Naurzum Nature Reserve (ca 51 34' N, 64 15' E, 197 m asl) 21 - 25 May

Many villages & towns have elaborate sign posts at their entrance, this is the one for Karamendi for the Naurzum reserve

Mike attempts to go on line in the reserve guest house

Whilst Carol was photographing these 3 ticks their mates all jumped into one of her shoes (see previous post)

The warden's garden



Mike spots something rare - or so he reckoned

There are many shallow, saline basins in the reserve - they were particularly low when we visited after 3 very dry years

Mature pine forest in the reserve

Fresh water lake -  where we saw 2000 Red-necked Phalaropes

We arrived in the village of Karamendi looking for the Naurzum Nature Reserve in mid afternoon on the 21^st and whilst trying to find it we misread the sign for the Naurzum electricity office. There was quite a lot of confusion on everyone’s part about what we actually were doing in that office but a call to Mike’s contact Evgeny soon sorted it all out, embarrassment all round! In the meantime the electricity office staff ushered us into a common room for tea with various members of staff who quizzed us about our trip. When we asked how we could get to the reserve office we were told that in a few minutes someone would come for us. Sure enough one of the scientists there, Kanat, came over with a hastily found translator, Botagoz, from the local school, and they took us to the reserve HQ nearby. Botagoz, at only 16 years old, spoke excellent English, mostly self taught - she wants to study English & Chinese at university and become an interpreter. With Kazakh and fluent Russian already we feel she will do very well.

Having arrived we were given a tour and shown photos etc whilst we waited for the Assistant Director Maria Zinyelova to come and sort out our passes and some accommodation for the night. We then stayed in one of the centre’s guests houses so we could shower and recharge all our batteries, that’s literally, we need access to mains electricity every 10 days or so. We had also hoped to post a blog but the signal wasn’t good enough.

The next morning we were met by Maria, Kanat & Kseniya another young woman who spoke good English. She acted as our interpreter for the morning and came with us to the Centre’s house about 10km into the reserve. There we were able to park up in the back garden for three more nights under the care of Albakir one of the wardens & his wife. They were very kind (see Coeliac/food page) and we had use of their outdoor loo (long drop) and shower which provided warm water by solar radiation.


The Naurzum reserve was established 80 years ago in 1931 but it has seen various changes of direction over the years depending on the soviet regime of the time. At one point it was closed down and at others the local Commissars interfered with management on political lines. There are plantations of alien tress in the reserve which originate from this era. Today the reserve is split into three main study areas and the zone between has farming and herding activities compatible with the objectives of the reserve. The total area of main reserves and control areas is over 200,000 ha.

We visited the main ‘Naurzum’ section based on the village of that name. The main habitats in this section are ungrazed steppe grassland and heath, conifer woodland, birch and poplar woodland, saline lakes and dry basins, and freshwater lakes and ponds. There are a number of springs and small streams in the reserve but no significant rivers. Introduced trees in plantations are similar to those seen elsewhere in Kazakhstan, mainly a sort of elm (judging by the leaf and bark or it may be a hornbeam). Most are dead or dying from lack of water. There are also lines of conifers (which may be alien) planted some years ago. There are very few tracks within the reserve and the level of disturbance seemed light.

This part of Kazakhstan being positioned between the east and west palearctic regions, receiving northern visitors and adjacent to the Indian subcontinent, will inevitably have a huge list of birds. Since records began here 340 species have been recorded but as might be imagined many are vagrants to the region. We had some of the reserve specialities such as Imperial Eagle and Little Bustard but we did not see the Sociable Lapwings that breeds in the park. One notable observation was a flock of over 2000 Red-necked Phalarope on a fresh water lake on 23 May, but the next day they had all gone.

Many thanks to Evgeny Bragin for showing us some eagle nests in the reserve and an elk (moose), the only large animal we had seen there although several others are known including Red Deer, Wolf and Wild boar. Some more details of birds seen at the reserve are shown on the file sharing site mentioned on the bird page.

