About castle valleys and drowned trees

Following the exploration of Altyn Emel National Park, we were set to discover the remaining natural wonders that the south-east of Kazakhstan still had to offer. With our Russian driver Boris navigating the 4WD van over the (off)-roads while cracking jokes, we spent many shaking hours in the car, as Kazakhstan is a massive country. For the final three days in the 'nature themed' part of our trip, we had on our schedule visits to: Charyn Canyon, Kolsai lakes and Kaindy lake. Gaukhar had arranged a guesthouse for us to stay in, once again a very simple home and home cooked food: delicious manti, salty meat dumplings. There, we met an older Swiss couple again that had been following the same route as us for the past two days, and who had refused an even more rudimentary guesthouse that only had an outhouse (schijthuis). The place we stayed at had a real toilet at least, but no shower. We had to make due with a wood-burned banya (Russian sauna) for 500 Tenge per person.  And believe me, after climbing rocky dusty canyons during the day, a banya feels like heaven, even when it's super hot and the water is rusty from the home made iron water reservoir. 

 Charyn canyon is like the Kazakh version of the Grand Canyon, where the soft rock has been eroded away by the Charyn river over millions of years, leaving all kinds of rocky creations behind in colors ranging from light brown to slightly red. The cool thing here is that there's one part of the canyon where the river doesn't run anymore, and what's left is a nice walk street: the Valley of Castles (or alternatively you can drive through it, an option for the hurried and lazy). Here you can let your imagination do the talking and see all kinds of creatures and shapes in the rock formations up close. At the end we scrambled back up to the top over a steep path in the blistering sun, only to be rewarded by some amazing views over the canyon.  

Charyn canyon as seen from the top

With a bit of imagination various shapes and figures can be seen in the rocks, this one looks like a frog (but won't turn in to a prince when kissed)

 

Imagine driving through this!

 

After about 3km of walking in the canyon, you reach the river which is nice spot for a picnic. To get back to the car, you can either walk back the way you came or take a short cut close to the picnic place. No need to guess which route we took! It was quite the scramble though, on all fours to get up..

 

The view from the top makes it totally worth the climb though!

The first Kolsai lake as seen from the start

...and from the other end of the lake

The next day was a hiking day. Kolsai lakes are a group of three lakes in the mountain range between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and its once again completely different nature from the desert like phenomena we saw the days before. Lush green and mountainous, this could just as easily have been Germany, except there's no good roads, trail indications or mountain huts with Radler (which it could really use). There used to be only the Kolsai river running down in between the mountains, but mudslides and earthquakes blocked it off and caused the formation of the three lakes along the river. We started at the lowest (1st) lake, and hiked to the 2nd lake in a good three hours, and turned back after a nice lunch in the middle of gorgeous mountain lake scenery. The walk is about 9-10km one-way following a rushing river, going up some 400m, with only the last half hour being quite steep. You can go to the third lake, but it's so close to the border that you could get into trouble without proper papers and really, 6-7 hours of walking is enough for one day!  

The path to the second lake followed the rapid river

There were some small wooden bridges to cross...

   

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...and some slightly bigger (and scarier) ones

We met this cute little fella on the way

Perfect lunch spot at the second Kolsai lake

   

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Little stream running into the lake

The last wonder of nature that Kazakhstan had to offer us turned out to be one of the highlights from our trip: the surreal and almost magical Kaindy lake. Once again, a hard to reach place, even Boris' 4x4 van wasn't up to the task to triumph the pile of rocks they call a road. The owner of our guesthouse would drive us to the lake that was about an hour away, in his old Soviet ambulance, the high and stripped-of-any-comfort UAZ ('uazik') van. After this bumpy but fun ride where we literally drove through a river twice, we were only a 15 minute walk away from the lake. Kaindy is Kazakh for 'place with birch trees' which is kind of a shit name for the lake, since there is a small pine forest standing bam-smack in the middle of the lake. Once again a mud slide brought this lake into existence in 1911, and more than a hundred years later, the trees are still just chilling there. Moreover, the lake is about 40m (?) deep and the trees are still covered in green needles under the ice-cold clean mountain water. Together with the almost turquoise, slightly murky water, this makes for an awesome, unimaginably striking image.   

The magical Kaindy lake

You need a sturdy van to get to Kaindy lake

We met a nice Ukranian dude who spoke more American than most Americans (like, like, you know) and his massive Kazakh boxer friend at the lake, other than that there were no tourists, just like at most other sites we've seen. The lack of hordes of tourists and masses of picture-taking Japanese is one of the best things about traveling the lesser-known parts of the world. Being able to just take your time and soak up the beauty of a place rather than standing in line to take that one picture that everyone's taking is worth a hell of a lot of planning and border crossing hassles.

 After this, we made our way to the Karkara border crossing with Kyrgyzstan, after a couple of small stops at special places (stunning moon landscapes, a random heap of salt in the middle of nowhere) that Boris knew to find. Just before the last hour of driving on a once again bumpy dirt road, we had the best duck and lamb shashlik in a little roadside shack. Once we reached the remote border crossing, we were in the middle of a thunderstorm and got completely soaked while running to the border guards. In a huge contrast to the Uzbek border crossing adventure, there was no one there apart from (of course) a couple of Dutch tourists. Once the super helpful guards and Gaukhar helped us figure out that the taxi I arranged beforehand was already waiting on the other side, we were in Kyrgyzstan in a matter of a few very wet minutes. On to the third and final country of our Silk Road trip!

At the moonlike landscape (we btw totally suck at this jumping thing)

With Gaukhar and Boris at the salt plains close to the border

Right before crossing the border, Kazakhstan had one little treat for us at the town of Kegen: the best and most mouthwatering duck shashlik!