A few hundred kilometers to the northwest of Astana is a region of hills, lakes, and forests that many call the "Switzerland of Kazakhstan." The most famous lake and town in the area is Burabay, but the largest town and the rail station is in the town of Shchuchinsk - which is named after a lake that is in the area. We decided to visit the area in the week after New Year. We went with our friends from church and the university - the Stices.
We met at the train station on Tuesday morning at around 10:30. Our train arrived just then and we loaded on. The train was coming from somewhere else and the seats where we were sitting for our 3 hour and 15 minute train ride had been occupied and were quite dirty. The Stices have two fourteen year old daughters that they adopted from Kazakhstan about 12 years ago. Our girls love them and really look up to them. They had a great time laughing and talking and playing games on the way. The adults talked as well.
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| Girls having fun on the train. |
When we arrived in town, we took two taxis to our hotel - the Park House - which was located in the National Forest on the other side of the lake from town. The hotel had been built just a year or two ago and was nice. The rooms were small, but the beds were comfortable. We checked in and then the girls spent the afternoon sledding on the ice slide hill that was right outside of the lobby.
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| Park House Hotel |
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| This is the view from the top floor of our hotel. You can see the lake a little bit. |
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| Just gorgeous! |
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| Sliding hill right outside of the lobby |
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| About ready to be pushed down |
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| Tired but happy |
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| Teamwork! |
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| Train! |
We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant to check it out. It turned out that the food at the restaurant was good and very affordable, so we ended up eating there the entire time that we stayed.
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| Kids' table! They fell in love with the place! |
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| The six of them also spent a lot of time playing card games at the end of each day. |
Wednesday morning after our complimentary breakfast (which was also good), we took some taxis to the big resort hotel the Rixos that is just a few miles down the road. They have a "Santa Village/Lapland" area that is a tourist area. We went in and did a tour of Santa's house. The tour was kind of like "it's a small world" at Disneyland, but without the boats, singing, and animatronics. The tour went through India, Egypt, London, Paris, Astana, and finally Santa's house. The kids took pictures with Santa and then wrote letters to Santa (we had them write thank you notes) and got glitter tattoos.
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| The quality of the pictures isn't the best because Yulia forgot her camera that day, and all of the pictures were taken with my phone. |
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| Writing "Thank you" letters to Santa. |
We also signed up to take a reindeer sled ride. We walked out to where that was located. There were three little reindeer tied to a sleigh. Our four girls went, with the driver going along. He let me "drive" the reindeer with Yulia. That consisted of me poking them with a long stick every once in a while so that they would remember to go - they knew where to go on their own since it was a circle. There were also dog sled rides, snowmobile and four-wheeler rental, and other activities. We signed up to go horseback riding. We had to wait until they were ready and a van was available. We were picked up and driven to the outskirts of Shchuchinsk to a horse farm.
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| Girls riding the reindeer sleigh |
Everyone, including our 7 year old twins, got to ride on their own horse. We went on a 5 km trail out in the forest and back to the farm. The ride was beautiful - the area really is nice. It is much different from the steppe around Astana (which also has a beauty to it). The snow was on the ground and frosting the pine trees and it looked like something out of a postcard. There was a group of four German tourists who were riding off the trail and faster than us, but we just had a nice walk/trot ride through the forest which lasted about 40 minutes. The total cost was about 8 dollars per person, and it was very much worth it.
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| Nika got on her horse first. Everybody else is still waiting. |
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| The camel in with the horses - he'll be important later. |
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| Waiting for our horses to be saddled. |
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| Lexa is getting her stirrups adjusted. The dark brown horse is Sophie's. |
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| Yulia on her horse with German "cowboys" in the background. Unfortunately we do not have any pictures of our ride through the forest for the same reason: Yulia forgot her fancy camera. So, you will just have to believe us that it was beautiful scenery. |
When we arrived back at the farm and dismounted, one of the "cowboys" asked us if the kids wanted to ride a camel. We had seen a large
Bactrian (two-humped) camel behind the horse pens when we arrived. The cost was about $1.60 for each of the girls, so all six of the girls took a trip around the yard on the camel and had a great time.
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| Lina and Lexa on the camel. |
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| Taking a camel ride. |
We had a nice big dinner at the end of the night back at our hotel.
Our last full day at the Park House was nice and quiet. After breakfast the kids spent the morning sledding on the hill. We had a nice late lunch and then went out and rented skis (about 50 yards from the lobby) and spent an hour and a half skiing on the trails through the forest. It was the first time any of our girls had skied, and they all did great. My skis were a bit short and my boots a bit small (I'm bigger than the median Kazakhstani), but we all had a great time. We had one last nice dinner that evening.
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| Our happy Lexa |
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| I think kids spent about 8 hours just sledding in three days that we were there. |
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| More sledding |
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| Beautiful trees |
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| Beautiful nature |
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| Lexa trying to figure out how to move on skis |
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| Nika got the hang of it on her first try. |
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| Sophie was a good sport even though her ski poles were too long for her. |
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| Lina did a lot of this in the beginning and was very upset when her mom took her pictures. That didn't stop Yulia though! |
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| Mountain Man |
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| Sophie with papa |
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| Sophie |
Friday morning we woke up and had breakfast and then checked out of the hotel. We took the train back to Astana and arrived back at our house on campus by about 4:00 p.m.
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| Riding a taxi from our hotel to the train station through the forest. |
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| Ready to get on the train. |
We had a very nice mini vacation. We were glad that we got to see another part of Kazakhstan and to spend time doing some winter sports. The horse riding was definitely the highlight for everyone (when we include the camel ride as part of that experience), but the whole retreat was great. Now we want to go back in the summer and hike and swim in the lake.
