At about 10am we officially left China and entered no-man's land, until arriving at Kazakh Customs. Here
soldiers and officials boarded the train and greeted us with enthusiasm. Luggage searches took place, and while we barely had to open our bags our Chinese room mate had all her bags thoroughly searched all the while the Kazakh soldier was making comments to us along the lines of "you'll like Kazakhstan better than China", "the people are nicer here", "our students are smarter here" etc. While we enjoyed the friendly welcome to the country, the bias towards western travellers was
blatantly obvious, and our
previously smiling Chinese room mate, slowly developed a sulk at the discrepancy in treatment.
Throughout the day we got great glimpses of the
beautiful Kazakh countryside including a massive Turquoise lake with shadowy mountains in the distance.
At one station stop Adam was admiring the snacks on offer on the platform (huge smoked fish, bread and kebabs) and struck up a conversation with
Mohammad a fellow traveller.
Later on we chatted the evening away with our room mate and
Mohammad, while enjoying our first Kazakh sunset and finally went to sleep with rising anticipation of arriving in Almaty in the morning.
Adlibing it into friendly Kazakhstan.
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