A Family Journal

The Obstacle Course

After hanging out in the Frankfurt airport for 6 hours, we got on the plane and literally fell asleep right away. I vaguely remember the plane taking off. I also vaguely remember Kara telling me I could lay my seat back, but I was out. Kara and I each got about 4 hours of sleep on the plane, which was much needed. We got in to the Almaty airport just after midnight Monday.

Of course, no international travel goes without a hitch, and Kara’s suitcase was lost. Never made it out of Chicago. How 2 hours in Chicago isn’t enough, I don’t know, but that is beside the point. It was on its way. I went outside to meet our driver while Kara worked on getting her suitcase to Taraz. Our driver was holding a sign with our names on it. It became pretty clear to me right away that he didn’t speak any English. I told him “Kara nyet bagaj” which he seemed to understand. We waited for a bit and then Kara made it out. We got to the car about 1:00 AM. There the driver had a piece of paper with some handy sayings in Russian and English we could use if we needed him to stop for anything.

After reading many other blogs, I expected our driver to do his best Jeff Gordon impersonation. Didn’t turn out that way. The first four hours of the drive to Taraz were actually pretty smooth. We stopped once for gas and I used the outhouse. It was rustic, even for an outhouse. Made me glad to be male… I can’t imagine how a female would use that thing. We only hit one bone-rattling pothole but that was about it. I had expected worse. We stopped again at a small station to use the restroom (a real one!). The driver pointed to the left and said “Kryzygstan,” and to the right and said “Kazakhstan,” and straight ahead and said “Taraz.” We went straight. That’s when the road got interesting.

I guess it’s just easier to put up a sign that says there are bumps and maximum speed is 20 km/h than it is to fix the road. It was bad. Very bad. There were potholes that could have easily swallowed a Yugo. The going was very slow. Even on the good parts, the speed limit was often posted at 50 km/h. Imagine trying to drive through Wyoming at about 32 mph with huge potholes. It was a long trip. Once we got closer to Taraz, the roads got a bit better. I found out that the car could go about 150 km/h before rattling too violently.

It was dark until about 6AM, so we didn’t see much. I could tell we were going through some mountainous areas and then we leveled out, but it was hard to know for sure. Once it got light, there was an endless expanse of steppe to our right with an occasional hut. One hut, which didn’t look to be bigger than a 4-person dome tent, had a John Deere tractor parked next to it. We went through a few towns and they seemed to be pretty poor. Livestock were grazing everywhere, but their favorite place seemed to be right next to the road. Cattle, sheep, horses, and donkeys were everywhere, and we saw herders keeping a watchful eye.

We got to Taraz about 9 AM. We figured that by that time, we had been traveling for 40 hours straight. We went to the Hotel Zhambyl, where we met the coordinator Janet and our translator Zema. We were shown two rooms in the hotel and chose one, and then were told to be ready at 10:40 to go to the baby house. Excitedly, we ran to our room to shower up and get ready. We were so excited that Kara wasn’t even too upset when she blew up her 110-watt hairdryer.

Quick advice section for this post. One, if you want to drink at all during your drive to Taraz, get something at the little concession stand or machine at the airport before you go. And go to the bathroom, whether you really have to go or not. Much better than the alternatives. Two, if you need to sleep on the drive, do your best to get it in on the first half of the trip. It won’t happen on the second half. Three, make sure your hairdryer (and other electronics) can handle input in the 220-240V range. Kara’s hairdryer was 110 only. We plugged it into the Magellan EuroSurge and it still blew. Some converters might have a switch that converts the output, but this one does not. The converter does work great though to charge the laptop and use other devices that can handle the higher voltage input.