Around 6am, we arrived at the starting point of the trip and packed into a van with four fellow travelers, our guide, and our driver who bore a slight resemblance to Putin. We quickly became acquainted with our crew for the next two days – an older Indian couple that lived in Dubai, a long-distance couple around our age that lived in Belarus and Lithuania, and our 23 year-old Kazakh guide named Saya. A Motley Crue! During the four hour drive to Kaindy Lakes, we exchanged travel stories, shared details about our lives and different backgrounds, and had many laughs.

On the way to our first stop, we made a few pit stops at rest areas in the Kazakh countryside. We saw a stand selling things that looked like jawbreakers (throwback) at one of our stops and asked Saya what they were. “Kurt – fermented cheese and a specialty in Kazakhstan! You should try them!” Saya enthusiastically replied. We walked over to the stand and selected a handful of fermented cheese balls in different colors, shapes, and sizes. Jessie was the guinea pig (Doug’s stomach wasn’t feeling 100 percent and he certainly didn’t want to push it over the edge with fermented cheese… Smart man), eagerly biting into one of the darker cheese balls. It tasted interesting… smoky and sour. Jessie tried a few of the others and then offered the rest to Saya. Not our cup of tea, but happy that we tried them!

We arrived at our first stop, Kaindy Lake, after a stretch of road roughs and a river crossing by car. There were a surprising number of fellow tourists there, especially given we had barely seen any other tourists in the whole of Almaty. We learned that these people were largely local tourists as it was Kazakhstan’s Republic Day, so everyone were keen to get out to nature. We walked a mile or two to a viewpoint just above the lake and wow! The water was a shimmering, bluish-green and full of sunken trees that still retained their leaves underwater – almost like an upside down forest. We learned that an earthquake caused these trees to be submerged in water and that many of the trees fell into the water each year (meaning that Kaindy Lake as we experienced it could soon be gone). After walking around the lake, we made our way back to the car and made friends with two adorable puppies.

We stopped at our homestay in Saty village for a quick lunch of kuurdak (Kazakh dish composed of potatoes, onions, garlic, and meat for Doug), tandyr naan, and too many baursak (fried dough) before our next stop. The weather looked like it was going to turn (rain, rain go away!), but luckily stayed overcast with no rain during our time a Kolsai Lakes. At first glance, Kolsai reminded us of the black lake in Harry Potter. The forest of pine trees that surrounded the lake looked black as did the water. But as we got closer, we saw that the water was a bluish-green similar to Kaindy. We decided to get out on the water and row-row-rowed a boat from one end of the lake to the other. Doug proved to be a much stronger rower than Jessie. 

After Kolsai, we settled into our homestay for the night. We enjoyed the Kazakh version of manti (dumplings similar to what we had in Uzbekistan) and the hours of conversation that followed dinner – covering everything from the Armenian genocide and current conflict with Azerbaijan (we’re hoping to head to Armenia in the summer) to Indian Diwali traditions. Throughout this discussion, we also endured multiple attacks on the US and the American mindset (some warranted, others not). We yearned for WiFi so we could disprove some of the assertions about US politics and economic performance, though largely kept our mouths shut as we didn’t have the data we needed to confidently refute claims (#consulting). 

When yawns started to erupt around the table, we all retreated to our shared room for bedtime. The ultimate sleepover with five single beds and one couch that Jessie was silently relegated to as the youngest of the group. We had one of our best nights’ sleep on the trip – a reminder not to judge a book by its cover 🙂