sofasurfers

So you don’t have to live it yourself. I’m now Writing the Book, see.

The tantrums, the toilet raids, the titty tours, the bedroom appointments, even the gothic bondage chatrooms - yup, it will all be there, and much, much more, in glorious, shameless explicitness. It’s called On The Couch, it features lots of Ollie’s photographs, and it tells both the geographic and personal journey that I took. Hypothesis: is it really possible to travel a continent by staying in the houses of strangers met online? And who really was placed on the metaphorical couch - them or me?

You can pre-order it here!

“Welcome to London Heathrow. The outside temperature is 7 degrees and the sky is expected to remain overcast today.” Reassuringly dreary.

But then my travel-tuned eyes turned towards London: so used to they to looking out of foreign windows, gauging new cities, London was instinctively perceived through fresh eyes: all Victorian townhouses and real Christmas trees with tasteful, twinkling lights - London resembled a quaint little Christmas card. What’s more, people in the supermarket let me go first. I patted someone’s Dachshunds and chatted to their owner. Everything seemed to fit the Goldilocks rule of proportion - not too big, not too small. I felt a surge of London pride. This will put me in good stead for receiving couchsurfers in my house… For now it is time to pay it back.

Ignorance alert: presuming that Knightsbridge doesn’t count, my visit to Bahrain was my first to the Middle East.

So when confronted with the full spectrum of female muslims all within this tiny country (pop. 723,000), I confess I got a little confused.

“I class them in a sliding scale…” said my host in Bahrain (who happens to be Omani, but still drives a Porsche so he fits right in). Plus he’s muslim, so he’s allowed to make the following comments…

“Darth Vaders are fully covered in black abayas - you can’t even see their eyes. Then there are the Ninjas, whose abayas just have two openings for their eyes, while Batman gets a mono-slit for both eyes. Those Star Wars-esque Jawas sport large headscarves that protrude out the back [it's apparently a combination of piled-up hair and fabric], and then there’s the humble Maid Marian who just wears a simple headscarf. If any colour other than black is involved, it means they’re Shiite; if they’re black, they’re Sunni.” (Most Bahrainis are Shiite muslims, though the Royal Family are Sunni.)

I found Darth Vader out shopping with some ninjas in the souk…

Oh sorry, wrong picture…

But I still didn’t really understand the difference in religiosity, so I went to the grand mosque…

(Please observe the newly built (if dwarfed) “World Trade Centre” - yuh, twin towers even - just to the left of the Mosque, which houses Moda Mall from the Kuwaiti retail royalty, Sheikh Majed Al-Sabah. This rival temple bows to that other God, materialism.)

Right, anyway, back to the Mosque, where I spent a good hour mesmerised by a member of the be-gloved batman subspecies who was my dedicated guide (dedicated to informing just me, and - natch - dedicated to her “creator”). I am somewhat ashamed (and unworldly) to admit that it was the first time I had ever spoken to a hooded lady (save any sightless call centre encounters). Am I allowed to be shocked that she was so confident, so self-assured? A 23-year-old Islamic law student, she was well-educated, well-informed, open-minded and open to all my questions - we briefly became friends, and she even gave me her email. She explained that the choice (choice, she insisted) to be fully shrouded in black was a matter of personal interpretation of Quranic translations: some say potato, some say potarto. “I am only to be desired by my husband,” she added. “We don’t want to put temptation in front of other men - it’s not honourable.” It was a point that I only fully grasped as I disrobed

Mixed movies: Batman and Maid Marian

and walked through the city to my next destination in my Western clothes (and - gasp! - short sleeves), to the soundtrack of constant beepings of the horn (geddit?) and kisses being blown at me. Without my abaya, I felt naked and inappropriate and thoroughly un-Rome. “Oh they probably think you’re a prostitute,” confirmed my host back at home. “Ex-pats just don’t walk around here - everyone drives. Walking the street classifies you as a prostitute.”

That evening, we saw the other side of the coin. Relatively liberal, Bahrain is crawling with prostitutes, and thobe-robed Saudis who cross the border at weekends to drink and ‘dance’… “The Bahraini women just aren’t available,” says my host “They stay at home until they get married”. Ample opportunities are available elsewhere, evidently.

