sofasurfers

It seems that my first two-week spell in China didn’t really
acclimatise me: my return (first stop Chengdu, a city with a
population the size of London) has filled my mind and camera with a
veritable freak fest: a male security guard wearing frosted coral,
1950s grannie lipstick (yes, I was too cowardly to snap) – presumably
to protect his lips from the cold, a young girl eating clementines the
size of a cherry, another young girl eating a purple dyed cake, two
boys playing badminton using a road as a net

people scooting along wearing their coats backwards to keep their
chests warm (a major trend, it seems; photo soon, I hope), speakers in
the street disguised as rocks playing “Look Happy for the Tourists”
jazz musak,

hoods for coats slung over chairs in restaurants,

dentists in shop windows (transparency one step too far, surely).

So, London is cold, huh?! Actually, when my (new Russian) host in
Karaganda (some 4 hours south east of Kazakhstan’s capital) said the
outside temperature was minus 15 degrees C, I whooped; he just looked
at me with disdain. It’s true, my ‘the colder, the better’ optimism
was unarguably tourist folly – a local would never be so flip (not
least when the mercury hits minus 40 degrees). But this was what I was
here for: I wanted to touch the frozen frontier. I wanted to
experience deep freeze, I wanted to know what this shock to my system
would feel like: it’s what locals have to negotiate every winter – so
I wanted to negotiate it too. When the moisture in my nostrils froze,
when my trousers felt like sausagey ice-packs wrapped around my legs,
when my fingers stung after just a couple of seconds of exposure, when
the sharp, cold air tickled my throat as I inhaled, I felt a warm glow
of satisfaction. In Moscow, a Kazakh had told me, “In Moscow, no one
looks at anyone else in the street, but in Kazakhstan, everyone
watches for everyone else to see if the tips of their noses have gone
white, to tell them they have frostbite.” Up till now, I’d presumed
this pure Kazakh myth; what Kazakhs tell their fair weather friends to
illustrate their colder climate and their warmer hearts. Now, it
seemed like it could very well be a reality. So, I asked my host: do
people suffer frostbite much here? “Yes,” he confirmed. “Actually this
is a real problem with alcoholics, because they don’t feel it
happening.” So vodka: not quite the anti-freeze it’s presumed to be.

And so to Karaganda’s city square, where like all good former Soviet
towns who know what’s good for them, a formidable statue of Lenin
stands proud, here his mighty gaze facing Moscow. These little
torpedos of snow can try all they like, but Lenin’s hold is
indestructible.

My host isn’t so impressed though: “Lenin was wrong. Communism suits
the lazy, the people who can’t be bothered to get a job – the
government just gives it to them.” Capitalism gives people an
incentive to succeed, he argues… It’s certainly seems to drive the
fruit sellers to the market.

“They’re very excited. It’s a big shock to see a British girl here.”
We’re in the local market, to buy fruit and veg, and despite the
temperature, it’s very much business as usual, with the market
operating for full nine-hour days. My host goes to buy some Persimmon
– but aren’t they frozen? “Yes,” he says, “but they taste better this
way – they’re much sweeter.” [When I eat one at home, with a spoon,
it's like a pure fruit sorbet – yum]. Anyway, as soon as I pull out my
camera to snap a stack of fish in nature’s refridgerator there…

and how they keep their little fishies warm there

people clamour to be in my photo

and so a kind of two-way tourism takes place. “Angliya?!” they say,
with awe and wonder. But, I ask my host (who happens to be blond and
blue-eyed – and might I point out, despite its irrelevance here, my
host’s blond hair is over two foot long), why can’t I resemble
European Russian? Why can’t I blend in in this multi-ethnic nation?
“Russian girls dye their hair. They dress differently. You just don’t
look like you’re from here.” True, there’s no mink or rabbit chapka on
my head, no trashy patent leather black spike heeled boots worn on my
feet in all weather. As we catch a bus home, a Russkette with crisped,
yellow hair comes unavoidably into our view. “See what I mean about
the dyed hair?” says my host. And actually, it’s a thrill to be the
odd one out: it really confirms that a frontier has been crossed.

