Taking the Train in Kazakhstan

It's raining in Almaty, Kazakhstan today, which has given me a nice opportunity to update the blog. I've had really good luck with weather so far on this trip - the is the first rain day I've had in over a month.

I've had some pretty memorable experiences on trains in Kazakhstan in the past two weeks I've been here. As you'll remember, I was thwarted from taking a train across the steppe from Aktau to Shymkent so I was very excited as I stood on the platform in Shymkent, valid ticket in hand, ready to board the train for Taraz.

Passenger trains are few and far between in Kazakhstan. The train station in Shymkent (Kazakhstan's third largest city) only had two platforms and saw about 12 passenger trains come through per day. So, when two trains pulled up at the same time, I was a little perturbed that they had to make this seemingly simple task of getting on the train to Taraz more complicated. I started asking people around me which was the train to Taraz and, fairly confident that the two people I talked to were right, presented my ticket to the train steward on the second platform to confirm I had made the right choice. He waved me on, I found my seat and settled in with my book for the four hour ride to Taraz.

But, about 20 minutes after we left, a group of three ticket checkers came through the cabin and, upon inspecting my ticket, excitedly expressed that something was not right. It turned out that I was on the train to Tashkent, Uzbekistan - not Taraz.



Dusty road in Taraz similar, but not identical, to my walk of shame after getting kicked off the train to Tashkent. 



I was very frustrated. How could three people all have pointed me to the wrong train? Why was the ticket steward who let me on the train and was part of the group informing me that I was bound for Tashkent not fessing up and apologizing? Of course, he left me out to dry as the dumb American. I can't imagine the consequences of me showing up at the Uzbekistan border without a visa and unable to explain myself.

I got out at the next train stop after spending fivec minutes as the center of attention in the carriage. I hopped off the train and followed a dusty road across the Steppe to a main highway about half a mile from the train station. Luckily, I was able to flag down a bus going to Shymkent within a few minutes. In Shymkent, I found a bus that got me to Taraz faster and cheaper than the train, but the driver played was playing bad, loud dance music at full blast the whole ride. It made me miss my train to Uzbekistan.

A few days later, now set and determined to have a proper train ride across the Kazakh steppe, I boarded the train in Taraz bound for Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty. I checked FOUR times to make sure that this train (at the time, the only train in the station) was in fact going to Almaty. The "Almaty" sign in the window, the confirmations of several stewards and the people I shared my cabin with all confirmed that I was, in fact, on the right train.

But that didn't stop me from having further adventures on the Kazakhstan rail network.

I shared my cabin with an Uzbek man headed ultimately for St. Petersburg, Russia and an older couple who were going to a spa for a week long vacation. The woman took interest in me and, as she spoke a little English, served as my spokesperson for the trip. At one point, she pulled out her cell phone and made a call. She spoke in Kazakh for a few minutes before handing me the phone. Her daughter was on the line and had all sorts of questions for me about the US and what I was doing in Kazakhstan. Moments after I took the phone, her parents exited the cabin, leaving me alone with the Uzbek (now drunk and passed out on the bed above me) and their young, very much SINGLE daughter.



Interesting brick work on a house in Taraz. I can't tell if this is supposed to be artistic or laziness. Artistic expression is rare here, from what I can tell.

After ten minutes of talking to this girl, her parents came back, giving me an excuse to hand back the phone. Her mom went on and on telling me how beautiful she was, that she was 22 and needed to find and husband and -oh! wasn't her English just so good?

I made many attempts to make it clear that I had a girlfriend back home and that I wasn't interested in her daughter. Kazakhs don't really seem to have an understanding of "girlfriends" though. It seems that inter-gender relations here are either familial or matrimonial - not much space in between for friends or girlfriends or the like.

Avoiding the marriage sack, I stepped out of my cabin into the corridor to watch the endless Kazakh steppe slip by us. After a few minutes of soaking in the fact that I was finally on a train across Kazakhstan, the door behind me opened and a Kazakh man looked up and asked, "Amerikanski?" I nodded yes and he waved me excitedly into his cabin saying "Also Amerikanski!" It seemed I was not the sole American on this train after all.

Turns out I was. The Kazakh, in his excitement, seems to have confused the Ugandan in his cabin for an American. Kazakhs don't have much experience with black people so I can imagine how he might have mistaken the Ugandan for an American. The Ugandan turned out to be Andrew Mwesigwa, a soccer player for the team in Shymkent on his way to meet his family in Almaty. He explained that he wouldn't want his family to suffer through a train ride as the lone black people, unable to communicate at all. I saw firsthand the unwanted attention he gets in Kazakhstan - not as a soccer player, but just as a black person - when a group of kids came up trying to take his picture. Few people in Kazakhstan have ever seen a black person live and up close before.

A few hours later, sharing a cab ride into Almaty from the train station, I learned that Andrew was also the captain of the Ugandan national soccer team! What?! He made me promise to watch him in the African Cup next year. I told him that the last person I had expected to meet in Almaty was the captain of the Ugandan soccer team. He was a really nice guy.

There were more shenanigans on the train, like they guy who offered to fight the drunk Kazakh for me, or the guy who offered to buy my iPhone off of me for $100. When I refused, he asked if I could send him back two once I got to the US. One of the train stewards shared a melon with me while speaking to me in Kazakh, persistent that if he only spoke loud enough, I would eventually understand him. He lost interest in me after a few minutes of non-comprehension so he sent me back to my cabin.

Tonight, I get on the train to Urumqi, China - my longest train trip yet at 31 hours. I'm going to have to stock up on food before I go. This trip will be sure to yield plenty of more stories, too, which I'll be happy to post later.