Thursday, 10 September 2026

 

Start: Almaty (KZ) 9:45

Arrival: Almaty (KZ) 18:50

 

Total: 416 km

 

 

We have reached the easternmost part of this trip: Charyn Canyon, barely 200 km west of the Chinese border. The day threatened to get hot. It was already almost 30 degrees when we checked out of our hotel in Almaty in the morning.

 

 

The drive out of Almaty was pleasant. Most traffic was trying to get into, not out of the city at this time of day. The apple orchards and fields along the roadside soon changed into dusty steppe again. But still the mountains rose up high in the south. There were several layers of them: brown undulating hills in the foreground, like an ancient creature lying dormant, biding its time. Behind, dark mountains rose up, then high steely summits further away and light blue ones, barely visible in the far distance. Above it all, in eternal snowy grandeur towered Pik Talgar, the northernmost giant of the Tian Shan range, rising 4979 m high into the air.

 

 

The road all the way to Charyn Canyon was in perfect condition. There were a few gas stations along the way, a miniature Silk road oasis that turned out to be a cemetary with family mausoleums and one shotgun village where, oddly, every house sold souvenirs or food. Nearby, construction of a huge new complex was underway. A sign announced that the name of it would be, of course, Zhibek Zholy, Silk Road.

 

70 km from our destination, the toll road forked into a road leading to Zharkent and the Chinese border, and another one going to the canyons of Southeastern Kazakhstan. To the north, we could make out the beginning of the vast Altyn Emel desert. We had decided against a jeep tour to see the singing sand dunes. I had seen enough sand dunes, singing or quiet, in Qatar and Sonia really wasn't interested either.

 

 

 

 

A few kilometers before the park entrance, a huge sign announced the canyon. We stopped to put on sensible shoes and take a picture of me looking intriguingly like a centaur. Those pants do nothing (or a lot?) for my sizeable arse.

 

To enter the park, one had to drive up to a barrier, be told off by a guard, back the car up to the side, get out and run to a booth. There I purchased a parking ticket for 3000 tenge, gave my name, phone number, number of passengers, car plate and the barrier miraculously opened for us. I suppose they want to know how many dessicated skeletons they have to go pick up in the canyon every night.

 

There were rather a lot of tourists at the visitor centre. We overheard at least one bus group of Americans (tour guide: "don't go down into the canyon. We only have one hour"), and saw many Chinese, South Asian, Russian and of course local visitors. The Americans braved the blistering heat in T-shirts and shorts, while the Chinese were well equipped with face coverings and umbrellas. We had brought umbrellas too, just for this occasion. Or so we thought. We frantically rummaged through our entire luggage twice, looking for the damn things. "I'm dying of heat stroke before we ever get to the canyon", Sonia moaned. So we gave up. Desert nomad costume would have to suffice.

 

 

The path along the ridge wound on for kilometers, the desert sun mercilessly burning down on us. How could it not have occurred to the canyon administration to provide heat shelters for visitors along the way? There were a few benches, none occupied, curing slabs for future carrion. We trudged on. The people heading back that passed us all kept their heads down, quietly hurrying towards the very distant visitors' centre.

 

After more than a kilometer (says Google Maps, it had seemed a lot further!) we had the view all to ourselves. And what a grand view it was! Millions of years of rocks, patiently built up, then sculpted out by a passing river. Michelangelo had taken five years to paint the Last Judgement on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Goethe had worked intermittently on his life's work Faust for 60 years. A mere drop in the ocean, a sigh on the breeze, compared to Nature's relentless endeavours. 12 million years of shifting and shaping, so that I would be standing here to marvel at it. The awesomeness of it.

 

 

"I'll walk to the end of this path, see if there's a way down", Sonia said, leaving me to my thoughts. Fifteen minutes later, she returned. "No way down. But the view is amazing, I took a video of it." That would have to suffice, because if we were ever to marvel at another of Nature's highlights again, we would have to turn around and seek shelter now.

 

Now it was our turn to put our head down, pull the scarf up against the merciless rays from above and focus on just one task: make it back. Bruce Dickinson's words played on a loop in my head: "The sun that gave us life yesterday is now the sun that takes our lives away."

