Camping in Kazakhstan

Sophie Ibbotson:

My brother Wills is the greatest cynic I know, and he’s probably very proud of that fact. If I come home raving about something absolutely, immensely, terribly incredible that I’ve seen, shrieking in delight and flapping my arms around like an enraged ostrich, it’s likely he’ll simply smile, raise one eyebrow, and then disappear off quietly into the kitchen for a stiff gin and tonic. We love each other dearly, but it’s a wonder how our parents managed to have two such different children.

Despite our contrasting natures, one thing that we’ll probably agree on is that nothing is awesome. Wills would resist such hyperbole on principle. I agree with the notion because I interpret it from a rather different angle: the complete absence of anything is awesome.

This was rammed home the last few days as we drove across the Kazakh steppe. The land is entirely flat. Whichever direction you look, the only thing you can see is the horizon: it’s just you, the dust and the sky. Spotting a tree is a novelty, and a hump in the road is a cause of great excitement.

We stopped the Isuzu (now properly named Suzy the Isuzu) and looked into the distance. Casting a glance across the horizon from left to right you could see the slight curve to the earth. In a word, it was awesome.

In such a space (and further encouraged by the complete absence of hotels), it would have been criminal not to camp out and soak up the openness. This is a country of nomads in tents, after all. We picked our campsite with care (no railway tracks, motorways or dance music here), only to find it was infested with the world’s most deadly creatures: marmots. As fans of QI* will know, the marmot has killed more people than any other animal on earth. They’re just under a foot long, resemble rather fat meerkats, and would make decidedly cute television characters – selling a rival brand of car insurance, perhaps. Needless to say, our tent remained where it was, and we chased marmots in a bid to get just one photo that didn’t show the sandy spot where a marmot had been sat sunning itself a split second beforehand. We failed.

Unlike our stay on the outskirts of Penza, there wasn’t an obvious restaurant or supermarket for a good hundred miles in any direction. I lacked the energy to snare a passing camel, and there’s not enough meat on a lame marmot to feed a team of four. Instead, I dived into the back of Suzy and recovered our bag of freeze-dried meals. Having told everyone it was chicken and mash for supper, I was a little surprised to discover they were all in fact sweet and sour pork with rice. It was an easy mistake to make; the ingredients list is probably the same.

The food problem was dealt with, and we had ample bottles of water to rehydrate the mush. The only thing we lacked was a source of heat. A camping stove was one of the things I’d never got round to packing, and my bid to get a 12 volt kettle from Halfords had been thwarted: the Hammersmith branch listed on their company website does not actually exist. Helpful. Fortunately for all concerned, the Boy Scout hiding inside Bryn came to the fore, collected a pile of brush wood and tumble weed, and lit us a fire. He fashioned a pan holder from the shovel, a socket wrench, three cable ties and some gaffer tape, and stood on the shovel’s plate to act as a counter-balance to the saucepan of soon-to-be-boiling water. It was ingenious, if a little Heath Robinson.

The water boiled, the food re-inflated, and the pork cubes were satisfyingly crunch. We sat by the fire on our rolled up sleeping bags, and watched the red sun set over the vastness of Kazakhstan. Awesome.


* For more information see: http://www.qi.com/tv/