A very large chicken

Finaly we leave the Uzbek cuisine of plof, sashlik and fat soup behind to trade it for the Kazach kitchen which is famous for it's plof, chicken, horse sausages and fermented horse milk; mmmmmmhhh I can't wait to feast on the local specialities. The Uzbek - Kazach border crossing is fairly easy and we can cross without any noticable troubles. You only have to be carefull not to take more money outside the country than taking in as they will confiscate the difference; new rule according to the Uzbek officer, one might think they make up these "new" rules as they seem fit.

 

As we drive through the Kazach country I notice immediately the resemblence of the opening sequence of Dr.

Zhivago where you see Omar Sharif standing in one of the endless hunger steppes at a funeral. Kazachstan is the largest former republic of the Soviet Union and there live only a mere 15 million people. So everywhere you look you see nothing but barren steppes with a little bit of green as far as the eye reaches.

 

And all of a sudden a city appears and you see a humongous mausoleum/ tomb; the Kozha Akhmed Yasaui tomb. This man was a declared living holy man and a famous writer in his time. As he reached the age of 63 he left his wife and children to live in exile in a cellar as he deemed that his life was useless from this point as Mohammed only reached the age of 63 and that he was not worthy of all his luxeries behind this age.

 

Later that evening we went to a local chicken restaurant and ordered three chickens for 650 Tenge each and some salades, beer and tea. We feasted on this truly heavenly meal after all the plof and sashlik we had to endure. When we asked for the bill we had to pay 4000 Tenge, a quick calculation learnt us that we had to pay less than 3000 Tenge. You can image that we felled robbed and wanted to see a specified bill, they suddenly came with a specified bill that was 3200 Tenge, still not correct as they charged us 2100 Tenge for the chickens we asked why as the chickens were only 1950 Tenge. They explained to us that we got very big chickens. With that bombshell we decided to pay the woman 3200 Tenge and headed to our beds.