Continuing East after his trip from Greece to Georgia, Ryan Wilson finds himself exploring a lesser-traveled part of Central Asia, this time on the steppes of Southern Kazakhstan. Read on for a look at what it’s like riding through this underrated region, which often gets overshadowed by its more mountainous neighbors…
After finishing up in Georgia and Türkiye, the natural progression would have been to head to Azerbaijan and continue my trip to the East. The wrench thrown into the works of that plan was the fact that Azerbaijan still hasn’t opened its land borders since they closed in 2020 for the ‘rona, which has made cross-continent trips considerably more difficult for those with passports that don’t easily allow them to pass through Russia or Iran.
I went back and forth over a few options, but when plan A hit a snag with visa issues, I honed in on Kazakhstan as a starting point, and to see where I could go from there. Back in 2019, I toured the ‘Stans with my friend Chrissa and the whole Central Asia region became an immediate favorite, but we never really got a proper crack at Kazakhstan as winter had arrived by the time we wrapped up in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. I always knew I’d return one day, and that day was finally here.
I packed up my bike in Istanbul and set off for Shymkent, one of the Southernmost cities in Kazakhstan. It was April, so all of the high-altitude dirt roads of Kyrgyzstan would still be buried under snow for a couple of months, which meant finding a route through the lower Kazakh steppe, where far fewer cyclists venture compared to the Tian Shan Mountains that are now a staple destination amongst bike travelers.
At 4 am in the Shymkent airport, I slapped my bike together in a daze, loaded up all of my bags, and rode into the city. I’ve done away with dealing with airport taxi drivers the way I used to, and my mental health has improved greatly for it.
KOK BORU
After a couple of days to stock up on supplies, I headed south out of town, looking to take the most traffic-free option out of the city that I could find. It added an extra 25km or so to my trip, but I wasn’t in a hurry. As I rode through a few small villages, I noticed an odd number of trucks hauling horses in trailers. I knew they were into horses here, but this seemed a touch extreme, like something was going on. Eventually, a man who spoke English flagged me down and started asking about my trip, and then said, “You should go to the Kok Boru match! It’s the last of the season before it gets too hot” as he pointed up a nearby hill.
Kok Boru is a traditional Central Asian game where riders on horseback aim to haul a goat carcass across a field of play at top speed and score points by crossing into a circle on the ground while the other riders try to stop them. There are apparently a few different versions of this game, but this one featured a massive horde of 100+ riders and seemed to be a free-for-all.
Locals gathered to grill kebabs (shashlik), and enjoy the dusty festivities from atop their own horses on the sidelines or in the stands. I guess there aren’t many tourists riding up to these things on bikes, because I immediately became a second attraction.
One very friendly local man invited me over for some traditional lamb shashlik. “You must be very hungry to ride all this way” he translated, ordering more and more skewers of meat as soon as I’d get close to finishing one. They eat the meat skewers with fresh “nan” (tandoori bread), raw onions, and a tangy, spicy sauce on top. It was damn good, and my first dose of Kazakh hospitality.
Sairam-Ugam
As the party started to wrap up, I hit the road again, now just looking for a place to camp for the night. Thankfully, that’s never too tough in this region, even in the farmlands just outside of the city.
After a soggy morning, I aimed to take sideroads that would skirt along the Sairam-Ugum National Park, and give me some views of the snow-capped peaks that make up the border with Uzbekistan. Before long, I got my first glimpse, and I would work my way a bit closer as the day went on.
The local police stopped me almost every time I passed through a village. Asking me what I was up to, and usually taking me around to a local shop to buy me a few things before taking a bunch of selfies and videos. These photos must have been making their rounds in the Kazakh police group chat because suddenly, I was being recognized as the tourist on the bike, to the point where people were pulling up photos of me on their phones as soon as I met them and shouting my name from across the street.
People would often come up with their phones already in hand as I rode through town, ask for a selfie, and politely walk away without saying more than a few words, “Hello, selfie? Thank youuu”. From grandmothers to kids and anyone in between. It was clear that these areas don’t see a lot of foreigners, but the locals definitely aren’t shy!
I continued the climb toward Sairam peak as the farms and villages began to thin out, and more yurts started to pop up in the hills. The paved road weaved through the valley and soon turned to dirt as it climbed much more steeply toward the mountains.
A group of local guys from Shymkent playing Kazakh rap music from their car waved me over and asked if I wanted some pilaf, a staple regional dish made with rice, vegetables, raisins, boiled egg, lamb, and topped with horse meat. Everyone gathers around the big plate with their spoon and digs in, family-style. The guys would take turns trying to ride my bike, perhaps the first to get a real sense of what it’s like riding a 50kg bike, as they were trying to start on a gradient over 10%. Endless entertainment.
Aksu Canyon
After the picnic, I descended back toward a park ranger office, where one of the guards had offered to let me stay the night in a yurt before I veered north toward Aksu Canyon. With little in terms of hotels or guesthouses on my route for the next few weeks, I couldn’t turn down an opportunity to charge up my batteries.
