sofasurfers

Couchsurfing sadly necessitates city dwelling. Very few couches exist in villages: if on the off-chance there are, they’re hard to access, and if hosts go AWOL – as they are prone (with me) – there’s no back-up. Given my questionable success rate, I’ve thus far played it safe and clung to the cities. Or I’ve cheated. Like I did in Korgalzhyn, a village 130km southwest of Astana, where I paid for my accommodation! Hold on, though – it was at least in a homestay (a paid-for couch, if you like). So, two hours out of Astana, the Derby lass and I arrived right slap-bang in the middle of the back of beyond.

“We’d like to go horse-riding!” we chirrup on arrival to our Russian babushka, in whose house we’ll be staying, along with her husband and 8-year-old granddaughter (whose divorced mother is currently “sorting things out” in Kaliningrad). Righto! Dyedushka (grandpa) takes to his battleship-grey Soviet combi and drives us out into the steppe, stopping at the few signs of civilisation along the way to ask if anyone has seen a horse. We pull up at a small farm (ie one lonely room) where dyedushka thinks eventually the farmer will return. That the local graveyard we passed suggested more signs of life than these barren backwoods, we settle in for some meditative mind-emptying amongst all the nothingness. Taking to the binoculars,

The lesser spotted lovely Derby lass hiding behind big binoculars

we find a thrilling game to play – spot the rot. Look! What could that thing be like way out there? (Cue much squinting and triple zooming with camera..) A car bumper! It was much more rewarding than it sounds, admittedly.

Fun: it's a matter of relativity

We wait for over an hour, just sitting there, saluting the silence, romanticising about nomads (I mean who ever waited without word in post-mobile-phone-era UK?). Then, with a distant rumble and accompanying dust cloud, a major development materialises on the horizon: a stampede of wild horses!

Eventually, they arrive centre stage – I try and befriend with them; they scuttle off, and curiously, all roll to scratch their backs.

After some more protracted nothingness, a mounted Kazakh eventually comes into focus. Our farmer! Dyedushka makes the appropriate introductions, and we are go! But first we are invited in for tea and fried, sliced potato.

It’s about 4pm, and neither of us are particularly hungry, but Kazakh fingers continually jab at the potato pan in forcible invitation, so we continually peck away, until his 20-year-old wife just picks up both of our plates and piles ‘em high with even more potato (now our third helping): “It’s cold outside – you need to prepare yourselves.” Yipppee, I’m thinking, we’re in for some ride! Third chai downed, it’s time for a quick Number 1 – the wife leads me past the old toilet (thankfully)

and into an outhouse with a dirt floor, and points at one of its four corners: this is my toilet, I am instructed.

And now… my ride! Oh what a wild ride it will be, into the sunset through Kazakhstan’s wilderness, kicking up the dust past the tumbleweed, the nothingness, the car skeletons… Nearby, some geese are making a run for it, no doubt in fear of the forthcoming thunder of my trusty steed’s heavy hooves.

Or maybe they were just sparing my shame. For, though this shows incontrovertibly that I did actually go horse-riding,

you can also see that my ride simply entailed being led around for 30 seconds (look – two legs up ahead, just north of horse’s ears; leading rope). We’re not really sure what they thought we were after, but when we tried to pay, they refused. “We’d like to pay for our potatoes!” we insisted. Or, we ventured: “A gift for your daughter!” Eventually, £2.50 was parted with, and – rather like Japanese tourists marvelling at a mangey London pigeon – we left, totally exhilarated by nothing very much in particular.

The thrills continued right into the evening, as we settled into a ‘village’ Saturday night in the living room (and when I say living, I mean “all living” - it’s where the three family members sleep as well as relax). Delights included Russki Stars on Ice (where one celeb pair’s act includes answering a ‘ringing’ mobile phone on the icerink – classy), a scratchy recital by the granddaughter on Kazakhstan’s national instrument, the two-stringed guitar-like dombra,

and looking through a coin collection of Soviet kopeks, Kazakh Tenge and the odd Euro cent left by previous visitors. To them, it was probably the most normal – mundane, even – night in, but I was right in the moment; there are few places I would rather have been that night. Cringeing at my voyeuristic tendencies, I rationalised to myself: normal’ is so relative.