Monday, 7 September 2026

 

Start: Karagandy (KZ) 11:20

Arrival: Balkhash (KZ) 15:40

 

Total: 388 km

 

 

 

We found the mural! Sonia had hunted it down online. We had looked for it in a backyard and on the front, but murals, almost by definition, are on the side walls of buildings. How could we not have guessed that? After a good breakfast, freshly prepared just for us (as we were the only guests in the hotel) we made a little detour on our way out of town and there it was! Yesterday's quest number two ticked off at last.

 

For hours, we drove through hundreds of kilometers of steppe. A moon landscape. Endless regolith loosely covered by dusty brown shrubbery as far as the eye could see. Luckily, the highway was newly paved and in great condition. There were very little cars on the road and we made good speed.

 

Officially, one was allowed to do 140 km/h, but there was a lot of wind (obviously, as there were no hills or buildings to stop its momentum), so mostly we went about 110. Gas stations were few and far between, but we had our tank filled up in Karagandy, so no worries. Unfortunately, rest places were a rarity as well. Just when I really needed a break, a resting place announced itself. The resting place of Baba something, probably an ataman of some kind. (Edit: we later read that baba are Kazakh stone formations, so no mighty leader after all.)

 

 

We rolled onto the desolated stretch of tarmac. After going about my business, I tried to get out of the backseat. "Your hair is flying up", Sonia noted. So it was. I enjoyed the micro-needling on my face. The wind was acting like a welcome fan, making the almost 30 degree heat bearable.

 

Since we were already here, how about checking out the advertised memorial stele? A stretch of pavement lined by pitiful patches of brown grass led up the hill to a small monument and a sort of lunch-break pavilion. We hiked up. Getting nearer, we noticed that the place was already occupied. A herd of cows was grazing in front of the pavilion. They had noticed us too.

 

 

We came nearer. A few had stopped eating, watching our approach. "I don't think I want to go there", I said. "The cows won't eat you", my sister objected. Did the cows know that? They looked pretty territorial to me. So what if we didn't see the stele from upfront. We didn't even know the bloke. Not a thought worthy of an explorer, I know, but that's what the stare of desert bovines will do to you. We beat a retreat. Too hot for sightseeing anyway.

 

Karagandy and Almaty are 1000 km apart. Too far to do in one day, I had thought. In retrospect, we could have done it, if we had made an early start. Instead, we chose to make a stop on Lake Balkhash, the huge body of water right in the middle of Eastern Kazakhstan. Just as Lake Ohrid is the Pearl of the Balkans, Lake Balkhash might be the Pearl of the Kazakh Steppe. The emphasis was on "might". It probably wasn't, for all its mesmerizing dark blue-green colour.

 

 

 

 

Dusty clouds and grey industrial infrastructure greeted our approach to the seashore. We had booked a room in a hotel named "Zhemchuzhina" (Pearl), a few kilometres out of town, with its own swimming pool, restaurant and access to the beach. Sounded good for one night. We had emailed them, saying we wanted to reserve a parking space for our car. We need not have worried. Again, we were the only guests at the hotel. The pool was empty of both playing children and water, when we asked for the restaurant, the only member of staff we saw said that "there was a restaurant, yes. But it was closed today." So there actually wasn't one. We took a stroll towards the beach, but the access was closed off by a gate. Ok, so this hotel was for all intents and purposes closed for the season, and yet they had asked 100 euros for a room on the ground floor looking directly onto a wall with a AC outlet. They had no other guests, why not give us a room with a sea view? We closed the blackout curtains to have some privacy, and debated our options. There was no Coffee Boom in Balkhash. I knew this because I had accessed the internet with my travel plan. The "free wifi" the hotel offered was spotty verging on non existent. They might consider investing in a better router.

 

 

We drove back into town with two objectives: get a bite to eat and take a walk on the beach. We parked our car on the street and right away found what Astana had not offered: a vanilla-chocolate soft ice in a tiny hole-in-the-wall. Ice-cold and yummy. The day was saved!

 

The promenade to the beach was a tiny bit desolate though. The stands were all boarded up, the benches badly weathered, weeds the only plants growing in the arid shrubberies. The flower beds added a nice bit of colour though. Three elderly women walked along the promenade, talking animatedly in Russian. "They are reminiscing about their first trip to Lake Balkhash in the 70s, when they had a blast", I surmised. "Maybe this town was all the rage then." "This town is just like every seaside resort we've ever been to", Sonia pointed out. "Seen better days, hotels overpriced for what they offer, off-season. Because we don't want to deal with the heat, crowds and noise during summer, we always get the boarded-up version." Right she was. Though I suspect I like the boarded-up version still better than the halli-galli summer-crowd version.

 

 

The beach was somewhat of a let-down too. Or was I just getting travel weary? The grand staircase led down to a stony, muddy area with a large sign "Opasnaya zona". Danger zone. A few men had ignored the sign and were wading toward the water, then back to a crooked bench. "Do you want to go down there", Sonia asked. I looked at the industry towers belching smoke into the air, just west of where we were standing, and shook my head. Let's just get some food.

 

 

We found a restaurant, Café Istanbul, that actually looked rather nice inside. They had a huge menu and a waiter who communicated in Luxembourgish with us via Google Translate. "Did he just mumble "Wann ech gelift", I asked Sonia, when he brought our manti and pizza. "Yep, I heard that too", she said. Cool! Promoting the Luxembourgish language in Central Asia.

 

We had debated whether to cut the drive to Almaty in half again and stop along the Kapshagay Reservoir north of Almaty. But now I just wanted to be in a big city. Tomorrow, come what may, we would sleep in Almaty. Sitting on our rock-hard bed (this mattrass was 15 cm thick, how did they even get it to be so hard?), I booked a room in the 4-star hotel Resident City, put the alarmclock on half past 6 and lay down to sleep.