Day 73 Almaty

After a leisurely breakfast we offered Chris some route info for the Pamir area. We then caught a taxi into the central city area and had a wander around some nice parks and a beautiful cathedral. Almaty is a nice place, mainly for domestic and Russian tourists I suspect, also it is set to a spectacular mountain backdrop which supports winter skiing.






The war memorials are very impressive monuments and they depict the war heroes as larger than life colossus' of men but in reality we all know we send off 18 year old boys to die in these conflicts. Certainly most of the soldiers we have encountered in our travels in this area fit the latter category.



We had a nice lunch then back to the hotel for some planning, which has thrown up a couple of things that we need to do back in town, so we may end up there tomorrow as well.




Chris has spent most of the day planning as well, we will meet up for beers and dinner shortly.
On our way to dinner we caught our first glimpse of the mountains, atmospheric conditions (smog) has hidden them until now.

Very nice meal and good company   

Comments

  1. Audrey Larsen30 July 2019 at 11:38

    Impressive memorials, interesting what they value. Really enjoying learning about places unlikely to see!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Angela Whitney31 July 2019 at 17:43

    Wow, very beautiful and impressive architecture.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Auckland - Home

Image
This journey doesn’t seem to want to end. Firstly we had to wait in the plane in Bali for 20 minutes so we wouldn’t arrive in Sydney before the 6am opening time.  We were expecting to land in Sydney in a few minutes when the captain informs us there has been a major malfunction with air traffic control and the landing time scheduled for us is outside the window of fuel remaining on board. So we diverted to Canberra for more fuel and a new flight plan to return to Sydney.  We arrived in Sydney 3 hours late and someone had parked their plane in our space!  Of course we missed our connection to Auckland.  We are booked on an afternoon flight, it could have been worse.  We had a lovely day with Paddy and Jules in Auckland with a nice brunch followed by a walk on a local walkway. Very relaxing in the warm sunshine. On Monday we collected the bike with no fuss, it was great to be reunited.   We then had a miserable  ride to Cambridge in torrential rain....
Read more

Day 166. Cameron Highlands - Kuala Lumpur

Image
It was funny packing the bike today knowing that it was for the last time.  The descent from the Cameron Highlands was a delight, narrow winding roads with beautiful bush scenery in cool mountain air.  Before we knew it we were on the motorway and heading for the megatropolis of Kuala Lumpur.  What a massive city.  We entered from the north and are staying in the south closer to the airport.  We navigated the labyrinth of the motorways and found our hotel ok Our hotel is quite large with apartments as well as hotel rooms.  There is a large shopping complex nearby so we should be ok here for a few days. Also the carpark has a carwash with very obliging man so things are falling into place.  The next few days we will be busy organising the shipping for the bike and cleaning it thoroughly for NZ customs.  Suddenly  our journey comes to an end.  It hasn’t sunk in yet.  So this is the last daily post. Thank you all for reading it.  ...
Read more

Tribute to a Tiger

Image
I agonised for months about which bike to bring on this trip and then spent more months preparing it for the journey.  It hasn’t missed a beat.  3 oil changes 3 tyre changes 1 set of front brake pads.  The 14T front sprocket is badly worn and will end its days on display in my workshop.  Punctures 0 😄 It has been used and abused, dropped, and ridden on many many roads and trails it was never designed to be on.  This kind of trip is all about compromise, sometimes I wished for a bigger bike, sometimes I was glad it wasn’t bigger.  It has handled everything we have dished out to it and not once let us down.  It is a miracle it hasn’t shaken itself to bits.  It has been a great servant and we couldn’t have asked for more. 
Read more