[Cool place – part III]
Glad to know everyone’s enjoyed part I and part II.
Ok…….I figured I cant write everything that happened during that 1 month……it’ll take too many parts…..and ppl are just gonna get bored to death.
So, I’ll write about two major outings I had there. One was to the grand canyon (yeah, Kazakhstan has a really cool canyon too) and the other to Medeo and Chimbulac.
Today, it’ll be Grand canyon. Medeo n Chimbulac next time. Aw man…..it’s a free day today!!!! Yay! Before I move to that, lemme tell you something. That night when we reached Almaty, at about 3.30 or so, after I got into my room, I fell asleep instantly. I expected my father to allow me to sleep late into the morning coz I was tired. But he said that I needed to adjust my sleep cycle and adjust myself to the time zone too (+ about 2.5 hours than India). So, he woke me up at like 7.30 a.m. and told me to take an afternoon siesta if needed. I was glad that he woke me up coz I saw something great then. At night, I hadn’t bothered to look around the house.
When he woke me up in the morning, I saw a huge lady standing by my bed giving me an even huger smile. It was our maid – Maria….who was very happy to see me. I ‘hi – helloed’ her and woke up groggily. It was exercise time for dad. He was doing his push-ups and stuff in the drawing room. He told me to come into the drawing room to see something. The dark curtains of the drawing room were closed. And then, he opened them, and I lost all my sleep…..right in front of me was the snow covered peaks of the Tien-shan Mountains. We weren’t too far from them. (Eventually, we actually did go that place. It was only about 30 minutes from our house). Great view. Clear day, brilliantly blue sky…..golden white peaks…….sigh wish I was there right now. BTW, if you’ll look at the houses there, they’ll have this central heating system, thick heavy metal doors with double layers of glass and they’re mostly carpeted. This is all to protect you from the freakin’ cold they have in winters. But I was there in summer. So it was pleasant. Their summers are not too hot. You just need a mild sweater and it’s good enough.
Anyway, as I promised, I’ll get to the grand canyon now.
The grand canyon (GC for short) is a great place to be. So, on one Sunday, all the office staff (the Indians and the Russians) decided to go there for an outing. (btw, in today’s piece, all names have been changed ….the foreign sounding names will be that of the Russians, the rest will be the Indians. Ok.)
So….on this one Sunday, we decided to go to GC. We were supposed to leave at like 8 a.m. (about 25 of us) from the office by this bus that we had hired. You know, like ‘rent a car’…this was ‘rent a bus’. We were all waiting at the office since like 7.45 but the bus dropped in only at 10. Meanwhile, we just passed time. I played Frisbee and badminton with Ellie (she was the younger sister of one Angela who worked in the office too). Ellie was almost my age. We had lots of Frisbees, and badminton racquets and stuff.
Whoever had done the job of hiring the bus had done a pretty good job. It was just the perfect size to fit in about 25-30 people. Clean, stylish, very comfy seats, trays in the front (like it is in aircrafts), T.V, washbasin, music and tables at the back…and a bathroom too. It was cool.
The four hours to grand canyon were worth it. Everybody was having a great time, listening to music first….(we were all fighting on which numbers to play). The Indian people wanted Punjabi…Daler Mehndi…the Indian ladies wanted something more peaceful…my mom wanted some sentimental English singer’s songs to be played (I forget his name), the Russians wanted Ricky martin and Lou Bega. Eventually, we decided to play them all one by one. Ellie and I couldn’t care less. We were eating Pringles, drinking cola and talking. Fortunately, she could talk in English.
The journey was beautiful. The mountains on both sides, deep huge cliffs…you can just stare out into them and ‘feel’ their beauty. It’s difficult to put into words. How something makes you feel varies from person to person. For someone else the cliffs and mountains would just have been ‘huge pieces of rocks…..spotted with a few trees here and there’. For me, they made me ‘feel’. At one point of time, there were actually different coloured flowers in them. Lovely. The weather was great, the place was great……life used to be great back then. No worries.
We reached grand canyon (GC) obviously 2 hours late. Once down, Alex (also from the office) warned us that we should be a little careful around here for scorpions. Coz this was a semi-arid region….so occasionally, scorpies came around, you know.
We were on top….and were supposed to go down ‘INTO’ the canyon. But from the top, the view was spectacular. Huge, red, sandy canyon….the best part was that in the distance, we could see snowy mountains too. It was such a contrast….sandy, dry, hot canyon…..and in some distance from there, cold, snowy, white mountains. Aw man….
So getting down into the canyon was ‘steep’. Literally. It was difficult to get down into the steep slope. When there was this general announcement ki andar utarna hain, I was like…..you nuts? But then, I had to. My dad and two other gentlemen got in first….easily. Then, the rest of the guys got down too. Then, they helped the ladies to get down. The problem was that the slope was steep and there were lots of small pebbles on it…so the moment you step onto the pebbles, they start pulling you down….they don’t stay in their place…you know. They keep rolling down. So you keep slipping. You should know how to use that slip-force to your advantage…but I didn’t. I was screaming and shouting and making slow progress along with many others. I was shouting at dad to come and get me….he did. He took my hand and carefully guided me down. I was so happy. What I didn’t know was that I was going to face worse things later.
We had lots of luggage. Lots of cola bottles, orange soda….lots of soft-drinks, water, shashlik (chicken)…sandwiches, bread, salads and stuff. Somehow….Andy and Samir uncle took up the task of getting all that down and they did it. Then, we started the long walk to the camp site. We knew the way coz Alex had been there before. He was quite strong. He had taken some scout training or something…..I don’t know exactly what it was….but he was like very strong, knew the way inside the canyon…..had general info about it and everything. Very cute.
We walked for about an hour, till we found a taxi….now you’ll think HOW the taxi got INTO the canyon. Yeah well, even I don’t know how. But it was there. And it was the only car INSIDE the canyon. So what we did was, we put all the food inside the taxi and sent Alex and Samir uncle with the taxi to the camp spot. So they reached there in a few minutes. While the rest of us trekked for half an hour more to get there. It was great. Walking inside the canyon, huge rocky walls on both sides, little caves….the occasional dry shrub. You feel so….small…inside the huge thing. (contd. In comments section)