A spot of titty tourism (”No photos or you leave!”) took me to an Arabic bar where five sausagey-built Asian ladies danced on stage in an attempt to lure the few solo Saudis sheeshing away at their tables to come and buy the Arabic equivalent of a lap dance - the chance to lay a garland around the girl’s neck and to hold hands with her while she looks into their eyes for the duration of one whole song! All the girls were clothed from the bosom to the ankle, if tightly with some tummy spillage, in coloured silks. So innocent? “There’s a sliding scale…” said my host. A full service is supplied by China (recall that new Chinese proverb: where there is demand, there is supply). “In the late 90s, most of the Eastern Europeans were kicked out, and replaced with Chinese girls - I don’t really understand it,” he admits. Apparently they’re tighter, I offer. “I wouldn’t know,” says my host. That, I say, is the correct answer!

Walking to my host’s house in Shanghai, I had my first warning of
Shanghai’s noise nightmare. It was just a humble fast food outlet –
y’know, just one of those single-fronted, fluoro-lit
only-go-in-drunken-desperation numbers. Outside was a young, suited
man who was holding a MICROPHONE (for he was SHOUTING LOUDLY but I’ll
spare you the caps lock): “Yum, yum, come and get it! Fast food! Slow
death! Come and get it!” (Or something like that).
In China, even the low-rent fast-food joints have to make a noise to
make money. As one foreign student told me, “Unless you shout in
China, no one cares about you.” So the free-market frenzy of Shanghai
is right off the scale of noise pollution: “Miss! MISS! You come my
shop! Just lookin!” I’ll only come inside if you promise to remain
silent, I said… But no: “Miss! Miss! Come my shop! Chopstick! Jade!
Cucci [sic] bag!” My Italian host compared the Bund, the riverside
promenade and tourist trap numero uno, to Alien 2, where all the
aliens shoot out of their hiding places, screaming and yelling. Even
the house cat cries at night when he doesn’t get his way….
You know what this means? It’s time to come home – and so I am… But first….

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And finally, the nitty gritty. Building up to a conversation about the reality of Soviet times can be a delicate matter, given the potential suffering involved. My fumbling tactic is start wide open, and ask general questions and then close in. So, via my Derby-lass companion who speaks some fine Russian, it was something along the lines of… Were you born here? “I was born in Belorussia – my family came here when I was 6.” Oh – was that for work? “Yes, my parents came with the Virgin Lands Campaign [Krushchev's agricultural plan, launched in 1954, to develop the virgin Kazakh steppe for grain production].” And were those good times? “Yes! [she calls out to her granddaughter to fetch the photographs] We were paid well, we were given houses, we had good power supplies.” From the stack of photos, an old, worn page of a book is produced – one that has evidently spent considerable time living proudly in a wallet.

“This is my family – this is me (bottom centre). This book was published to send back to people in Russia and Belorussia, to show how migration to Kazakhstan was a success – we were happy! Things are better now than they used to be after Perestroika, when there was no gas, no electricity, no work, but you can’t do anything unless you have money now. Back then, everyone was equal – we all had the same opportunities. There is nothing for the children now unless you pay for it – as Young Pioneers, we could all play sports, there were concerts, games… all for free. There is nothing now here apart from boxing and the children have to pay for it. All they can do now is watch TV.” But what about freedom? “But this isn’t freedom – we can’t do anything.” So with communism, the people weren’t free; now, with the opposite extreme, extreme capitalism – where even the hitchhikers have to pay for their ride in Kazakhstan – it’s the case that nothing is free.

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.

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My Derby lass and I have taken a taxi to take us to ALZHIR, Stalin’s gulag for Wives of the Betrayers of the Homeland. En route we pass a Kazakh graveyard where we notice a circle of some 50 Russian fur hats bowed in respect towards the ground. “No women?” I ask our taxi driver, for the bearers of said hats were all male (and all Kazakh). “No,” he confirmed. “Crying is not allowed at Kazakh funerals, so women are not allowed. The women stay at home and cry.”