 

Under the only shelter east of the visitors' centre, I splashed new, generous sunscreen on our faces, we drank and waited for our body temperature to get back down to "liveable". My sister's face was all red, her hands swollen. "It's not that far any more", I lied. "We can do it". And we did. Somehow, we stumbled onto the terrass of the visitors' centre, slumped into a chair and slowly made it back among the living. I checked the watch: an hour and a half since we'd parked the car. No way this was only a 3-km roundtrip!

 

"I am just so so sick", I mumbled, cleaning my nose for the hundredth's time today. "I should be in bed, not traipsing around a canyon." Meanwhile Sonia's life spirits had returned. "I want to see the canyon from below too", she declared. I stared at her in horror. "We just barely made it out alive. I'm not going back into the sun." "Then I'm going on my own." That, of course, was not an option. So after a huge soft-ice, we went in search of those stairs. The guy at the reception desk had said there were shuttle buses taking you to the furthest point.

 

We quickly found the stairs down to the bottom of the canyon. Again, no shade as far as the eye could see. "This is madness", I said, watching a blonde woman leaning over the railing, gasping and trying in vain to shade her lobster-coloured face from the sun. "This will be us in half an hour!" I warned, but Sonia was already climbing down the stairs. What else could I do but follow?

 

 

At the bottom there was a rudimentary wooden shelter where people waited for the bus. Soon it arrived: a soot-belching pickup truck. In Luxembourgish we call it a Dreckschleider. People climbed in the back, some sat, some stood, and off it went, envelopped in a cloud of dust and smoke, towards the "scenic spot" 2.5 kilometers further east. We had seen that spot from above, and neither me nor Sonia had any desire to stand on a pick-up truck. Call me spoiled if you will.

 

 

So we set out on foot. "Just five minutes in", Sonia said. "Just to get a feel for it." So that's what we did. We found an interesting formation, Sonia climbed on it, we marvelled at the rocks from below - it really was awe-inspiring, we climbed up a little hill and sat in the shade. Sonia had been right: we should have done this right away. A flying grasshopper seemed eager to adopt (or to eat?) us, the pick-up truck belched past us below. "Didn't they say they had electric eco-taxis?" I wondered aloud. No answer. The canyon lay quiet, impassive. He'd seen it all. A bit of black smoke might give humans the coughs, it certainly did not faze this giant of nature.

 

 

A five minute stop to drink some water and steel ourselves, then somehow back up the steps - 257 in all! - stumbling to our car, get in, AC on full blast and off we went. Bye bye, Charyn Canyon, maybe I'll see you again one day - in winter.

 

In the shade of the Welcome to the Canyon sign, I put on my "driving shoes", drank half a litre of water and felt somehow able to brave the drive home. It was four o'clock now, we would just make it back to Almaty before nightfall.

 

Driving through the canyons west of Charyn, Sonia and I both agreed that this was much nicer: experiencing lower, narrower rocks from the safety of your car, speeding through them, the evening sun illuminating just the upper half, the lower half in soft shade. Gorges du Verdon, the Serbian gorges on the old road to Bulgaria, all this was more human-sized than Charyn or Grand Canyon. There is a reason these places are called gorges. It's because that's what they are: gorgeous.

 

 

 

Exiting the toll road near Almaty, Sonia had a "victory!" moment. We managed to pay all our outstanding tolls - all 5 euros of them. Kazakh authorities really do not make it easy for tourists to pay them, but we outwitted the system and are now debt free. Yay us!

 

The drive back into Almaty was a breeze. "10 km straight on this road, then two lefts and we're at our hotel", Sonia had said and I had acted accordingly. I even ran through two blinking green lights. Give it a week, and I'd be driving like our crazy cabbie yesterday.

 

 

The Resident Hotel had been booked out for tonight, so we had chosen another hotel closer to the "Golden Square", the centre of Almaty. When we entered the Renion Hotel lobby, a manager greeted us with the words: "I have been to Luxembourg. Nice country. People know so many languages there." Small world!

 

Even though my energy gauge was below empty, Sonia coaxed me into getting back out and have a bite to eat. Almaty by night is truly beautiful. Here in the centre, stylish coffee shops moonlighting as restaurants abound. If you starve here, you'd starve anywhere! We even found an old friend from back home: a Leonidas coffee shop!

 

We made a detour to an interesting-sounding merchant-house museum. Sadly, it was under construction and closed. Enough seen for one day. We'd been almost to the border of China today! Sick as a dog, I'd still braved a canyon from both above and below and driven us all the way from Almaty and back. I'd say, I've earned my rest.