Overnight Tour

"The canyon is 7th place in the world by huge," our tour guide, K——, tells us in a rare moment of mistranslation. In the past thirty-six hours K—— has led our group of seven through the various natural attractions that draw tourists to this south-eastern pocket of Kazhakstan. He speaks English perfectly so this mistake, whilst humorous, is a little peculiar.

Earlier this morning we saw Kaindy Lake, a turquoise beauty, under the glow of the morning sun. After a drive in our minivan from the previous night's accommodation, we were transferred into a long beige vehicle. "VIP transport," K—— told us. In Russian it was called a bukhanka, a loaf of bread. It was a minibus-like overland vehicle built during Soviet times to navigate the more difficult-to-reach corners of the empire. In our case it was to get us from behind the cemetery at the edge of the town of Saty to the lake thirty minutes uphill.

A bumpy ride ensued with a soundtrack of Kazhak pop hits being played by the bukhanka driver navigating the rocky landscape. After a few river crossings we transferred into another bukhanka before reaching an open area just above the lake.

It only took ten minutes to walk down to the lake's edge which was relatively empty in the early hours of a Thursday morning. I watched as grey squirrels with orange faces rummaged around in the early season snow. Whilst it had been a few days since any snowfall, the cool overnight temperatures were more than enough to sustain whatever had fallen a few days prior. The deep lake was cold to touch with the edges of it frozen in a thin layer of ice. Putting my ear to the edge of the lake, I could hear the ice slowly cracking and melting as the sun began to shine on the lake.

An eagle soared overhead as K—— told us a little about the lake, as he did at each lake or canyon we had seen in the last day. The lake, he said, had only existed for the last hundred or so years. A 1911 earthquake forced a split in the nearby mountainside, exposing a stream which then filled up the valley below, creating a lake. The thing is, being a natural phenomenon and all, the vegetation was all still there when the lake began to fill. As a result, dead trees, now over a hundred years old, now prod out of the clear blue lake, puncturing the water's flat surface.

Occasionally a tree, years after its death and subsequent semi-submersion, would collapse and fall over, K—— told us. But not today. Instead we were given an hour to explore the lake, take the necessary photographs for social media and then meet back at the spot our Soviet vehicle had dropped us off at.

K—— had only given us about two minutes worth of information before we were left to explore on our own. I'd come to expect this as a result of the three sites we'd seen on the previous day. I calculated that, over the entire two-day tour, the collective amount of tour spiel we'd been given would have been about the same amount I would've given in my first two stops when I was a tour guide in Sydney.

I realise now I was working way too hard for all of those years. To take this overnight tour I was spending about the same as I had been spending in four or five days elsewhere in central Asia. This was the ideal tour guiding gig.

K—— was a nice person. But if you have to start a sentence with "... was a nice person, but..." then that's usually an indicator of something being a little wrong. Of the nine of us in the minivan, including K—— and the driver, K—— was the youngest. And occasionally it showed. I think most saliently, though, was on the previous evening. A polite Filipino woman on the tour informed him that the taps in the bathroom had frozen over. As he was in charge he needed to talk to the guesthouse owners to get it fixed. However he had been drinking so much alcohol in our yurt that he was falling over having to put his shoes on to get outside.

And so, as we stood observing the grandeur of a canyon that was 7th place in the world by huge the following day, I wondered if his English-language stumbling was again as a result of alcoholic influence. I think he was still hungover from the night before. He was clearly an intelligent guy but I think he had mentally checked out. Needless to say, I had come for the canyon and not the tour guide so I made the most of the situation and enjoyed the spectacular scenery.

On the car ride back to Almaty later, K—— was passed on the front seat next to the driver. He had been getting into the cha-cha again. Not the dance, but the homemade high-proof alcohol he had been sipping the night before. He had met some Russian women at the canyon and had enjoyed chatting to them and drinking whilst the rest of us explored. Whilst I didn't need commentary on the three hour drive back to the city, it was just a little surprising.

As someone who rarely takes tours, I was interested to see what going on a more-expensive overnight tour would be like. I learned that, as is often the case in the tourism industry, a more expensive product doesn't mean you'll get a better quality outcome. You paid for the tour before it even began. The quality was left up to chance. If only I too had realised this clever business trick I might still be tour guiding, myself.