The graveyard and not the funeral...for obvious reasons

And why did I not stay with Sergey and Yelena, on-piste in Astana? “We cannot host couchsurfers now,” says Sergey. “We are not bosses at home any more.” The young couple married last summer and now live with Sergey’s parents in the centre of town (Sergey is out of work, despite having an MBA: “It’s very hard to get a job because of the creesis [crisis].”) They ask us to sign their couchsurfers’ wall of fame pinned to their door – one previous comment reads: “Sergey without guests is like a bird without wings”.

And when the wedding photos come out on the laptop (the slide show is an inevitable couchsurfing moment in any get-together, and, yes, the bouffant bridal gown does boast a special pearlescent sheen), there’s a German couchsurfer in the crowd. He was staying with Sergey at the time of the wedding. “But couchsurfing is not in Kazakhstan’s mentality,” he explained. “People think it’s very strange to have a foreign stranger staying with you.” Hence, perhaps, the lack of couches even in its capital. So what did your parents think? “They were angry.” The unknown off-piste beats angry on-piste any day…

Sergey and Yelena, a young married couchsurfing couple invited us to dinner in their bedroom. Diner au lit (for we actually ate it sitting on their bed) consisted of ‘potato’ cakes (so-called for their look, not their ingredients), aubergine ‘caviar’ (so-called for its…je ne sais quoi, not its ingredients), halva, apricot kernels and sunflower seeds. (NB: can you see - in the far left hand corner of the bedroom - a stash of pumpkins?!)

On the menu for discussion was Borat (“I love it!” proclaimed Sergey. “I have watched it maybe 20 times. It’s illegal to sell it or hire it here, but you can download it. It’s only the Kazakhs that are offended by it. They don’t understand the joke. There was not the point to discriminate against Kazakhstan. The makers selected Kazakhstan because no one knows it – it could be any country.” And now apparently, Borat lives in Almaty – and he’s a member of couchsurfing. That is, ‘Borat’. Seems he was on the run when I tried to find him.

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And so, should proof be needed, here is me in the Golden Ball (complete with gold-tinted windows) of the Baiterek Tower, some 97m off the ground, in honour of the year (1997) that Astana was crowned capital of Kazakhstan. And where is my hand, you might ask? Covering the Very Fingerprints Of The President Himself, laid in some 2kg of gold, atop some 5kg of solid silver, mounted upon a plinth of green malachite.

Please: give a big hand for...

In fact, looking out at Astana, as one is wont from this vantage point, it appears that the whole city is something of a vanity project for the president, what with the Museum of the First President of Kazakhstan, the President’s Cultural Centre, and, right at its epicentre, amply surrounded by importance-implying open space, the Presidential Palace – an Islamic take on the White House: a neoclassical glory-fest topped by a pompous turquoise dome.

There’s a pleasing calm to Astana, in contrast to Almaty’s chaos. That’s possibly because Astana is still waiting for its inhabitants to arrive (it was built to house 1.5m people; currently there are 600,000). So because there are hardly any cars, crossing the road isn’t death-defying like it is in Almaty, its gleaming city attractions are joyously deserted, and when the sun goes down, it becomes apparent that the lights never come on in all those uninhabited (gold) skyscrapers. And as our Russian couchsurfing friends point out over dinner that evening, “What’s the point of skyscrapers, when all around is as much land as you could possibly need?” Because, perhaps, skyscrapers maketh a city. Because, perhaps, like minarets and spires, skyscrapers are a stairway to heaven.

Pre-script - sorry, bit of a blog catch-up thing going on.

“Pack warm clothes!” Rather like climbing a mountain, the route northwards to Astana has steadily become more snowy.

