05
Mangystau
4 days
On the night train from Aralsk to Aktau we catch up on some reading since we have the compartment to ourselves. The train pulls us through the steppe with only the occasional small village. Despite the emptiness, I can look outside for hours. Like in a dream, I see galloping horses in the pink glow of the sunset.
On the train we meet Bakit and it does not take him long to invite us to his home in Aktau. He offers us a place to stay for the next night. When we arrive, his mother has filled the table with every breakfast food imaginable.
Having learned our lesson from the daytrip in Almaty, we rent a 4x4 from Redmaya. With lunch provided by Bakit's wife and a bottle of kymyz, we set off for three days to the cosmic landscape in Mangystau. We are the first tourists to rent a car from this company and although the equipment is top notch, maps and directions are lacking. “Just drive in the direction of the pin on Google Maps”. There is hardly any phone reception so without internet connection this will be fun.
Past camels and horses we drive over dirt roads. We see schoolboys hitchhiking along the dirtroad from Shakpak Ata to the main road. They are hiking for two weeks from Fort Shevchenko to a place whose name I never understood. Since there are hardly any cars in this no man's land we take six of them in our backseat and take the luggage from the guys who were not able to catch a ride. We drop them off a couple of km further.
The first day we drive to Shakpak Ata, Torysh and we set up camp at what we think is Airakty. With Beisbarmak from Bakit’s mum and hot tea, we see the sun setting over the limestone landscape. This was once the bottom of a sea.
After a cold night in our tent we set off to find Sherkala. As with many of the places we try to see we are never really sure if we found the right spot but we settle for a view from afar. We still need to drive a long way to Beket Ata today.
Together with other pilgrims we go for the mandatory toilet visit and descend to the mosque. Our last stop of the day is the most beautiful on our itinerary, Bozhyra. Again it takes us some time to find the right viewpoints but eventually we find a spot with a view on Dragon’s Crest. We almost set up camp at the “Martian Panorama Viewpoint” but we take the risk to drive further even though the sun has already set.
We wake up at dawn and admire the light change on Dragon’s Crest. From peach to pink to icy blue. We return to Aktau with one more landscape to tick off our list. In search of the Kyzylkyp landscape we turn off the main road too quickly. When everybody says we will have to drive off-road in Mangystau, we do not expect that there is in fact a completely easy to follow dirt track. After nearly running over three turtles in the low bushes we go back to the main road and lo and behold, there is the laid road to Kyzylkyp.