Jagshemash!

At last, it was time. Time for Kazakhstan. Time for the Stans. Time for hard mode. Time to get the hell out of Georgia.

Time to take… SCAT airlines? Yes, that was the shitty name of the obscure Kazakh airline which would - if all went according to plan - take me to Aktau on the far side of the Caspian sea. As I waited in the airport, I noticed that all of the pilots walking by seemed alarmingly young. I don’t know much about the life expectancy of Kazakh aviators, but the fact that everybody clapped when we landed confirmed my suspicions that our chances of survival were indeed not quite 100%.

I was in Kazakhstan. 

Very nice 👍

At baggage claim I met @Alexis, a French bicyclist bound for Singapore. My journal entry for the day says "we got dinner together, he's a cool guy." 

The malaise of Tbilisi was gone in an instant, and the world was interesting again. The vibe was different, the people were different, the landscape was different, and the food was… not great. I am generally averse to criticizing other cultures, but the tastiest dish in all the land is only inspiring enough to have been named plov.

Malcolm Gladwell says that if you can't solve a problem, then all you can do is digress. There was no way around the fact that for the next three months I would basically just be eating plov, stale bread, and assorted sheep byproducts.

I digress.

I took a taxi to the port where Strom was baking in the hot sun. Even here, where gas is only cents per liter, cab drivers keep their tanks empty until a fare guarantees reimbursement for a fill up.

Kazakh officials are notoriously corrupt. I therefore carried with me my largest bottle of brandy, should it come in handy. Unfortunately, there was a security checkpoint and they confiscated it (gleefully, I might add). So lame - didn't they know that I was in the mood to bribe people and do dumb stuff!? But it was just as well, for the port was a large, modern building full of seemingly officious, respectable people and I would have surely made a fool of myself. Hardly. I was shaken down to the tune of several hundred dollars, but I just wanted to get out of there, because reasons, so I paid and hit the road.