Gratuitous sunset'n'snow shot

Astana is the new name for Akmola; it means ‘capital’ in Kazakh, and took over from Almaty as Kazakhstan’s new capital in 1997. Opinions differ as to why, when many still believe that Kazakhstan’s cultural, financial and symbolic heart remains in Almaty. To develop another city! some say. To move away from imminent earthquake danger! say others. To demonstrate Kazakhstan’s newfound financial confidence (found along with all those oil reserves)! Or to start over in a young city, with a clean political slate, where, unlike Almaty, opinions are not so entrenched (and disillusioned)… We’ll see about that. We’ll also be seeing me – finally – in my winter woollies that have been somewhat redundantly weighing me down all this time. Sadly, however, we won’t be seeing Lindsay, my co-pilot for the last eight days. She is staying in Shymkent with the American contingent to wait while her friend replaces her visas in China: it’s Thanksgiving on 29^th November, and I think subzero temperatures, superinflated city prices and superspeciallovely me weren’t enough to entice her over to Astana.

And what of my host? Who is my sartorial instructor? Actually, I don’t know. I’ll be going off-piste couchsurfing (finally!): my host, a British girl from Derbyshire, is not on couchsurfing.com, but is a colleague of our Almaty host. (This is couchsurfing missionary work in action: “Hey, I’ve got these couchsurfers staying with me – they bring stories from afar and for once, I didn’t have to go out to dinner on my own or with some professionally-friendly-yet-dull middle-aged businessman. Check it out!”) So there have been no safety checks, no dodgy references to dodge, and no clue as to what I’ll be getting – and of course, it’s ditto for her. In fact there may be even more for her to lose, seeing as I’m the vagabonding vagrant. But it’s a British girl from Derbyshire! What I can’t see on her non-existent profile, my imagination compensates for: that immediately there’ll be an implicit cultural understanding; that our common ground will bridge our differences, that – starved of alternatives (well, me at least) – we’ll be instant friends because we’ll just get each other. Rather like what Lindsay has stayed for in Shymkent.

Shock news! The Americans have planted yet another flag: this time in a Shymkent university seminar room. We’re here for “American Corner” - a US government-funded project to encourage English-speaking forums around the world; this particular Corner is run by our host (cf that over-achiever characteristic of couchsurfers: our host is also the regional Peace Corps warden, is currently training in AIDS awareness, runs a film club, does a weekly aerobics class…“Well, at least I now have a great butt,” he justifies in jest, though being the sole male, there may be an ulterior motive).

Anyway, the point… So, along with three Peace Corps volunteers, Lindsay and I get to participate in a 90-minute exchange with 18 Russian and Kazakh students. The point of the session is to encourage locals’ foreign-language skills, the festive nationalistic festoonery is to show that American hegemony has even jammed its foot in Kazakhstan’s backdoor (NB: at the insistence of the program, and not our host, I should add).

Under the influence...

“So does everyone remember what we’re here to talk about today?” asks our host, standing at the front of the classroom. “Technology!” volunteers one student. “That’s right!” And so ensues a conversation about how the students have appropriated the digital age: research, emailing their homework to their tutors, social networking (using Russia’s Facebook equivalent, ‘In Kontakt’)… No difference there, then. Do any of you have blogs, I ask. A Kazakh medical student with green contact lenses tells us she has a private blog that her friends don’t know about but that strangers can – and do – comment on: a free, anonymous agony aunt service, if you like. Is there censorship? “Yes,” says a Russian girl who wants to become an interpreter. “Any emails with the words ‘drugs’, ‘kidnapping’ [cf bride-napping] and the president’s name are intercepted.” And then what happens? “Nothing.” So it’s not like in China then, where contraband words in emails are vaporised; never arriving at their destination, they are apparently then stored in a vast database (if my Beijing hosts are correct). Another Russian student wearing a camouflage teeshirt and a bullet pendant says, “I could write whatever I like on my blog, and no one would stop me.” So does he? “No. I don’t think I have anything interesting to say.” However, journalists have been imprisoned for speaking out against the president, they tell us, and there is “of course!” the death penalty, though a law student, who happens to be holding “his favourite book” on the American Death Penalty, informs us – with some reserve – that it is under some kind of review (“it’s complicated”), and no, there’s no one currently on Death Row.

