Yee Haw!

Zack and I took a few days to rent a car and head out to Altyn Emel national park—site of sand dunes and mineral mountains with stunning views and oppressive heat. If Almaty is a Soviet version of a standard American city, Altyn Emel is Arizona or New Mexico.

We rented the car out of the Almaty airport, and though leaving Almaty was a little scary on the traffic and road norms front, once we got out of the city, driving was pretty smooth. There were not many gas stations anywhere near the park, so we filled up frequently on the way to ensure that we had close to a full tank when we entered the park. We watched the green landscapes of Almaty fade into grasslands and then desert, and we rounded the big reservoir north of the city where casino towns and beach resorts dot the shoreline. This place is pretty dang far from the nearest “beach” so people got creative. Eventually, after about four hours of driving, we made it to the village of Basshi.

Basshi is where the park ticket office is, as well as where most of the lodging options are near the park. The place we stayed was super nice, and we got the entire indoor part of the hotel to ourselves. It was really nice to have some space to myself, unpack my toiletries in the bathroom, and not feel like I’m in someone else’s space all the time. I don’t think I’ve gotten as good of a night’s sleep this trip as I did for those two nights we stayed there.

When we arrived at our lodge, the host told us immediately that the Hyunday Accent we’d rented would not be able to make it to the dunes, nor to the mountains that were even farther away. We took her warning cautiously, knowing that she does have an interest in selling us a tour. We wanted also to be able to go on our own time, so we told her that we’d try and ask her for tour recommendations if the car was certainly going to give out. We did, after all, have a spare tire and all the equipment to replace a tire just in case we blew one out.

At the ticket office, they saw our car and were cautiously pessimistic about our selection. A savvy tour operator came right away and offered his 4WD to us for the low, low price of $100 per person per day. Yeah, we weren’t doing that. The Hyundai wasn’t even $200 total for the whole trip, and we were still paying for it for three days, if we used it or not. So, we headed off in the Hyundai into the park.  

Our first afternoon in the park, we headed to the Singing Dunes: some sand dunes that formed between two mountain ranges due to the odd wind patterns that created. The ride out to the Singing Dunes was entirely chatter bumps, which, are probably awful for the car and terribly uncomfortable to ride on, but it wasn’t going to cause the car to break down on the spot, so we kept on going.

The whole ride felt like I was in the Wild West. You could see the dust from other cars spewing up into the air for miles, the whole area was grasslands with tumbleweeds and dust devils popping up all over. Wild deer and cattle crossed our path several times, and the mountains far in the distance were deep red, just like Red Rocks or Sedona. I mean, I really felt like this was indistinguishable from driving on a dirt road in the Southwest.

Eventually, after an hour of chatter bumps and admiring the landscapes, we made it to the Singing Dunes. Supposedly, the dunes sing when there are large movements of sand and though we thought we heard it, it turned out to be a drone from a ways away.

We met a man at the top of the dunes who was amazed to see us here by ourselves, especially from America. This region does get some pretty decent European and Russian tourism, but it seems that whenever we tell people we’re American, they’re surprised. Anyways, this guy’s from this region of Kazakhstan, but he’s working in Chicago now, so he spoke excellent English. He grew up fishing at the river about a 30 minute walk from the dunes, and went through his camera roll to show us the many gigantic fish he’s caught in that river. He was very pleased to welcome us to Kazakhstan, and was glad that Americans were exploring his homeland.

That night, we watched Borat. Because, well, how can you not?

The next day, we drove even farther to the Aktau Mountains and spent a few hours hiking there. It was absurdly hot and dry, and we brought 9 L of water for the two of us. This was frankly just enough for the day. The hike wasn’t that hard, except for a small amount of uphill we did for fun and to get some good views. It’s just that we were sweating so much from the heat. The mountains had the most bizarre shapes, carved from erosion. Their colors were so diverse as well, being made from different mineral deposits from what used to be a sea. You got every color from red to purple in these mountains, despite their name, Aktau, meaning white in Kazakh. We explored for a while, I fell into a pit of mud and got my Keens all dirty, and we enjoyed some dried fruits and pastries for lunch.

After we were done with the Aktau Mountains, we explored another region of the park, where there were red rock formations that popped out everywhere in the landscapes. The sun was lower down in the sky by this point, so it was less hot and we needed less water. We enjoyed summiting some rocky hills and wandering around the rocks for a while.

Our third day, on our way home, we stopped on the side of the road to do a little bit of bushwhacking. We just climbed up over a pass and into a valley, which we walked along all the way to the top of the next pass. This was all fine and dandy—the valley was pretty grassy and there even was a horse trail we could follow through some of the shrubbery. But we decided (well, really Zack decided) that we should go back through a different valley so we don’t see the same sites again. That turned into a two-hour debacle of plowing through thick shrubs and trees, teetering on the steep edges of this valley, getting stabbed by plant thorns every two minutes, and stepping with incredible patience and intent over loose piles of rocks. Though in the moment, I was a little frustrated that we got ourselves into this crazy situation, I am really glad we did it and I had a lot of Type 2 fun.

We returned the car, still in one piece and with the same four tires we started with, back at the airport in the evening. We were 11 km over the allotted limit of 750 km we got for the 3 days, which should have resulted in a charge of $3.08. When the guy who checked out the car saw how we just barely went over on our miles, he laughed and waived our small fee.  

The road trip was a blast! I’m so glad we did it, and in the end, it didn’t end up being that expensive. It was fun to just venture out into the vast landscapes of Central Asia with hardly a plan nor any idea if what we’re trying to do is even possible.