While we have traveled to many parts of the world and faced lots of diverse foods, this was the first time I was facing the prospect of horse being a staple on almost every menu. And while I'm all about experiencing the culture and cuisine of the places that we travel to, the thought of eating horse was leaving me queasy. As a group of travelers we are diverse in our opinions on this topic, and some of us in our group are keen to try horse meat and others of us are a hard no. You can guess where Avery's stance is on this given her love of horses. Cadence thought that she would be willing to try it and I'm a pretty hard no on the idea. Dave was feeling mixed about it and wasn't sure what his take would be.
What's interesting to me is that the Kazakhs respect horses and due to their respect for them, eat them, while we as North Americans respect horses and don't eat them. Kazakhs are thought to have been the first to domesticate the wild horse and the country's success and culture is thought to be directly tied to horses.
While at one point North Americans did eat horsemeat, it is thought that because we moved away from using horses for transportation, horse became more like pets which in turn moved us culturally away from eating them. While Kazakhstan is now a thriving and modern country, eating horse meat is still deeply rooted in their culture and is thought to have many positive healing properties.
So we will be faced on this trip with the decision of whether or not to partake as the Kazakhs do in eating horse meat, while we also experience the joy of riding them while we stay in the mountains later on in our trip. An interesting dilemma for sure and one that has certainly sparked a lot of discussion and debate about how to show respect for those in our family that have different opinions on this matter.
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We all woke up just before 7am and decided that a hotel breakfast would be appropriate to start the day. The hotel put out a pretty good spread with some interesting additions to a typical breakfast buffet such as a soup broth to which you could add various vegetables, Russian pancakes (like crepes) and a really good ratatouille dish with bacon.
Once we were all well fed and coffied up we packed a bag for the day and headed out to explore. The morning air was quite cool and we were happy to get out early as we knew that the daily temperature was expected to climb to 35 degrees later on. Getting a head start on the day was a good plan.
As we walked towards the downtown of Almaty, I have to admit that I was truly amazed by this city. It is absolutely spotless first of all, the streets are clean and the pedestrian walkways are wide and paved in a variety of paver styles and colours. There are bike paths alongside most of the sidewalks (although not many bikes) and there are parks with fountains and gardens every few blocks. The air quality is okay, but its hot, so that can sometimes exacerbate the air quality of a city.
While I can't say that the architecture is beautiful, it does seem to be a prosperous city and so far I'm impressed. What's really crazy is that despite the heat, as you look into the horizon, you can see the most amazing backdrop of enormous snow capped mountains, which doesn't really compute in my brain I have to be honest. We will be getting out of the City and exploring some of that mountainous regions in the weeks ahead which I imagine will be spectacular.
Our first stop was visiting the Central Park with a stop at the Zenkov Cathedral. A Russian Orthodox Cathedral built in 1907 and made entirely out of wood without nails. It is 56 meters tall and is claimed to be the second tallest wooden building in the world. It was quite impressive.
We continued our walk northwards and hit the Green Market, which is a large 2 level market with everything from clothes, shoes, souvenirs to fruit, spices, nuts and...meat...everything from beef, to pork to mutton and of course horse. We meandered through the clothing section and then went into the food part where we were encouraged by the vendors to try their wares. We ended up buying pistachios from Portugal, Macedamia nuts from Macedonia, Kazakh and Polish cheese, interesting cheese and chive bread and cured beef salami. We also bought some fresh cherries. Erik, Dave and Cadence did try some horse salami which they said was very good, the rest of us stayed clear and were happy with the beef. We would have a lovely picnic somewhere as everything we tried was delicious. I'm certain that we overpaid for most things but in the grand scheme, the prices seemed pretty respectable. Our dollar is worth about 280 Tenge...but regardless, Macadamia nuts are still expensive here like at home!
After the market we needed to find a knife to cut our cheese and meat, so we hunted down a supermarket and picked up a $3 knife and some cold drinks. We then headed to a nearby park to get out of the sun and enjoy our snacks. We stumbled across the Park of 28 Panfilov Guardsmen which had been on our list of things to see anyways. Its the most amazing statue and is dedicated to the Panfilov Heroes, 28 soldiers of an Almaty infantry unit who died fighting Nazi German invaders outside of Moscow in World War II. I've never seen anything quite like it and given our extensive travelling through the Balkans and Europe that is saying something. We enjoyed a nice picnic here and then planned our next moves...it was getting hot so we needed to be strategic.
Across the plaza was the Musical Instruments Museum which I had read about in one of the guide books. Among all of the large Soviet looking buildings, this delicate wood building seemed slightly out of place. I'd say that this museum could probably take a pass for most people unless you are avid musical instrument historians, however for $3 each it was air conditioned and had nice clean bathrooms, which was a plus as the outdoor public toilets are the standing squat kind, which was a new experience for my girls!
We decided to walk to the Metro station and take it towards the Central State Museum. It was a trek by foot and train, but was in the direction of the hotel and we all needed to keep moving and stay awake. If I go back to that hotel room too early I'm going to crawl into that bed and its not likely I'll get back out! The Metro is something we try to do in every country and city we visit. This one would not disappoint, the tunnels were absolutely stunning with tile and stone work and incredibly long escalators. At $0.25 a trip, its an economical way to travel although it’s not a very widespread network. They ran us through the scanners in the Metro and found our picnic knife - I guess they didn't think we were a big threat as they ended up letting us keep it.
By the time we got to the Museum we were all red faced and sweating. We bought our tickets and went downstairs and sat in on a series of marble steps while attempting to bring our body temperatures down. We must have looked a mess! I was so hot that I was starting to feel cold and get goosebumps - not a good sign! We got cooled down and then explored the Museum. While I think that it was generally very good, there was not a lot of English. English is not a prevalent language here and due to the lack of tourism in general, there isn't a lot of call for English in places like this. I would have loved to have been able to take away more from this museum, but we did what we could and enjoyed the reprieve from the sun.
We headed back to the hotel and took cold showers and had a rest. We figure it’s best to stay out of the heat in the late afternoon, it’s just too much. I didn't sleep on purpose as I know from past experiences that if I succumb to the late afternoon pull of jet lag that I'll be a goner.
A few hours later feeling a bit rested we headed out for dinner. We aren't super close to restaurants unfortunately so it was a bit of a walk and we were all feeling pretty tired. My feet were also killing me - which I later found out was due to the fact that we walked almost 19 kms today! We went to a traditional Kazakh restaurant for dinner and it was a pretty neat place where you sat on cushions with your feet up under a short table. The pillows and deeply reclined seating positions were not ideal for a bunch of jetlagged Canadians - we had a hard time keeping everyone awake! Bruce and Dave ordered the traditional meal called Besbarmak. This consists of boiled horse and mutton meat on a bed of noodles. I wasn't very hungry and neither were the girls or mom, so we ordered some soup (I had a boiled mutton soup that was pretty good) and Fiona ordered dumplings which quite honestly were the best thing ordered by any of us. Dave couldn't get the horse part of the Besbarmak down, so I think despite being an openminded eater, his daughter and wife's love for horses has gotten the better of him. Good to at least try the traditional meals of a country.
It was a long quiet walk back to the hotel after dinner and we quickly all went to bed. All in all a pretty good first day in this great city!
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