There is a beautiful grass in the reserve, and much of the steppe generally, which has long, trailing filaments which look like hair blowing in the wind

Two mature pine trees

View from the warden's garden

Mike goes for a solar assisted  warm shower

Mike with Kanat and Botagoz

Carol with Botagoz and  butterfly

Kseniy, Maria Zinyelova (Deputy Director) and Mike

Our latest adoptee - another dog with no name

Carol gets the bug

Pictures for Aktobe to Kostanay post

School kids (age 10-11) - see more below

Endless roads across endless steppe! (3000km so far)

Many of our routes run beside the railway

Golden Oriole

Road stop near Denisovka

This reminds us of Ely Cathedral (Ship of the Fens), many towns in northern Kaz have huge "cathedrals" to collective agriculture in the form of grain silos like this one at Denisovka.  Many of these appear now to be in disuse & dilapidation

The only rock outcrp we have seen on the steppes so far was this river gorge at Denisovka, this was also the site of the only Common Ravens we have seen in Kaz so far.

Gate guardian to a collective farm

Entering Rudnyi 

Our first forest camp - and ticks

Filling a jerry can at a village standpipe

This chap explained the intricacies of the workings of the standpipe to us, as we could not get it to work.

Local shop keepers

More school kids

Mike is asked for his autograph! It was quite chilly that day but the little girl seemed to be dressed for winter!





Handsome spider - body & head about 2.5cm, colours suggest it may well be poisonous

Dilapidated farm buildings from Soviet era

Imperial Eagle nest campsite



One of many dusty drives in northen Kaz - note bumps signpost which should actually say 200km



Carol joins the war against dust!

Aktobe to Kostanay 16 - 22 May (64 deg 04'E)............ (Posted 26 May)

Buying petrol in Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan is not quite a straightforward as back home where you fill up your machine then go and pay on your card. For a start not many garages take a card and not any in Kaz yet. You have to pay first which means you have to estimate how much you need. Most local people seem to hand over a sum of money and get the volume in litres and part litres. Or you can ask for a set number of litres.and pay the price. Problem is the garage cashiers often sit behind very small windows or a glass screen and do not speak much, if any, English and of course we do not speak much of the local lauguages. We found the easiest way was to write the required number of litres on the palm of your hand e.g.‘40' and press it to the cashiers window and say ‘litres’. This seems to do the trick - they then show you their calculator which displays how much you need to pay. After paying an attendant appears from nowhere and puts the required number amount in your tank. Sometimes you are able to put it in yourself but the pump stops when you get to the volume you have paid for. We have not found a single garage in Kaz that has water easily available, if at all - you need to go to a village and look for a standpipe.

The school kids in Kaz are great, it seems the boys uniform is often a mini lounge suite and the young girls a black dress with a sort of white lacy waitresses apron over the top. We found the girls outfits quite bizarre at first but when we thought about it both of us had seen photos from the early 20^th century of our own females relatives in similar white aprons in school photos. We chatted to one group of school kids in a village and in no time at all there were nearly 20 of them all clustering round, including 2-3 teachers, all wanting to practice their English and get our autograph. We have found that whilst the older generation, 40+, rarely speak any English almost all school age kids speak a little - apparently everyone is now taught English at school along with Kazakh & Russian.

The northern steppe between Aktobe and Kostanay were at one time huge collective farms. They now mainly owned by big businesses. We thought the farms in Ukraine were big enough but these ones are enormous. Tractors go over the horizon before they finish ploughing a furrow. There is also however a lot of abandoned land or fields that have been lying fallow for many years. Water is probably a problem and in dry years not much grows. Everywhere one sees evidence of the old soviet collective farms lying in ruins and decay. Derelict grain stores, old animal barns robbed of the roofing, old combine harvesters rusting and many villages in a state of decay & depopulation as so many people have left for the towns now that the collective does not promise a job to all. A number of small towns had huge grain silos overshadowing them but no areas under cultivation for miles around and presumably now no longer in use.

