Sadly, Kazakhstan was an all too brief affair as with a transit Visa we only had 5 days to traverse the South. That we said we managed to succesfully answer the above question at the Aksu-Zhabagyly nature reserve!
On the night we arrived, my buddy Tony and I went for short walk a we often do to work up an appetite, sop we headed naturally upwards to check out the view and accidentally stumbled in to the Aksu-Zhabagyly nature reserve when we spotted a very fresh USO Unidentified Steaming Pile on the ground. We aren't natural trackers, but we know sheep, cow, rabbit, horse and even yak droppings and this was certainly none of those. And then we got to thinking are their bears around? Does it belong to a bear?
Shortly afterwards a rustle in the bushes and the path running out gave us 2 good reasons to swiftly turn round and head straight back the way we came.
Asking our friend from Alaska and the guide the next day (whilst on a 7 hour hike we saw more droppings and 3 snakes) confirmed that they were bear droppings and yes a Kazakh bear does indeed sh*t in the woods!
I have developed a slight addiction on this drop to watermelon and nutmeg. Apparently it's not a commonly done thing so must just be my family, but definitely I have an adddiction to freshly cut watermelon with lashings of nutmeg and I'm taking others down with me. This only briefly disapeared when my ice cream addiction temporarily took over, but now it's back with a vengence!
Bush camping in Kazakhstan (and Uzbekistan for that matter) has afforded us some of the finest starry night skies that I have ever seen. Apparently teh square of pegasus is a good indication of ho good. If you can see more than 4 stars inside it's good for star gazing. Well I counted 14 the other day, so it's just amazing. I have been working hard on my naming of constellations.
So another bush camp later led us to Uzbekistan, the jewel of the silk road.
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