And then I go and mention the B-word. It was unavoidable, honest! A student who wants to work in the petrochemical industry has asked, “Is Kazakhstan becoming a popular place for travel?” Who could deny how Sacha Baron Cohen raised awareness of the world’s ninth largest country which, as Christopher Robbins says, is The Land that Disappeared? However, the students are clearly still smarting from the national insult. One of the Peace Corps volunteers delivers the stock Western response (a crutch of mine too), which is that the joke of Borat was on Small Town America, not Kazakhstan. The students don’t see it like this: “At the MTV Awards, there was an actor playing our president, and Borat kissed his feet, as if he is our king, as if Kazakhstan is a dictatorship,” says a Kazakh girl wearing a green tanktop and matching eyeshadow. As Robbins points out in The Land that Disappears, while votes in the most recent presidential elections were 91% in favour of Nazarbaev, the independently run exit polls were at 85% (gonna check these facts! No complaints, please!) - so while there’s evidently some some skulduggery, it’s hard to argue that he’s not a popular president. But up till last year, the president’s eldest daughter ran the media, and freedom of speech is evidently compromised; it’s a well-known fact that Nazarbaev is not a fan of political opposition. Other Kazakhs have referred to it as a totalitarian state. But her statement goes unchallenged… How very un-American.

“But there is not only bad in Kazakhstan,” pipes up one student. “Have you met any of our teenagers?” Umm, sadly, no…

(OH NO! Don’t say ‘Umm!’ It’s Faux Pas Number One in Kazakhstan! What could possibly be the problem with the humble umm? “It means vagina in Kazakh,” our host had warned us earlier).

Ahem, so no, we haven’t had the honour… “Our teenagers have a vision for this country, and many of them want to study abroad to bring back their new knowledge to their country; the president has a programme to encourage overseas study [however, if you don't then return to work in Kazakhstan for five years, you lose the house that you have to buy and put down as collateral]. Plus we have very many natural resources,” says the petrochemical industrialist-in-waiting.

And then it was time to go. The students left the American Corner, and left me filled with youthful optimism. And left me their doodles, abandoned on the table…

Inside the mind of a Kazakh girl

Inside the mind of a Russian boy

google ‘Baiterek Tower‘ - i’m currently IN the golden ball! I’ll be back on terra firma soon for more news from Astana.

Three trips to Khodja Ahmed Yassaui’s Mausoleum at Turkestan are, apparently, considered as holy as one trip to Mecca. Holy by Kazakh standards, of course, can include unlimited vodka (or fermented camel’s milk, if you prefer).

But surely, we thought, we’d be safe from the seemingly eternal urge to swindle here, while under the watchful eye of the Almighty. And indeed we were - we just weren’t safe from our own entrenched cynicism. “Would you like an English guide?” said a sweet, pretty young Kazakh. Hmmm, we replied, with narrowed eyes. How much? “It’s free!” Yes, and then how much, we retorted (because surely nothing is free here - it hasn’t been so far: toilets, Kodak moments… even the hitchhikers don’t come to Kazakhstan because all drivers charge for a ride)? “It’s free!” You promise? “Yes!” My guilt for being so suspicious shadowed me throughout our tour; it sat down beside us in the staff restaurant as our guide invited us to dine with her without the other tourists (where we paid staff prices). It even handed over my guide book involuntarily, when she asked if she could photocopy it (but I was charmed - she wants to learn recycled information about the Mausoleum from a British guide book). “That will be 1,000 Tenge,” I teased, when she returned it to me, taking a swipe at the national habit for charging for everything. And then I felt really guilty, when she clearly didn’t realise I was joking. I’d better book in for a return trip.

“Oh you should have been here three days ago, when I had three couchsurfers, and no electricity and no heating!” said our host, with mock pride. Well, as it turned out, we didn’t need to be… When we heard that our host had had a ‘bad day’ (read: he was – one whole year prematurely – taken off his community development project due to, shall we say, ‘artistic differences’ with the Kazakh director), Lindsay and I decided to do the honourable thing and cook him a couchsurfer’s dinner. Any requests, we asked. “Anything that is not drowning in oil, and dairy free makes me happy” (ie, no cuisine a la Kazakh tonight). So, with rice, roast peppers, cauliflower, onions, garlic and a good pinch of couchsurfer love, we cooked up some pot luck. And bring down the power. Yup, we only went and blew the fuse – cue blanket blackout.