One of our most enjoyable camp sites so far (one of many) was on the way to Kostanay just north of the village of Livanovka. It was ‘big’ farming country and we were beginning to despair about finding anywhere. We turned off the main road along a dirt road which clearly let to a village (signposted 38 km) and after about five km we found a large patch of fallow fields (probably been fallow about 10 years) which were dissected by rows of birch and popular trees planted as wind/snow breaks. We drove a couple of km off the dirt road across this fallow (not easy as the plough ruts were still there) and camped up in the shade of some birch trees - see picture. Immediately on getting out of the car Mike spotted the nest of a pair of Imperial Eagles about 500 m away with two birds attending. We saw them several times over the next 16 hours but they were very skillful at approaching the nest behind trees. There were also breeding Hooded Crows, Magpies, also two pairs of Red-footed Falcons and a pair of Kestrels seemed to be disputing a nesting site in a old crows nest. Grey Partridge, Pallid and Marsh Harriers, Booted Warblers were a few others and as Little Bustard showed itself in the late afternoon. Lots of Common marmots had colonies in the field but our trail camera only succeeded in getting head shots. We also saw a couple foxes.

Our route took us to Kostanay which at 53 deg North is the first place on our trip so far to be further north than the fens where we started. There were more trees here than we had seen on the steppe proper. The diversion was to meet a contact of Mike’s, Evgeny Bragin who has been responsible for ringing many Imperial Eagles in Kazakhstan’s Naursum reserve, which have turned up in Arabia in winter and so come within Mike’s sphere of interest. We met with him briefly for a cup of tea the morning of the 21st and arranged to see him at the reserve on the 24th.

At Kostanay we needed to get a truck stop overnight camp, this one had no facilities at all but it served the purpose. South of Kostanay on the way to Naurzum reserve we had our first forest camp. There are islands of sandy outcrops in this region unsuited for agriculture and as a result were delightfully wild with forests of pine, birch and poplar. Our camp was just north of the town of Awliyekol. We turned off the road at a picnic site and were able to drive much further into the forest where we found a nice secluded little glade. Two new butterflies were immediately apparent but there very few birds. We did find a Great-spotted Woodpecker’s nest only about 30 m from where we pitched the tab, two adults feeding young. Also a dueting pair of Common Scops Owls. The common pigeon of these woods is the Oriental Turtle Dove, a bit bigger and heavier than our Turtle Dove.

Throughout the Ukraine, the part of Russia we saw and here in Kazakhstan we have seen many roadside shrines, we assume to people who have been killed in car accidents (as are starting to appear in the UK). In these countries though actual headstones are placed next to the road and each has a photo engraving of the person(s) concerned on it - other than where the victim was a Muslim and there is a crescent instead. We have found this to be quite poignant as actually seeing a face (usually young-mid age men) really brings the tragedy home to those passing much more strongly.

There is now a bit of a war going on with mozzies. They have been around for a while, there are several types and some are not like any we have come across before. Three burning coils and lashings of repellent just about keep them away but this lot never sleep, they are present all day and are big things with a voracious appetite. At least there is no malaria but Mike has a bad reaction to bites and they also can carry other nasty diseases, as well as just being unpleasant to be around, so we are trying to keep them at bay.
We had our first tick in the wood near Awliyekol. We are not talking here about ‘lifers’ for a twitcher but arachnids, the carrier of tick-borne encephalitis. We had half a dozen sitting at camp and Carol found one in the bed the next morning. So there is now a second front in our battle with the wildlife. Ticks are commonly found in grassland and forest areas but seem to be very local within this but we are not sure what specifically they prefer. They are a great way of spoiling a good walk. It is hard to walk here without brushing up against the grasses etc which they collect on and it is easy to get paranoid about them crawling up you to find a nice nook or cranny where they can attach themselves. We both had lots on the morning of the 24^th and when back at base Carol took her trainers off and a whole ‘nest full’ surged forth. This trip is not all fun! Although we have 90% protection through the vaccination against TBE, ticks also carry many other unpleasant diseases so again we have to be a bit careful - the tick tweezers have now been moved from the fist aid kit to our day bag but we have not had to use them yet!

