Tuesday, 8 September 2026

 

Start: Balkhash (KZ) 7:00

Arrival: Almaty (KZ) 15:30

 

Total: 650 km

 

 

I barely slept during the night. Not for any external reason - it was quiet, the hard bed was actually quite comfortable, the room was neither too hot not too cold - but it's a simple fact of life that whenever I know I need to be fit and well rested at an early hour, I simply cannot fall asleep. Story of my life. So I stumbled out of bed, bleary-eyed, my throat feeling like I had eaten glass the day before. The air-conditioner I had put on full blast two days ago, was Sonia's conjecture. The hotel was deserted. We couldn't find a member of staff anywhere, so we just left the key on the front desk, wrote them a message saying we did not need their "set plate" breakfast and took off.

 

 

The area south of Balkhash town looked even more barren than yesterday's landscape. Instead of regolith, large stretches were covered with a salty white substance. Dried-out lakes? Industrial run-off? A wasteland. The desolation of Smaug. Several yurts along the way were selling "Freshly caught fish". Maybe we were way off with our judgement, but we gave the fresh catch a pass.

 

Again, no gas stations or rest areas for hundreds of kilometres. A few suicidal birds, pecking at the tarmac and flying off at the last moment. Some horses standing in the glaring sun. No source of water anywhere to be seen. A single dead animal, possibly a gazelle, lying in the middle of the road. One of the reasons I don't like to drive after dark.

 

 

We passed a burned-out car wreck, mounted on a stand. Not the first one, too. "Even the cars are dead here, Sonia said sadly. "Gives you the creeps." "They could market this, though", I mused. "Pave an exit road up to an observation deck, build a nice roadside-café and two-room museum explaining how the landscape came to be like this. A couple a panels in Kazakh, Russian and English would be enough. Some pictures. A 1-km roundabout walkway on wooden-planks and the tourists would come. Like in Alta in Northern Norway. Or Nemrud Dag in Central Turkey. Noah's Ark in the no-man's land on the Turkish-Iranian-Armenian border." Nous on a des idées, as Michel Sardou sang. Still, I honestly think that a few such stops between Balkhash and Almaty could add immense touristic value to this stretch of road. Even yesterday's baba monument could be included into such a "Kazakh steppe" discovery road. The things we could have learnt about the steppe! The cakes and barsaug we could have eaten at each stop!

 

 

The road was in excellent condition all the way to Almaty, though. AI had warned me to drive slowly and carefully, as the tarmac throughout would be horrible. Later in Almaty, I challenged this claim. "You are absolutely right!", came the cheerful answer. "The road in 2026 is completely new. No problem whatsoever going 140 km/h. Would you like some suggestions on what to see in Almaty or do you need help finding a good restaurant on the way?" A novelist inventing such a psychopathic virtual assistant would be berated for dreaming up a completely implausible dystopia.

 

About 70 km north of Almaty, Sonia pointed to the horizon. Those can't be mountains, can they? Odd cloud formations though." I squinted into the distance. From the endless flat steppe, a white shadow rose up on the horizon, barely different from the light blue sky. Soon, a few scragged zigzags pierced the bottom part of the clouds. We had reached the Tian Shan! The "Heavenly Mountains", as any first-year Chinese student could tell you. What a sight this must have been for nomads, after travelling for weeks through the desert.

 

 

We had made good speed but my sleepless night was asking its toll. "I need to close my eyes, now", I moaned. Luckily, we were close to the motorsport race track Sokol. We almost missed the entry to it, as not even a small sign advertised its presence. The parking lot lay empty in the afternoon sun. I stopped the car, crawled onto the back seat and was asleep within seconds.

 

 

 

Half an hour later, I was ready to brave the one-hour drive into Almaty. Bloggers and discussion forum members had variously described the traffic as "chaotic", "crazy" or variations on that theme. Still slightly bleary-eyed and with a "just-ate-glass-shards" throat, I was still excited to get going.

 

 

Either road conditions and traffic behaviour had drastically improved in recent years, online writers were exaggerating their feats or I was getting jaded (after all, I had both Tbilisi and Tirana under my belt. Compared to these, Moscow had been a breeze). In any case, there were no major hurdles once you stuck to a few rules:

- don't overlook traffic lights. A pet peeve of mine. The buggers are often hard to see and you don't want to drive into a huge intersection with cars coming at you left and right. Hence, the denser the traffic, the better. Just stop when the car in front of you stops.

- stick to the posted speed limit. Again, easier said than done. 20 km/h before a vast empty pedestrian crossing is a big ask.

- let line weavers weave. It's fun to watch, and I really don't mind them. They're usually good drivers.

- expect lines to erratically disappear and having to weave into traffic to the left or right at the last second. Yep, it happens. A lot. Better than Red Bull to keep you awake.

- rely on your sister to guide you. This makes driving in a large city so much easier. I scream: "A right, now? NOW?" She says: "Maybe..." And I scream, louder, "NOW, yes or no?" and in no time you infallibly arrive at your destination. Chilled-out. Better than any funfair ride. Way less scary than an open view elevator. I like it. It's fun.

 

 

Last rule: Expect roadworks, traffic diverted into adventurous gulleys, dust (Feinstaubpartikelalarm!) and "make-your-own-lane" newly paved road. And what would we see in a suburb of Almaty? A roadwork company named Wirtgen! A Luxembourgish immigrant in Kazakhstan? What a find!

 

We arrived at our hotel in Almaty without a single wrong turn, checked in, had a bite to eat, I fell onto the bed, stumbled up again, brushed my teeth, back into bed and slept for 13 hours straight.