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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…

“I think I’m going to kidnap you,” I said to Lindsay, on our first night in Almaty. I’d realised that while guest-host relations couldn’t have been worse, being able to be able to laugh/discuss/dissect with my ally – and not to have to rely wholly on the social interaction or otherwise of my host – was infinitely better than being on my own. I recalled my couple crisis in Beijing, where, compared to the catastrophe in Kazakhstan, nothing actually happened; it was just a series of nuances that – because I was alone – I was hypersensitive to. Here, we were sharing the pain, so it just wasn’t half as bad. That said, we were never quite sure whether the root cause of the problem was in fact because we were two. But actually, so what? If I were to recruit a new travelling companion out here, I don’t think I could have found a better candidate. She even draws caricatures while I write – I don’t have to sully their true identity if I want to post a picture of them.

So, instead of Lindsay waiting in Almaty for her friend to arrive from China with her new passport, visas, money, etc, she’s taking to the road with me, maybe just until the next stop, Shymkent..

“But why you want go Shymkent?” Support Act had asked. “It’s just a road.” Well… firstly, a devout couchsurfer doesn’t really have the pick of Kazakhstan. Actually, I’d wanted to go to Turkestan, some 180km (don’t check, probably wrong on that one) from Shymkent – it “contains Kazakhstan’s most impressive monument,” according to the guide book: the Timurid Mausoleum of Khodja Ahmed Yassaui (oh yes! Juicy cliffhanger there: coming soon! Juicy photos!) - but there’s not a single couch there, so I’ll just have to take a day trip from Shymkent. Secondly, (as I see it) couchsurfing tourism isn’t like conventional tourism – it is much more experimental, more open-minded. So if Shymkent is just a road, then I would like to see what that means: how do the locals cope? Maybe that’s why they’re couchsurfing hosts – to ensure a steady flow of fresh blood. Actually, our Shymkent host is a young American Peace Corps volunteer – it seems that half of Kazakhstan’s couchsurfers are thus, and probably for the same reason as those whose town is just a road. But we’ll see about that one.
Anyway, so Lindsay said she’d come voluntarily – a case of the Stockholm Syndrome perhaps.

I’d been so looking forward to Kazakhstan – after China and all its control and efficiency, I was anticipating a more heady sense of romance and passion here…

And so to the Russian couple, my – or rather our – hosts in Almaty, having joining forces with Lindsay, my SF NBF. We’d met the guy-half in town, where I’d felt that familiar sense of excitement and promise that comes from breaking the ice with total strangers you’re about to spend a few days with. He drove us around Almaty while he ran his errands, and in between, we listened to Russian rock, talked about Kazakh football (“Of course I support Russia – Kazakhstan don’t win”) and were educated in the wily ways of police bribery (“Oh! You got good deal!” he tells us – another story…). Finally, after much lurching, swerving and emergency braking, we arrived at his – another grimy Soviet apartment block, of course. The girl-half met us at the door – clutching a large, stripey cuddly cat and sporting these little pigs: ok, so a 24-going-on-4 situation.

She slinks back off to the bedroom while we repair to the kitchen with Guy-Half for his homemade borscht and tea – we eat off a glass-topped table filled with foreign banknotes. Did all your couchsurfers give you these? “Actually, yes,” says Guy-Half. Ah! I say, I have the perfect thing. Filled with gratitude for our hosts, not least for putting up one extra stray, the SF-er, and with warm fuzzies for good couch promise, I produced my mint North Korean note that my hosts in Xi’an had given to me (who founded the Young Pioneer Tour company to North Korea). While it was essentially worthless, its Ebay value would be pretty exciting, but I guess I wasn’t attached to it yet, I hadn’t been expecting it and it felt like an appropriate gesture…

But then the fun started.

