September 29, Rough Night, Needle Canyon, and Salt Flat Breakdowns

 So as you can see from the title, the night was interesting. Our tent was tilty so we kept sliding down on the slippery sleeping bags that we turned into a mattress. Every time I see this I wonder who and why the hell they made sleeping bags slippery?? 

If you need to use them in the rain, you won’t be doing much sleeping anyway and the other 99% of the time it is just annoying and disgusting. And the wind kept battering the plastic sides of the tent making wailing noises, and tiny blanket kept sliding off both of us. But the worst was the sand. The top of the tent was a wide mesh, but that fine sand made it through the sides of the tent as well. We woke up from the crunch between the teeth, shivering, to the wailing of the tent. Everything was covered by sand. We would wake up, come outside to look at a truly marvelous sky with stars not even despoiled by the almost full moon, and then would get tired, get back in, shake off the sand from the sleeping bags and the blanket, get in position and the cycle would continue. We asked ourselves again and again why the hell we decided to go camping and resolved no more countryside tripping at least for a year.

In the morning we sullenly packed and sat waiting for Alihan to drive up. He saw that we are sad and I mentioned that we don’t want to stay in the tent anymore because of the sand and cold. He said there was not supposed to be any wind here but in the third night there will be a lot and maybe we should try a different tent. We suggested to have breakfast and then make plans.

The tails definitely fluffed up toward the end of breakfast with two coffees each and it helped that we asked at the etno ayul we were eating at again for access to wireless and caught up on the emails and texts from home. Dan even suggested that we may do a tent again on the third night. I am not so sure. BTW we are staying in this same etno ayul tonight. Why we had to stay in the shitty motherland of Shevchenko totally beats me. Well not totally, it does help w the margins.

Our guide and logistics of the moving is not exactly optimal. He somewhat speaks Russian but no English. I guess Starlink helps to communicate in English w clients but it is shit experience and he does not know practically anything about places we are visiting. He does this on the side “cause they asked him”. He usually lets us out at the site and we kind of do our own exploring. 

And neither Google Maps nor Gemini are really consistent here on where stuff is and what that is. Even though roads are much better and there are many more paved areas compared to Mongolia, tourism itself as it is represented by care for parks, descriptions on landmarks quite lacking. We will have to seriously prep when we do our drive in South Kazakhstan in a few days. Compared to lovely and thoughtful Khoz in Altai, tourist infrastructure here is quite lacking.

Anyhow, the first stop was at what we called a Needle Canyon, a really lovely canyon with sides made of ancient crumbling slate, like needles. Alihan let us out and we walked for about a kilometer marveling. It kept going and we had no instructions so we came back. He said he ain’t been there before.

We grabbed take-home lunch and got on our way.

Mechanical Failures and the Salt Flats

We continued driving through the roadless road toward the salt lake when sudden, alarming beeping noises started coming from the car. Turns out the main machinery for the brakes completely broke down. We pulled over on the open steppe, and soon three 4x4s stopped to consult with Alihan for a while. Two young Chinese tourists hopped out holding cameras and sporting mikes on their shirts, I guess we're going to be on Chinese Instagram.

After the other vehicles drove off, we sat around for a bit until Alihan made the bold call to drive us onward to the Tuzbair Salt Lake and white cliffs using the handbrake. Once we arrived, we left him to figure out recovery arrangements and set off to climb the cliffs, truly magnificent chalk formations rising like ancient white monsters above the plain.

We took a walk around the salt flat afterward. We’ve covered a lot of salt lakes this year, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and now Kazakhstan, and this particular soil looked like a shoe-digesting variety, so we trotted back toward the car.

The emergency rescue plan was for Alihan to creep the vehicle back to the main road, wait for a tow truck to pick up him and his broken 4x4, while his brother dropped us off at the same yurt camp where we had eaten breakfast to stay the night, with a new driver scheduled to arrive in the evening to resume tomorrow’s route.

The Showdown & Evening Recovery

What followed was a pretty ugly showdown. Upon reaching the yurt camp hours behind schedule, no one knew why we are here. We called Timur the office guy and he did not pick up for a while and then the administration made a call and said us they were "doing us a favor" by putting us in a separate yurt, treating us like unannounced walk-ins rather than clients on a pre-paid, private tour. We laid it out bluntly to the tour company owner and the management that we expect a specific sequence of places tomorrow and a hotel for the night but I have doubts that that’s how it will play out. 

We found that using English rather than Russian significantly improves service here and in general everywhere in Kazakhstan. That's how we managed to get into Sandyk a few days earlier - even though there were available spots on open table, they at first did not want to let us in.

Now, after all that friction and several beers and dinner later, we are settled into a comfortable, warm, clean yurt meant for five. To top off the evening, Ron LaSalvia called, which completely made my night. He looks much better, and even though we commiserated back and forth, he seems to be in a genuinely good place.

We will see what tomorrow brings when the battle continues at 7:15am!