Border crossing Uzbekistan – Kazakhstan
We drove to the closest border coming from the mountains. After the border official checked our passport, he told us, the border is closed for vehicles (couldn’t he just said that right away? Or why didn’t they put up a sign somewhere?). We had no choice than to drive to the next border checkpoint that was supposed to be bigger.
To exit the country, the Uzbek border control let us unpack the entire car. Of course, such a procedure is annoying. We tried to keep always an eye on our valuables, since it wouldn’t be the first time, that somebody “lost” something at the border.
To enter Kazakhstan, Benedikt and I had to split up (again). He went through the passenger control and I imported the car into Kazakhstan. Since I am the official car owner (my name is in the car documents), it seems to be easier, if I do the entire bureaucratic procedure. After about 2 hours I drove the car through the border gate.
A Kazakh resort hotel
Our destination was a resort hotel east of Shymkent. Shymkent isn’t known as a very attractive city. Therefore, we had no precise ambition to go there. It sounded good to us to have nature around us and a pool in front of us. We found a resort hotel in the middle of nowhere. The hotel was nicely maintained and for what it offered good value for money.
We got extremely well taken care of by a receptionist (the only person speaking a few words of English in this hotel), who even drove us in a golf cart around the grounds of the hotel. When we sat down in the golf cart he said, “this is an electric vehicle!” – you can believe that we started laughing and replied that we also have an electric vehicle. He helped us find a Schuko, where we fully charged the car during the 1.5 days that we stayed at Alma Tau.
The only real downturn for us was, that the hotel was playing club music with the strongest beats the whole day long. We had a room facing the pool and could feel the vibration of the bass while laying on the bed. Kazakhs seem to have a different definition of relaxation ambiance than we do ;-).
outlet/socket | Volt | Ampere | kW | kWh |
Schuko | 220 volt | 6 amperes | 2 kW | 40 kWh |