Train Ride to Ust

Train stop in Jangiz-Tobe. Note remnants of soviet influence

The next day, after swearing in, began with packing up the car, and seeing my host family in Almaty for the last time. We went to the train station, at Almaty-2, about 40 minutes away from our home in the village. We got to the the train about 10:30 (it was scheduled to leave at 11), and since there are no customs checks or anything of the sort to get through, 30 minutes before is rather normal.

My counterpart was a little late, so I decided to go with my family ahead and load up my bags into the trains. The compartments are incredibly small, about four beds to a coupe, and very little room. Sitting down on one bed means you knock knees with the person across from you - but it's set up well enough that you can lie down and sleep during the night, since the trip to Ust-Kamenogorsk meant an approximately 32-hour trip.

Luckily, my counterpart had arranged for a stop at Jangiz-tobe, a stop that is 2 hours outside of Ust-Kamengorsk - the train ride directly into Ust is a 32 hour train trip because the railroad actually loops around from the west side of Ust, into Russia, then back around again back into Ust - stopping at Jangiz-Tobe meant we could cut off a good 10 hours off our trip, trading it in for a 2 hour taxi ride into town instead. Yet, it also meant that because Jangiz-Tobe was a 5 minute stop, I'd have to have all of my 2 year's worth of packing and luggage ready to go at the door.. so definitely a source of stress, but more on that later.

After we boarded the train, we were waiting for my counterpart, who arrived a few minutes later. Freida, (my site-mate), had her counterpart arrive already... but no Freida. After waiting for 30 minutes, we all became increasingly panicked - and at precisely 10:59 am, I look out the window, and I see Freida, sprinting down the train platform with her family and all of her bags, running her heart out.

Then everything went into slow motion.

Just as she got to the door, it's precisely 11:00am. The conductor shuts the door in her face, and she's stuck out there, pounding on the door... the train starts moving, and it looked quite clear that she missed the train. However, the counterparts shouted at her, telling her to catch the train at the next stop, and immediately, her and her family ran off the platform to catch a taxi that would take her to the next stop - and just like a scene from a movie, as our train was speeding alone, we could see her taxi speeding even faster, sideswiping other cars as it beat our train. Thankfully, the train stop at the next station was about 15 minutes, so she had plenty of time to get on board.

Another issue that seems to be common on train rides is that the conductors are often intensely corrupt, scrutinizing your tickets and documents for anything possibly wrong with it - my counterpart, who had brought her two children, was told by the Peace Corps that because the volunteers each received two tickets (one for them and one for their luggage), with Freida and I both having an extra ticket, her two children would be covered.

Of course, as with I’ve realized about everything else in this country, what you plan almost never works that way.

The conductor, a portly Kazakh woman, immediately latched onto the fact that her children’s name were not on the billet (the ticket), and began to threaten us my counterpart and I, telling us that we were doing something illegal, and that her children would have to get off at the next stop, and there she would have to send them back to Almaty. Nevermind the fact that I actually had enough tickets and there was more than enough space.

After arguing with her, I stepped in, and in my broken Russian I pleaded with her, telling her that I was an American volunteer here to help Kazakhstan, and that since I hardly knew how to ride the train alone, she should have been more lenient in helping us and finding away around her made-up “regulations”.

No dice.

The conductor left, and my counterpart began to dig for money as a bribe. About 30 minutes later, the conductor came with another conductor, and began to threaten my counterpart again – when my counterpart told them that we’d be getting off at Jangiz-tobe (our tickets were originally all the way to Ust-Kamenogorsk), the conductor became more lenient, because that meant they could ‘sell’ the empty coupe we left behind (from Jangiz-Tobe to Ust-Kamengorsk), and pocket the money themselves. This, along with a charge of 2000 tenge to somehow pay for the ‘tickets’ of my counterpart’s children, (which they also obviously pocketed), things were fine for the rest of the duration of the train ride.
As I mentioned before, the train ride is cramped and is blistering hot – it’s essentially a small metal box, and opening the window doesn’t seem to help much. No such thing as air conditioning or fans either, apparently, but there’s a bed, a little table to eat whatever you’ve brought with you, sheets and a pillow, and a little reading lamp. It’s comfortable enough that when you’re settled, you can go to sleep without many problems, if you can get over the cramped compartment and the heat. In the evening, it cooled off a bit, so it wasn't as horrible as it could have been.

We had a nice lunch of prepared foods, cheese, sausage and bread, and at nearly every stop you can run off and buy whatever people are selling along the stop, whether it be drinks or breads or many of the local delicacies of each city’s stop, such as bags of apples and dried smoked trout in Ushtobe. In the evening, we went the sleep, and it actually got quite cold, which may be why I’m fighting this sore throat now.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, if boring – I journaled quite a bit, and we watched a movie on my laptop (after locking the door, of course). But when we arrived in Jangiz-Tobe, the other source of stress came up.

Since Jangiz-Tobe is a 5 minute stop, we had to assert our position at the front of the door since we simply had so much luggage. So around 6:00, 30 minutes before our stop, we dragged all of our luggage to the door and stood there for awhile. I personally had 2 giant duffel bags with two smaller bags, and in between my counterpart, her children, and myself, we had about 14 bags total. Finally, we came to stop.

Hardly was my heart prepared for the sight I was about to see.

The second we stopped and the door swung open, I heaved one of the duffel bags onto my back and began to push my way down the steps – but this being a 5 minute stop, and this being Kazakhstan, there were literally about 20 other people pushing and shoving their way IN, while I was trying to get out.

Pandemonium ensued.

We were clearly blocking the entire entrance with our stacks of bags, and the line to get out extended all the way into the hallway where the compartments were – people threw themselves into me, and the door quickly became an impenetrable wall of flesh, bodies jammed everywhere, arms flailing, legs kicking.

I had no choice but to start playing lineback, and I literally shoved everyone out of the way, finding a tiny hole in the wall of armpits and crotches to push through the bags. My counterpart’s son found a way to stand on the steps, pushing off the horde of people with the bags I handed him, and some kind soul at the steps helped us get the bags down as well.

After about 3 minutes of screaming and shoving, we finally got everything off the train, the people that needed to get off got off, and the people that needed to get on got on.

God, I don’t think I’ve ever had an adrenaline rush like that ever in my life. At Jangiz-Tobe, we boarded our taxi and drove the 2 hours to the city where I’ll be spending the next 2 years of my life.