Almaty will be hosting Winter Asian games in 2011. They are doing a lot of work to get ready for it. We saw this mural not far from the central stadium. Interesting composition.
Category: Kazakhstan
Alpine Flowers
This is fairly high in the Tian Shan mountains. About one hour hike from the top of the lift at Chimbulak ski resort. There is no hiking trail going there and mountains are fairly steep. It was actually a bit nerve wrecking to clime up there, especially that we didn’t have right shoes for it. Of course, as it happens, the hike was totally worth it. The only down side, it was not a sunny day and rain sprinkled here and there. Beautiful place.
In the right lower corner are edelweiss flowers, you can click on the image to see larger version and see better details.
Any Idea where it is?
I bet no one would half any idea what mountains are those, what lake it is and near what city it was taken. The distance from the spot where I took the picture to the mountains is about 60 miles.
Hint: it is a man made body of water and I took a train that went over that bridge when I was a kid.
Ok, no one tried to answer so updated it with proper categories and tags.
Here is another one from the same area.
Local who wanted to be photographed by an American
Any time you visit new place, the majority of people you are going to see around are locals. As a visitor it is not easy to blend in, even if you speak local language something will give you away – your cloth, your camera or your race. In different places there are certain attitudes to non locals and it is usually man who show these attitudes and local behaviors. Some are nice and friendly, some can be rude, some can be hostile. In my experience you might encounter it in smaller cities and villages. In big cities, it is not as common.
So here is the photo of a local guy in Issik. Issik is a small town in Central Asia, about 40 km east from Almaty. After some hiking in the mountains, at around 3PM, we were going to the local market to get some food and I was crossing the bridge across river Issik. In the middle of the bridge I stopped and took a picture of the river and nearby mountains. At the same time I heard someone saying in Russian – “Hey, American, take a picture of me”. He said something else, I can’t recall. I turned around, pointed my camera at him and snapped it away. The guy was drunk and started talking some trash to me, while his friend (not pictured, on the right) was pulling him away. My wife was behind me and started passing us forward the market, this guy said something like “Hey, girl, you are pretty my little blond hotty”, in a trashy Russian way and tried to grab her by the arm. We quickly moved forward away from this character. Btw, gold teeth are the norm in central Asia for denture replacement. Some folks have full mouth of them. I haven’t seen it in the west for quite a while now.
Kazakhstan 2005
Almaty is the host to 2011 Asian Winter Games. I bet right now they are working hard on fixing all of the venues to get them ready.
I took these photos back in 2005.
This is an open air ice field. It was usually open from September through May, so this August I do not expect it to be operational. I skated there many times and watched a few ball hockey games and motorcycle racing. Both on ice of course. Highly recommend, especially motorcycle racing. This rink is called Medeo, it is about 30 minutes from the city, in the mountains. Next year it will be one of the ice rinks for the winter games. And if you turn 180 around at the spot where picture was taken from and look into the mountains you will see a ski resort, called Chimbulak. It will be the main venue for all mountain sports. I hope we can make to it this summer and hike around, but again, it might be under construction.
I’m trying to remember if this is an Opera house or one of the Government buildings.
This is the view on the above mentioned Chimbulak. Far away hills right under the stony part are down hill slopes.
Ships and goats going back from the mountains to their houses. Beah, Beah, Beah. This was in small village, Kok Tube, about two hours east from Almaty.
