Charyn Canyon & Jesik Lake

Friday 2005-09-09

Today in the morning Florian flew home to Germany. The job was waiting fro him...

We (Veronika, Anja and me) spent a lazy day in Almaty.

Meeting with Aizhana and her sweet niece:



Saturday 2005-09-10

Excursion to the Charyn Canyon with "Kraus Reisen" (have a look at the bus!):


The geogaphic position of Almaty is great. It is located, where the Zailiysky Alatau mountains rise up suddenly from the flat step to about 5000 meters.
The photos show the contrast between the flat step (about 800 meters over sea level) and the 4979 meters high Pik Talgar, which is only about 20 kilometers away:





The Charyn Canyon is located about 200 km east of Almaty:








































Sunday 2005-09-11

Excursion to the Jesik lake:




















Monday 2005-09-12


I spent the day in Almaty to gather some information about my planned two-day-hiking trip to the Bolshoj Almatinskij Pik.
In a bookshop I found some good maps.

Typical "Soviet"-style improvisation for garden watering:




Since some years the Kazakh railways have a modern Spanish Talgo-train. This hotel-train runs daily between Almaty and Astana, the trip for about 1400 km takes less than 13 hours (compared to about 20 hours with other trains).

I went to the station to see this train:




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