The cause? Putting on the kettle, for crissakes! Isn’t it just a case of flicking the switch in the fusebox, I asked, like a spoilt Westerner. “Well…,” sighed our host. “First you need a key for the fuse box. Then you need to unscrew the fuse [apparently this design is the precursor to the flick-switch fuse that we know]. There is a Russian alcoholic in the block who can fix it – last time we bribed him with a bottle of vodka – but I don’t speak Russian [our host was sent on a Kazakh language course when he arrived, seeing as Shymkent is Kazakh heartland].” Ok! Let’s look on the bright side (ha ha…): there are advantages in not having perfect vision – the roaches (for there are) become invisible, the burnt dinner (for it was) looks prettier, and what’s the point in washing up in the dark?

Really - it looks better in the dark.

The population of Kazakhstan comprises approximately 53% ethnic Kazakhs, 30% ethnic Russians, 3.7% Ukrainians, 2.5% Uzbeks and 2.4% Germans; the remaining percentage is made up of Koreans, Chechens, Uighurs, Tatars, Greeks… and American Peace Corps volunteers. “No one ever asks to go to Kazakhstan,” says our host in Shymkent, one such 26-year-old volunteer, whose “community development” project was to help relocate the inhabitants of the Aral Sea area (which, since the 1960s’ environmentally catastrophic irrigation programme, is really not much of a sea any longer) to South Kazakhstan, where there’s more hope of work, running water, etc. It seems like practically half of Kazakhstan’s couchsurfers are PC volunteers (given that “no one ever asks to go to Kazakhstan,” I guess it’s a no-brainer to sign up to couchsurfing, for the steady trickle of Western traffic it delivers). It’s two-way street：for a nomadic couchsurfer with a laughable collection of bad experiences, this is one big ‘yay’ – given the Peace Corps’ gruelling selection process (a minimum of nine months, it seems), they’re a safe bet as accountable, intelligent, ambitious and morally lovely couchsurfing hosts. And with their 27-month postings in situ, they seriously know this place.“Shymkent is the Texas of Kazakhstan,” says our host. Oh? “Yuh – things can be a little wild here.” And so for the next two days, we hear it all: play Pin the Tail to the Donkey in my notepad and you’ll gasp wherever you land. Such as:

- The local HIV catastrophe (three years ago, the city hospital sold off thousands of its sterile needles and just recycled what remained – there are now 70-odd HIV-positive children in Shymkent).

- Bride-napping: “I saw a young girl being bride-napped outside my window. It was about 2 in the morning, and I could hear a woman screaming blue murder inside a parked car, while one guy was in the driving seat, and another was standing outside shouting at the guy. Eventually, the two guys stopped shouting at each other, and the guy outside the car, got in and started shouting at the girl. They drove off into the night.” Jeeeez. “It happens a lot because grooms don’t want to pay the dowry. Even one of my host family’s daughters [volunteers are housed with host families for the first nine months of their programme] was bride-napped.”

- AIDS awareness: “Students have asked me, ‘Can you get HIV from sharing the same glass?’” Prostitution: “In one village in South Kazakhstan, there are two volunteers that the locals think are gay, because they don’t go to prostitutes.”

• Weddings. “My Kazakh roommate says all weddings end in a fight. I try not to go to weddings because it ends up being a game of “Let’s Try and Get the American Drunk.” Plus everyone is expected to pay on the day, and give money to the parents, but the parents seem to pocket all the profit.”

• Eating sheeps’ heads: “I’ve nibbled on an ear, I’ve had the cheek.”

• Actually, worst of all is the corruption, with crooked police, teachers and doctors (teachers and doctors, even? Indeed). But we’re not going to go there just yet: let’s not stoke any more trouble than exists already.

