Thursday, 3 September 2026

 

Start: Petropavlovsk (KZ) 9:00

Arrival: Astana (KZ) 18:00

 

Total: 530 km

 

 

 

I slept surprisingly well on our saggy sofabed. Sonia however woke up with a hurting hip. Vivement Ramada today! We quickly threw the soggy bathtowel into the bathtub (iced-up fridge, remember?) and were out of the apartment building by nine o'clock. The streets in Petropavlovsk (which is actually a much bigger town than I had thought in my ignorance) sport the same huge street signs than the ones in Russia. But here, there is often an additional QR code next to it. Where does it lead to? I'd meant to try it out later, but then forgot. In case we come across any QR-coded streets in Astana, I'll make sure to access one, now that my mobile plan from back home is working again.

 

 

I had vocally objected to braving the endless Kazakh steppe without first getting a decent cup of coffee. Preferably at a nice sit-down place. With a buttery croissant and some juice. Is that too much to ask? Not if you have checked out the Dostyq Mall the day before and stumbled upon the delightful Kazakh answer to Starbucks: BlackBeri, an éspresso bari. :) Half an hour later, I was ready to brave whatever Kazakhstan decided to throw at us.

 

 

The streets out of town turned out a test of will: will I manage to stay within the speed limit? 40 km/h on a wide new boulevard with hardly any traffic is torture. It also screams "radar control", especially because everyone else was taking pains to stick to the limit. And yes, the police was out in droves, enjoying the summer sun and generously handing out fines. Take your foot off the gas pedal, Sandra. "Make a right after 9 more kilometres on this road", Sonia advised after consulting Yandex Maps. I stared at the speedometre. 43 km/h. Nine more kilometres. Right.

 

The road from the border to Astana was in excellent condition. Long stretches looked newly paved, some even without any white markings, which made for fun driving. I had read horror stories about "totally destroyed tarmac". I'm not saying we won't encounter that somewhere, but so far we were very pleasantly surprised. If only they'd reconsider their speed limits.

 

Luckily for us, Russia's petrol problem has not spilled over to Kazakhstan. Gas stations are plentiful, most stock 95 petrol, some even have 96 (!?) and 100 on sale. And no more queues! We quickly put 20 litres into our tank, swung back onto the highway and off we went, now at a pleasant 90 km/h, towards our destination for the day: Burabay.

 

 

At one point, the road became a "Platnaya doroga". "I thought the toll road starts only after Burabay", said Sonia, staring at her map. No matter, yesterday, AI had confidently informed me that we had 30 days to pay any road tolls. We would worry about that in Almaty.

 

Along the road, we saw sunflower fields, lakes full of reeds, murders of crows, a solitary crane, and cows and horses grazing on the prairie. Sonia even spotted a real life cowboy, high up on his horse, managing a herd of bovines. None of this made it into a photograph though. Sometimes, one simply has to soak in the scenery and burn it onto the oldest memory stick of all: your brain.

 

 

 

In the distance, the landscape became hillier, dark pine forests clambering up the slopes. We were approaching Burabay National Park, the beloved weekend getaway of Astanans.

 

 

The road wound up into the hills and soon we reached a closed barrier. We stopped at the wayside and tried to figure out the payment procedure. It looked dangerously like a "download an app and pay with your Kazakh card" sort of thing. A car drove up to the barrier, stopped, the barrier went up and he drove through, then stopped immediately after. The door opened and a young man got out. "He's coming towards us", Sonia said. I rolled down the window. "Are you speaking English or Russian?" the man asked in flawless English. I liked him already! "Both", I answered, safe in the knowledge that my proficiency in Russian would not be put to the test. "Oh, I thought you were from Luxembourg", he continued. !! "We are!", I said. It turned out he had worked in Germany for a while. So the conversation switched to German and he assured us that we could give cash to any driver and ask him to pay the park toll on his app for us. He marvelled again at seeing a Luxembourgish car in Kazakhstan, wished us a safe trip and took off. What a nice encounter!

 

We crossed the barrier and drove on through the almost heady smell of pines. All along the way, there were neatly sweeped paths leading into the forest. But we wanted to see - quite inexplicably - the huge Abylai Khan stele in the centre of the park. There, the parking lot was of course enclosed by yet another barrier. Hopefully the Kazakhs were really as amenable to helping strangers as our new friend had claimed.

 

 

The Abylai Khan stele commemorates one of the most prominent leaders of the old Kazakh Khanate. As imposing as it is, the vibe is definitely yarmarky. Yurts selling trinkets, traditional costumes, for a fee, you can sit on a Game-of-Thronesque khan-throne. Touters are offering to take your picture or to let you ride on a horse through the forest. We just wanted to stroll about on our own, so we left the dibblers behind and, two minutes later, found ourselves all alone inside a blissfully quiet forest. The path led up the hill towards an unspecified observation point at the summit. How far up? No one knew. Literally no one, because we asked the people coming down and they all seemed to have turned around before reaching it. A father with a toddler stated that it was a bit "opasno". Hm. I didn't feel like clambering up a steep hill for half an hour, only to turn back at the last moment because it had become too dangerous to go on. So in the end, we just walked up for 10 minutes and then explored the area further down.

 

 

At three in the afternoon, we decided to call it a day. It was still almost 300 km to Astana and I don't like driving in unfamiliar territory after nightfall. Now for paying the parking fees. Sonia asked a lady for help with the payment app and she agreed to do it for us right away. She even insisted on giving us back the exact change. Nice!

 

Back on the main road to Astana, we put on a CD with our favourite songs. The highway soon turned into a wide dual carriage toll road. And there were barely any cars on it! A driver's paradise. And the most heavenly sight: a round sign with the number 140 in it. My heart jubilated, Bruce Dickinson screamed "Be quick or be dead" and I pushed the pedal down.

 

 

Mostly, we only did 100-110 km/h, as it was windy, our old car was loaded with heavy suitcases and we were not in a hurry. But how wonderful not to have to watch the speedometer at all!

 

Just before Astana, there was a toll booth. There was no human staff around, but luckily the machine accepted our credit card. So AI had been wrong about having to pay the toll online. Why do I even bother to ask bots anything?

 

 

 

 

In no time, Sonia guided me off the highway into Astana. We made our way over unevenly paved streets. Being jostled around like in a stagecoach of old. We came to a stop behind a long line of cars, waiting at a railway crossing. There was dense black smoke coming from behind a building. A home going up in smoke? Someone getting rid of 30 years of bank statements? "Maybe a barbecue?" I surmised. "If so, I don't want to eat their shashlyk. It looks like a cancer hasard", Sonia laughed. The train arrived. Ten carriages passed by, twenty, thirty. The longest train in the world. What else should one expect in a country of superlatives. A skinny woman in quite a nice leather jacket moved up the line of cars, whining and extending her hand to each window. A lot of drivers handed her some spare change. When she arrive at the end of the line, she hurried off with a spring in her step. The train carriages were still rattling past us. I had stopped counting them.

 

When the barrier finally went up, we carefully made our way over the potholed crossing. And another one. And a third. This is not what I had imagined the capital of Kazakhstan to be like. Maybe we'd better stayed on the highway for a bit longer?

 

At last, we arrived at the beautiful centre of the city. We found the hotel right away, parked, checked in, brought our luggage up to the fourth floor - this place had an actual elevator, yay! - and had food at the hotel restaurant. A quick post-dinner stroll around the block, enjoying the by-night, and that was it for today. Tomorrow we would have a quiet day, no sightseeing, no nothing. Just lazing in the room and updating this blog.