Alluring Almaty: Episode 1

The episode will run really dry without any written narrative packed with the vlog. 

It is sheer negligence or saturation, I presume, of my own mind affected by daily preoccupations to survive that had driven my creative abilities to the Horse Latitudes where there was no wind to blow out a narrative with the decent flow of the desired words to share with all the pictures in my mind, apart from the stills and movies shot from the location where we had been to spend a week of the festive vacation in Bengal

It would be very irresponsible of me if I miss to mention that before leaving India to reach Almaty,

*one must install  

1. Google translate

2. Yandex go

3. 2GIS maps.

For Google translate, to use it even offline the necessary action to be taken is that, 

**one must download the Russian and Kazakh languages. 

Remember that they are even poorer in understanding English language than any common person in India. 

If you know either Kazakh or Russian language, then I must say a potential opportunity is awaiting you in Almaty.

The flight of Air Astana took off from Delhi. All I could see through the window the pallor of smog looming large on the city. The level of air pollution can easily be gauged from above. I have heard that the children are happy with their long holidays in the city, and parents, exasperated, however the breathing-system-oriented diseases and the effects of polluting elements are heavy on the nervous system of the children. I could realize that Zen Alpha in the capital city is under a real threat from an unseen monster. 

As the flight was smoothly cutting through the throng of cloud, without facing any turbulence, I turned busy exploring the screen in front of me. However, I was distracted badly by the exotic sight through the tiny window of the airplane. Air Astana provides its valued customers with a nice little hamper that may prove useful to any traveller at any point of time. My son was occupying the window seat making no use of the best advantage -- the view through it. He was more interested in the movie in front of him. I coaxed him a swap to which he agreed, finally. And as I my tiny phone was extending its abilities to its farthest stretch with its commonplace lens provided, the hostess served us the lunch. The luncheon was bellyful. As I was licking my lips with the awfully good taste of the palak paneer, in consummate camaraderie of a wink of whisky, suddenly I was drifted by the marvel of the brown, steep and jagged mountain range of the Karakoram. The entire range is quite devoid of any vegetation. The sharpened mountain tops were so very thin that they may split though the hardest of objects with one blow. This continued for almost the entire stretch the only shift being that the Karakoram was followed by the Hindukush. A part of the Hindukush was defined with a sharp line that separated the stretch that was full of snow and without snow. Once the snow-capping had started, it never ended till we reached the city of Almaty which it self is entirely surrounded by the Trans Ily Alatau Range, a chunk of the infamous Tien Shan mountain range. When the gate of the flight opened and we kept our feet on the foreign land a gush of wind told us that the temperature there was less than 10 degrees Celsius and we need to put on the warmers immediately.

Visiting Almaty requires NO PRIOR VISA. IT IS ON ARRIVAL AND FREE FOR TWO WEEKS. 

Almaty airport is a small airport where there was almost no one but the boarders in that flight that reached the land. After getting off the flight and clearing off the frisking and immigration. we were given an opportunity to avail a free local mobile SIM card which may instantly be registered on our mobile phone against our passport details. This SIM Card provided us 1GB of free data and quite a good calling time.

THIS IS VERY ESSENTIAL BECAUSE INTERNATINAL ROAMING MAY NOT WORK AT SOME PLACES. For directions and language translations and booking the cabs one will feel helpless for not availing this facility. We did take it and throughout the trip it was a real help.

Osman, the owner of the apartment, was waiting for us to pick us up and reach the apartment that Indrani had booked through booking.com. The details of her card needed to be given while booking the apartment, but no money was debited from there. Osman informed us that in Almaty booking.com may take the card details but according to the government policies no money can be deducted from the account. The only way Booking.com and the similar travel sites may get the commission is that the person who gets the money gives them the commission. These third party sited cannot debit any single amount from anyone’s account. What he had told us proved to be true as we cancelled our booking and directly rescheduled our stay with the Airbnb apartment owned by Osman and his company.

It took us half-an-hour to reach there. The apartment was around 400 sq ft. with a good size washroom and a open kitchenette. For living a household life it was well-furnished and well equipped apartment.

 The only thing that proves to be essential here is to carry one

INTERNATIONAL PLUG CONVERTER/ADAPTER.

The temperature outside was around 6 degrees when we had some hot cup noodles as our dinner and went off to sleep because last morning, we had to wake up too early at 4am to catch our flight to Delhi from Kolkata.

It is highly suggested that while booking the flights, to and fro, one must maintain the gap between the domestic and the international ones at least of four hours. Many things may happen in between among which the vital one the change of Terminals in Delhi. T1-T2 and T3 all are located at a distance of at least 8 kilo meters from one another. This will take one at least half an hour to reach from one to the other, if there is a change. This change may happen even in the last hours.

With the finest memories of snow-capped mountains almost licking the bottom of our flight we went off to sleep wondering how could Alexander cross such a terrific terrain which appears almost impossible to cross as the stretch expands through almost 300 sq kilometres splitting apart Asia and Europe!

 Eyelids were heavy and in my dreams I could see myself in armours with a straight-sword and a spear, standing on a mountain top on a black-horseback, watching the land of the Indics to invade…..

 (continued…)

Click here for : Vlog: Episode 1