The road to Aksu would once again weave through quiet farmland adjacent to the mountains. This was where the views really started to open up, and I could get glimpses of the canyon with a backdrop of the Sairam range. The views were too good to pass up, so I set up my tent near the edge of Aksu and watched the sun dip below the horizon.
Off the Beaten Track
While Sairam-Ugum and Aksu get their fair share of visitors, especially locals from nearby cities, the next handful of days on my route were spent diving deeper into the steppe, amongst some obscure hills and valleys that even made the locals confused when I would mention where I was going. Just to make the conversation easier, I would instead say I was going to a nearby city that could make a bit more sense to people who couldn’t really understand why I was doing a few hundred extra kilometers just for “fun”.
A string of villages dot the steppe in this region and are filled with all sorts of action. From your (overly) friendly neighborhood vodka enjoyer that loves to get a little too touchy and uses you to keep his balance, to hordes of kids, who seem to run these towns during the day when the parents are out working. This is where one selfie turns into about 30, and a quick stop turns into an hour of practicing my Kazakh and their English. As it turns out, there is a bit of crossover with Kazakh and Turkish languages, so I could really impress with my counting skills (bir, iki, uç, dört, beş…), along with a few other words that are very similar.
Shepherd Valley
After a couple of days, I reached the opening of Alğabas valley and made my way into the unknown mountains. This valley has no road on my map, but I could spot something through the satellite view, so I took my chances coming all the way out here in hopes that it would connect to a canyon to the south.
The track criss-crossed a river and slowly worked its way uphill, with only a few shepherds’ homes along the way. The rest was wide-open grassland with horses and sheep roaming around freely.
After crossing one shepherd’s home with seemingly no one around, a man suddenly came riding up on a motorcycle with a balaclava on. He pointed back toward the house and made the universal motion for food via the air spoon. He looked a bit intimidating in the mask, but I learned long ago to always say yes to these invites.
When I got in the house, the man introduced me to his wife, and they immediately prepared a meal of sheep meat with noodles and all sorts of breads, treats, and tea. They gave me a full tour of the area and shared loads of photos of their kids, who had moved away to the city, a common theme around here. I only spent a couple of hours with them, but they were some of the kindest that I’ve met in 9 years on the road, and it immediately validated my desire to head way out into places that tourists don’t go, as this tends to be where you meet the most hospitable people. We took a bunch of photos together, and they loaded me up with boiled eggs and a dried, sour cheese called ‘qurut’, and sent me on my way as I had a long climb ahead.
Less than a kilometer later, a man on a horse approached me and asked if I wanted tea. While it didn’t make logical sense to stop again so soon, I stuck to my rule of saying yes and accepted. I even got a chance to ride his horse around his farm. My progress for the day wasn’t going to be great, but it was well worth the memories.
After passing the final shepherd’s home, I turned up the valley and followed a very rarely used set of tracks that rose steeply through the mountains. The final kilometer was basically all pushing, up a 20% wall, reaching a plateau that I would skirt along the edge of for a while before dropping back into Bayzhansay valley. I found a spot overlooking the valley and called it a night there.
Bayzhansay is the site of an old Soviet-era ore mine. It used to be a bustling town, but these days is semi-abandoned. They say that the lead from 1 in 7 Soviet bullets fired during World War II came from Bayzhansay. These days, it’s largely limited to just a few shepherds remaining, with most of the “town” infrastructure from the old days being in ruins. Still, the dirt road that cuts through the rugged canyon is impressive on its own.
The Almalı Feast
When I rolled out of the valley, I got to the small village of Almalı. The streets seemed to be all but empty on first glance, but as I got further in, I spotted the local mosque with a huge table set up and locals mingling around a couple of large pots. It didn’t take long before I was being waved over, and they were pouring me a big bowl of buckwheat and milky soup with tons of freshly made fried bread and endless sweets. I couldn’t quite gather what the celebration was for based on a few translations, but I was welcomed in as one of the villagers for the day.
They filled up a comically large bag of leftovers to give me, and a friendly local lady invited me to stay at her house for the night, where they were set to have a barbecue just a few hours later. Of course, I could not refuse, and ended up sleeping in her kitchen after an evening of shashlik.
The Road to Taraz
The toughest days of the route were behind me. Now I just had a small paved pass to get over and a couple of hundred kilometers of rolling hills on fast roads before I’d reach the final city of this stint through Kazakhstan. There was no shortage of scenery along the way, as lush green valleys met rugged canyons, and made for some perfect camping opportunities, if you’re willing to ignore the punishing wind for those views.
Taraz was another low-lying city, and would be the point where I’d cross into Kyrgyzstan for the first time on this trip, but it wouldn’t be my last stretch through Kazakhstan, so stay tuned for that…
See the Prospector frame he’s touring on and more at Tumbleweed Bikes.