Girl-Half summons Guy-Half from the kitchen. We talk amongst ourselves until the distinct sound of sobbing becomes impossible to ignore. Eventually he returns, and so begins a perpetual cycle of him to-ing and fro-ing, as if playing a game of tennis for one, as he is caught in the middle of guest and girlfriend duties. We shift uncomfortably in our seats, but it doesn’t matter because it’s as if we aren’t there. It also becomes apparent that it’s going to be one real cosy sleepover, as we deduce that we’ll be sleeping in their own bedroom – plus all our stuff has been put there (yeah, so forget about getting anything from your bags – the bedroom is totally no-go until further notice). After several rallies, we meekly ask for an introduction to the elephant in the room. Umm, is everything ok? “Oh, yes, of course, it’s just the autumn… moods?” Autumn blues? “Yes – it’s nothing, really.” We remain unconvinced. Girl-Half takes a bath, throughout which Guy-Half continues his tennis rally, jumping up on demand literally every five minutes to attend to her whim. After a time Guy-Half’s support act enters the fray. Support Act is the goofy court jester, a Goa-loving, authority-hating neo-hippy. We can only presume that his role in this kitchen sink drama is to babysit for us – I mean, why else invite the gang into a domestic? But frankly, he could have been Mr Blobby and I still would have been happy to see him. With him, we could almost pretend that all this was just a figment of our paranoia. Until… RRAAAAH! She serves an ace: screaming, yelling, sobbing, screaming, yelling, sobbing…for a good (or actually very bad) 20 minutes.

I take it back! You can keep your romance and passion! I just want peace. I just want to be able to relax. Anyway, Support Act is sent off to get food for her, and returns with dumplings and bijou cakes

and finally Girl-Half slinks into the kitchen, in a pink-and-white polka dot fluffy dressing gown, and sits on Support Act’s lap, giggling coquettishly with her head cocked and her finger coyly in her mouth. She only speaks in Russian, but when she does try to say something in English and I don’t hear her, she flips, yelps in Russian and locks herself in the bathroom. I don’t know – it all sounds so extreme, maybe you’re thinking that I’ve failed to tell her side of the story, like maybe we pulled her hair or flushed her head down the toilet. Guy-Half apologies: don’t worry, I say – we understand. We are women.

Oh anyway, this storm in a teacup continues right into the next day: Support Act is despatched again to hold our hand so our hosts don’t have to, and (we presume) to keep us out of her sight until after she has gone to bed – we all have to leave the house at 8.30am, and are only delivered back after 11pm. And then, in the afternoon, Guy-Half calls: “Well, is it ok if you leave tomorrow? My sister is coming to stay [Really?!]. I can help you with a hotel.” Umm, well, umm – I mean, what can you say? As non-paying guests, we really have no rights (I feel like I’ve written that before somewhere…). Of course we can leave. So Lindsay put in a call to a couchsurfer that she’d previously tried to surf with and explained the situation: so we now have a new couch for tonight. And this morning, as we packed up our belongings, I secretly, guiltily reclaimed my North Korean banknote – since the unspoken contract has been broken.

“So couchsurfing – this experiment in idealism…” says Lindsay over lunch, a deux. “Do you think it’s a success or a failure?” Well, it depends how you define a success, I guess. Certainly, the chance to observe up close the personality and behaviour of the locals in a genuine setting is something you can’t put a price on – even if that means being shaken to the very core by the volatile Russian temperament. However, the opportunity to have some control – and rights - is something that I could happily pay for now.

Anyway, we decided to have us some fun - sans hosts.

We climbed a mountain - we’d hoped to see all of Almaty from above…

(”No, no - there’s no pollution in Almaty,” our host had said. “It’s just winter fog.” Right…

We went shopping…

Room for growth...

We went to the Russian baths, and had a shampoo and set.

We had fun.

And now the whole anticipation of another new host and ensuing charm offensive is set to start again… Fun.