8 - 16 May: Astrakhan to Aktobe (58 deg 16' East - 4200 miles)

Volga delta fishermen

Two fifths of the Astrakhan slipper thief gang

Our first view of the Volga, before it starts to split to hundreds of distributaries

Lenin (in coat) and Mike in Atyrau

The Kremlin Astrakhan

Rickety pontoon bridge on the way to the Kazakhstan

Carol had to be dragged away from the puppy heaven that was the Astrakhan truck stop and we headed east 100 km to the Kazakhstan border.  The formalities on both sides were done quite efficiently although it still took just over two hours, that’s with a 10 km drive between the two border posts.  Almost immediately into Kaz we saw some camels (picture posted earlier).  They had two humps - on all our travels in Arabia we had only seen one humped camels.  These looked so strange.  Once through the Kaz border we had a night to use up before our booking at an Atyrau hotel.  Having a hotel appointment on arrival seemed to be a condition of getting a visa but no one checked at the border.   We decided to camp off the road (our first wild camp) on the way to Atyrau.  We chose to camp about a kilometre from the road near a  disused oil administration building and about 200 m from a small farm that seemed at the time deserted but later spewed out a good sized herd of cows, sheep and goats. The herder came over to see us and try our tea, nice guy but did not say a word even in kazakh.  Later on two policemen arrived from nowhere to ‘say hello’ we suspected the farmer called them just in case we were some kind of subversives.  The police visit was all very amicable and they were pleased to be shown the inside of a Tab.  The only excitement in the night was the herd of 30 odd cows outside which started jostling, as cows do, and rocked the Ta b at one point.   The next day we were glad for the comfort of the hotel and we even decided to stay an extra night, once we had established that we were unwilling to pay any more per night than we had booked on the internet - as the hotel had suggested we should.  It was all the same the most expensive event of the trip so far at £150 for two nights.  Most hotels in town are much more expensive as Atyrau is a prosperous town benefitting from the developing oil exploitation industry nearby.

Europe officially ends at the Ural river that runs through Atyrau.  We first felt the Asiatic influence in Astrakhan where many of the people are oriental in appearance but by the time we got to Atyrau these people were in the majority.  There are of course many people of Russian descent in the town, indeed in much of Kazakhstan (about 30% in 1999),  as a result of many years of Russian influence and settlement in the region.  Kazakhstan is actually a secular state despite Sunni Muslims being the largest religious group.

At Atyrau we had a good day in the Ural marshes to the south east of the town on the Asian side of the river. We left the Tab at a hotel for the day. To get to the marshes you need to make your way to the village of Damba and then continue southwards along causeways across the marshes, or to be more precise through the reed beds.   Unfortunately the tracks all ended in channels too deep for the vehicle to cross but it was nice to get the Land Rover really muddy at last.  It was not possible to get any good views of large expanses of water or mudflats because of the high reeds in every direction but all the same we had some good birds. Lots of Pygmy Cormorants, Night, Purple and Grey Herons and Glossy Ibis but only single examples of Spoonbill and Little Egret.  A few Dalmatian Pelican overhead and a couple of White-tailed Eagles.

On our first night in the steppes we discovered that there is a shortage of wood and twigs for our kelly kettle, which we use as much as possible to save gas.  After a few days of the steppes we have become really frugal, saving all paper and cardboard and picking up bits of wood lying around by the road.  We have even used dry cow dung, which we find burns odorless a bit like coal, but is not such an efficient fuel as wood.  We are not yet in a position to be able to say whether horse, camel, cow or sheep droppings are our preferred animal derivative fuel on the steppes.

