No border

In countries previously ruled under a communist party including Kazakhstan, a registration for foreigners are required within 3-5 days of arrival. When arriving by land, all non-Kazakh passport holders are to report to Ministry of Inner Affairs to register, which without it departure may be a hassle. We visited the designated building the day after we arrived, and were told to come back next morning at 10:00. At 9:45, Friday, we arrived the same place to find many people pushing to get to the counter. We somehow got to the officer, received necessary documents, took copies and handed them in. We were then told to come back on Monday at 18:00, which was surprising as we were hoping to get our only IDs back immediately, but if this is the rule then we had to make sure to not cause any problem over the weekend.

A couple of days were enough to walk around the city, and so we spent the weekend by visiting the long-distance bus station in the morning to find an appealing route, hopped on and made ourselves day trips to towns outside of Almaty. A visit to Medeu, a mountainous area south of the city, and a town of Talgar to relax near a river was just enough to get our minds off of Internet.

Forming a line is not a pert of their cul

Without any problem we picked up our passports on Mondsy evening, and we were off to the next destination. Instead of the common route of direct bus to Bishkek, we chose to go to a town of Karakara, east of Almaty to cross the border into Karakol of Kyrgyzstan, then traveling west by lake Issyk Kul, and finally to Bishkek. The direct route will likely take about four hours including the immigration procedure, on the other hand, reaching Karakara will take about the same with our route, so we planned a rough 3-day traveling scheme.

The minibus left the station at half past seven, and is driving through the land on a good pace. People sharing the same ride were very friendly people, and we chatted with hand gesture and three Russian words (I think one of the older lady even invited us to her home), time quickly passed and we arrived our first destination, Kegen by 13:00.

We hitched a car, and were in Karakara 10 minutes later. We then tried to explain that we wanted to cross the border, but he keeps shaking his head with unknown explanation. Soon another car pulled up, and after talking to our driver they drove off and came back with a Chinese girl. She translated to us that the border has been closed for over a year and a half, and after making phonecalls to authority, our only option is to go back to Almaty to take the direct bus. We had no choice, so we went back to Kegen to hitch a car back to Almaty on the same road.

We arrived Almaty exactly 12 hours later of our departure from the same station. With no time to waste, we went to international bus station on the other side of the city, and found a bus to Bishkek leaving at 21:00. The border was open and quiet at this hour, and it took least amount of time to cross, first time by foot. It was 1:30 when we arrived Bishkek, meaning we spent 18 hours to go 200km. Luckily a guesthouse was still open. Even though the spontaneous traveling style can make the experience filled with stories to tell others, the exhausted duo was unable to laugh it off at 2:00 in the morning. And so we only made one plan for the following day; to relax the whole day, and quickly went to sleep.