Tell us something positive about Kazakhstan, we say! “Well, the personal interaction with Kazakhs is very positive,” our host concedes, “but you need to be here for a while for that.” Riiiight…

(apologies for blond-style mastery of bullets and formatting..)

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”…

Even easier to find a rescue couch when there are two couchsurfers on the case. So Lindsay had got in touch with a new arrival to Almaty, a Kiwi girl who touched down two weeks ago for a year’s contract with Air Astana. “Come in!” she said chirpily, as we panted outside her fifth floor apartment. Clean, modern, empty with a view of the mountains: there was no clutter here with which to cold-read our new host. Actually, we found ourselves without much to go on – we seemed to be on the receiving end of a complicated sequence of mental gymnastics, which neither of us could quite fathom. For example, five minutes after arriving at a local Uzbeki restaurant (which was just 30 minutes after first walking through her door), she insists we all get up and dance.

Given that it’s Friday night, and the local Kazakhs are in full funky-chicken swing, Lindsay and I whisper conspiratorially that we feel like wedding crashers, so out of place are we on this dancefloor.

She drinks green tea throughout dinner and then slopes off into the night, giving us her door key. She asks us with disbelief why we would choose to travel through Kazakhstan, and when we return the question, she simply says enigmatically, “Big skies.” But you’re in Almaty – you can’t see the sky for fog/pollution. Prior to Almaty, she was working in Korea, and before that Albania, and she speaks with a crisp English accent. I can’t hear any Kiwi in you, I comment. “Well, when you’re with particular nationalities, you adapt, don’t you?” she says. “So venn I am tokking to mein Deutsch freunds, I speak viz a German accent, ja?” Couchsurfing is always a guessing game – what are they thinking, what do they want to do, am I behaving in the appropriate manner? But usually, the players of this game aren’t usually such, well, players. “I guess the nth degree of her unpredictability,” speculates Lindsay, “is that we can’t rely on her to be here when we need to collect our bags tomorrow. I mean what if…”

“What if” was a paranoia too far, but the strange behaviour continued. She returns at 2.30am to announce that she’ll rise at 6am. Why?! It’s Saturday. “Oh it’s just when I wake up.” What will you do? “Oh, I’ll probably go shopping.” At 6am?

But she overslept till 8am, would you believe? “What time is it,” she asks (to she who knows not the meaning of oversleeping). 8am, I say. “Oh f***!” Woah – it’s Saturday! Chill! She showers and rushes out. But on her return, she flips into Perfect Host mode. She has bought us breakfast (and notably not for herself – bread intolerance, see?). She gives me a shiatsu neck massage because, after another night on the floor, I am feeling like a scarecrow that’s been mangled in a combine harvester (or something). “My God, woman!” she says, when she feels my knotted neck. And she packs us off to the mountains with a bag of satsumas and nuts… Ach, so what if it’s strange? After Almaty Plan A, I’d happily forsake answers, explanations for a Perfect Host once in a while.

So we’re strolling along with Support Act – he’s kindly helping us to buy our tickets to Shymkent, and we’re leaving (read: being evicted from) the Russian couple’s apartment this evening. Actually, we were again turfed out at 8.30am; we’ll just return to collect our bags).

“So, now that all this is history,” I venture to Support Act, “and that we have another place to stay, and everything’s ok now…. Could you tell us: what really was the problem with Guy- and Girl-Halves?”

“Well! I sink it is because he doesn’t tell her you are coming.”

What?! When did she find out we were staying with them?

“Well! I don’t think he ever tell her.” So like, she found out when we walked in the door? “Well! You know, he is owner of his place, he is in charge. She just lives in his place. He is Russian man – he is in charge.”

U-huh. No wonder she was upset. There was us feeling bad for him, having to play piggy in the middle between her and us, when actually, it was us that were caught in the middle of things. And there was I assuming it was a case of one fine collection of female neuroses and insecurities about speaking English, ie, the female Russian temperament, when actually it was a case of the male Russian temperament. So how far away does your sister live? I’d asked on our last morning (she being the ‘reason’ we were asked to leave). “Oh she doesn’t live so far from here.” Hmmm…