As we pulled into to have lunch on the 12th a Land Rover Discovery with a roof tent arrived in a cloud of dust.  It was a couple from Switzerland, mother Sarah and son Mark.  They are also on their way  to Mongolia.  They could not stay long because they had an appointment to see a rocket go off at Baikanour cosmodrome on the 15th.  They were planning to get to Aktobe that night - a journey we were planning to take five days to do.

Some nice birds on the Steppe so far, several pairs of Demoiselle Cranes, lots of Steppe Eagle including some on nests.  One nest on the level ground could be driven right up to with the Tab.  - it had two eggs.  Other birds included Red-headed Bunting, Black Lark, White-winged Lark,  Rose-coloured Starling,  Ruddy Shelduck and Sociable Plover.

As we have headed north the weather changed considerably - we were consistently having cloudless skies and temperatures in the mid 30's but a nasty wind has started blowing from Siberia. We had a couple of storms - one with big hailstones (but still at still 33C) - which really felt to be battering the Tab but seem not to have left any marks. Then it started getting cooler and the wind stronger until just before Aktobe it became gale force and the temperature dropped to 17C with a very significant wind chill - the night of the 16th was even down to zero, the lowest since 19 April in Czech.

One of the great things about having the Tab with us it that it  makes people, children, elderly folk and border guards, almost without exception, smile. Here in Kazakhstan we have had many toots from other cars and then waves. At the supermarket one day a woman asked if we were with a circus!

We have added notes on the coeliac page and about buying fuel in this region on the home  page.

We meant to say last time that as well as appreciating your comments we have also really enjoyed hearing your news and that of home - so please keep that coming - we especially enjoy hearing how bad the weather is in the UK!

The road from Atyrau to Aktobe (596 km)

This is the only road from this western city to the center and east.  It starts off fine and having had a little experience of Kazakhstan roads since the border, we thought how long can this last?  We got to the town of Dosser (101 km) and it was still excellent and then on to Maqat another 30 km still fine.  Unfortunately we could not find the road east from that town until we realised that a very rough unasphalted track was the road..  The next 260 km were really terrible.  At best the official road was asphalted or was hardcore more or less graded but both these surfaces were so heavily potholed and broken up by the elements that unofficial roads had been created both sides of the road where cars had left the road to form parallel tracks in the steppe, usually within 100 m of the main road but sometimes 2-3 kms from the main road.. The big problem of these tracks is the dust.  Clouds of it.  The silty strata which compacts after rain breaks down to fine billowing dust which lies in pools and explodes from the ground when you drive over it.  It gets in everywhere. Including a fine covering inside the Tab.   Had we not been towing the Tab we could have gone a lot faster but the Tab is not good over large bumps and uneven surfaces or corrugations (the rippled surface that forms on well used sandy tracks).  We were not in a hurry in any event and this rough section took four camp sites with our lowest daily mileages so far.    About 30 km east of Bayghanin (56 deg E) the road improves and is mainly asphalted but of poor quality and still with anumber of  potholes and rutting for the rest of the way.  At least you do not have to leave the road very often.  We had two more camps before Aktobe.  It took us six days all told of about 4-5 careful hours driving a day but it can be done a lot quicker.  The couple we met  from Switzerland in a Discovery were planning to do the whole journey in one day and we understand they made it but it would have been a long hard day.

The herder and his dog at our first wild camp in Kaz

Our first wild camp - the road is a disused oil company track, not the highway -which was worse!

Road near Maqat

Steppe camp site - several more like this.  Look no neiighbours

Sarah and Mark from Swiitzerland  - on the way to  Mongolia via Baiikanour

Mike enjoys his Easter egg - thanks Lin and  Ed

Another campsite on the Steppes

One of the secondary routes which is actually better than the main road

Steppe Eagle leaves its nest - see below - on the bare ground

Our first day with our sun canopy 

See more pictures on the Kazakhstan page.

The next leg is to Kostanay (767 km).