We have a
long day today. We plan to drive 750 kms. today. We left hotel by 8:30am. Our
first requirement was to have cash currency. So, we searched for an ATM first.
We were on
the highway soon. The highway was single lane with no divider in between. It
became difficult for the us to overtake. Ours is right hand drive car and we
have to overtake another vehicle from left side here. Normally when there are
two lanes in one direction and a road divider, it is OK with right hand drive
car. Remember we are on Right side driving traffic rule right from Laos and
will continue so till we cross over from France to UK. The person sitting next
to driver (on the left side) had a larger role today as he has to advice driver
whether he can overtake or not.
We saw many
camels, horses and cows. Camels were special attraction. There were camels with
single hump and double hump (bacterial camel).
The whole
route today was devoid of anything scenic. It was just open space on both sides
of the road. You could see miles on the left and right having nothing but open
spaces with green grass.
We reached
Kyzylorda, town around 300 kms. from Turkistan. We had seen on the net that
there is an Indian restaurant ‘Namaste Kyzylorda’. The town was about 15-20
kms. away from the highway. We went in search of the restaurant. We reached the
location but could not locate the restaurant. We took help of a lady to locate
the restaurant. She was kind enough to help us to reach the restaurant. She sat
in our car. She took us to another nearby restaurant, Buffet Café.
We had one
of the best lunches on this trip. They allotted us a separate area, room-like,
where we sat on the floor with a big table in the middle. There were very soft
carpets all around the table. It was very comfortable. There was one girl who
could converse in English, though, not very fluent. She managed to take our
lunch order. The food was sumptuous. Kids had a gala time there as they could
run around the table. We all could stretch our legs. We were there for about
1.5 hours and thoroughly enjoyed the lunch. This was the way Aditi arranged a
special treat on “Father’s Day”.
We travelled
to Aralsk without break except for filling petrol at one place. We reached
Aralsk at about 7 pm. We lost one hour on the way. We started from Turkistan
where it was GMT+6 hours and in Aralsk it is GMT+5 hours. In Kazakhstan there
are two Standard times.
Kazakhstan
is a very big country. It is the biggest land-locked country in the world. It
is the ninth largest country in size. It is almost as big in the size as India,
but the population is only 1 crore 84 lakhs (18 million). There is a vast area
which is not inhabited. The open spaces here are green with grass.
This country
is located mostly in Asia, with small western part in Europe. It extends from
the Caspian sea on the west to Altai mountains in the Eastern borders with
China and Russia. Astana is the capital
city. It has been renamed as Nur-Sultan in 2019.
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