Atyrau, November 8

"I was very surprised to see you. We have a lot of foreigners in our hotel, but only in summer." The words of Makhambet, the owner of the place where I stay here in Atyrau. People in the streets seem curious, but not altogether unfamiliar with foreigners: Atyrau is a major oil hub so it has a large expat community. It sits on two sides of the Ural river, separating Europe from Asia. And yes, you can actually cross a bridge and walk to the other continent here, which would be funny if the wind wasn't freezing your ears and fingers off on your way across. Atyrau also has a nice glittering old church, a nice glittering new mosque, heavy traffic and a lot of big office buildings. I visited the local historical museum, which had an interesting collection of fossils and archeological artifacts (among them the golden armour and burial gifts of a 4th century BC Scythian warrior) and a not so interesting collection of apparatshyk pass photos, Soviet medals and gifts of other heads of state to president Nazarbayev, the leader of Kazakhstan.

It took the bus all day to cross the 350 km of steppe between Astrakhan and Atyrau. This steppe consists only of grass and some low shrubs, quite weird to see it with my own eyes. Hence a strong wind blows, a nasty combination with the current temperature. At the border, the Russian guards made the passengers line up in front of their small office, fully exposed to the biting cold wind. The Kazach police at least built a convenient warm hall, large enough for the passengers to wait inside, thank god.

That god, by the way, should be called allah, since most people here are muslim. Kazakhs are not devout muslims though. Actually, the only way of telling is that the villages we passed have mosques with azure blue domes instead of orthodox churches. But once the road passed a sufi shrine, and the bus stopped. Half the passengers went outside to pray in the direction of the shrine. Their prayers were rather short, but perhaps that was due to the cold.

Kazakhstan is different from Russia in more ways. 90% of the people on the streets here have Mongoloid faces and black hair, while in Astrakhan most are blonde ethnic Russians, with broad Slavic cheeks. The language took me by surprise, not only does it really sound like Turkish, but people use it all the time. I had been under the impression that it was dying out in favour of Russian. So altogether, I'm in the coat of a different animal. And I guess it's a camel, cause the landscape looks like shabby camel fur: yellow, brown and grey grass as far as the eye can see. But there is the odd herd of horses, cows, goats, sheep or camels, roaming the steppe. In the bus, I kept myself awake searching for the elusive bobak, a smaller cousin of the alpine marmot, which digs its tunnels through the chernozem (steppe soil). The steppe is only interrupted by some small settlements and the strange extravagant graveyards people build here. The tombs look like small houses and these graveyards appear like empty cities.

This evening I filled my stomach with a "French salat" at a local bar. Never knew French salats involve corn, beetroots and even dorito chips, but I won't complain as long as it tastes so good. Tomorrow I'll continue my journey south to Aktau, where it will hopefully be a little warmer (above zero would be nice, at least).