sofasurfers

On our last day in Almaty, we head up the mountains that cradle the city of Almaty. Our escort for today is Gulnara, a Uighur girl (some 20-30% of Almatanskis [made-up word alert] are Uighur). And her name means Flower of Pomegranate: cute! She’s another couchsurfer, but doesn’t host - she just meets up with other couchsurfers for a drink. “I’m shy to have guests,” she admits. “I don’t have a bathroom at home - we have a typical Kazakh set-up, with only a toilet and a banya [a Russian sauna]. And also, there is a guest room - as my sister, mother and I all sleep in the same room - but we have so many relatives visiting, that I can’t promise it can be free.”

Anyway, this isn’t really the point: oh look, here it comes now… Turns out her last job was working for an international marriage agency – you mean like connecting Western men to Kazakh women? “Yes – actually, I only worked there for eight months. I had thought that it would be a very nice job, helping people find love and to follow their dreams and their hearts: the women of Almaty say there are no real Kazakh men left. But actually, the women just wanted money and to go to America and the men just want young girls – I had one guy who was 72 who married a 16-year-old Russian girl.” (We lean in with morbid curiosity.) “All the women have a dream that America is like one big New York, and then they find themselves in a village, and they come back to the agency and say, “Find me a richer husband!” Have you heard of Christopher Robbins’ travelogue, In Search of Kazakhstan - The Land that Disappeared? I ask. It starts with a chance encounter with an American guy off to Almaty to meet his Kazakh internet bride. Lindsay is reading it at the moment, so we show it to her. “Ah – it’s strange,” she says, after dipping into the first chapter. “This Almaty woman doens’t want to leave Kazakhstan”…