Soooo...! With a decent latency now some pics from Kazakhstan! :-)
Unfortunately the lack of time required cutting down (or better, not writing much) text, so it's more some random thoughts to the pictures with a minimum of information and a maximum of grammar and spelling mistakes. And by accident I deleted one posting, which pisses me off quite much atm.
Well well, enough of that justifying, lets now get to the nice stuff! :-) To sum it up, an amazing and interesting trip in every way, people (!), impressions, animals, weather...
So what was it all about? The excursion has been organised by a Kyrgyz geograph and a German zoologist and it's main goal was to see and get impressions of the countries and learn more about geography, geology, nature as well as the people's way of life. So as you can see, for the first time since ages, herpetology wasn't the main goal of the trip (well, let's say not the sole one ;-) ).
Of course I haven't been the only one interested in that kind of travelling, all together we were 35 participants and except for ~5 persons (me being one of those...) all students from mainly Germany, but also Austria, Switzerland and Italy. The main professions have been geography, biology, botanics but also (and now for something) completely different, like medicine or journalism! I think the highlight has been a student of nautics (...in one of the most continental countries on earth ^^).
So much for the what (what) and who. How usually looked like following three pictures, travelling in (offroad-)busses, excursions and mainly camping [except for the first picture in this posting {Kyrgyzstan}, all were clicked in Kazakhstan]:
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The nice thing about those three things has been their diversity:
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Uh, yes, we had cold weather too.. like the really cold way of cold weather :-) I actually could observe subsuns on ground level the first time in my life..
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Well, just cause it has minus 10 degrees, it doesn't mean that lectures are off! As proven below, unicorns are obviously not adapted to that temperatures ^^
Also the two aspects of consuming vodka during cold weather, a) it warms you up b) you easier freeze to death, got a little more clear to me :-)
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..I was so indescribably happy having invested some money in a down jacket and sleeping bag, besides some merino shirts and socks (uh, yes, we had a real shower on the 21st day :-) )...
...could have been taken out of an lone-warrior-end-time-movie...
Enough of that coldishness! On we go with the Singing Dunes in the Altyn-Emel national park, the tallest dunes in Kazakhstan!
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Uh, we've also been on Mars!
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From there (Aktau [white mountain] with those amazing colors, also Altyn Emel national park) back to earth, cause after frost and stones only, some weeds were highly welcome [pictures: if i remember right, Ili river Canyon close to Kapchagai on top, below a riparian forest, i think also Ili, but far closer to China].
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...end of Part 1, more will follow, or actually should have already followed, if I wouldn't have deleted it. And AHRG -- the grammar of if-sentences... again! :-)