, neither me nor Toon managed to get the lightest gears to function. I took the bike to a four bike shops, where they didn't manage to fix it either. All of them told me that I have a wrong bottom bracket, and I argued so hard with them, that I have made enough kilometers with this bottom bracket to know that the gears can function with it. All of them told me to leave their shop and I started to get desperate with unfriendly people. I think, I have gotten treated way too well during last few months, because in the last bike shop where I went I almost started to cry, because of the rudeness of the people. They were telling that I should not travel with my bike alone, if I don't manage to fix it. I should have man to cycle with. I knew it did not make sense, because they are the professionals and they didn't manage to do anything with my bike either. As usually in life this story has a happy ending: Vladimir arrived into the shop and told he likes old bikes, if I don't mind he would like to have a look on my bike. He told that Lady princess is beautiful and he can fixed her. After one hour he had managed to give her a treat and with smile on my face, off I cycled and thought that actually Kazhakstan is not that bad place to be. There is always good people around and people just communicate differently..
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