With our Uzbekistan visas successfully acquired, Cindy and I could enjoy the spoils of Almaty until we departed. The most noticeable characteristic of Almaty are the enormous snow-capped Tian Shan mountains on the horizon. Surely, we thought, there must be some good hiking in the area.

A combination of hostel staff and Lonely Planet gave us a workable set of directions to Chimbaluk, a ski resort area southeast of Almaty. A city bus took us to the cable car station, where two old women gestured for us to join them in a cable car that had just arrived. They talked to us in blurring Kazakh and we stared blankly in response. I reminded myself that this would be the last time anyone thinks that Cindy and I both speak the local language.

We told them “nyet Kazakh,” proving that we were just stupid, not mute. This seemed to satisfy them, and they looked at me, gestured towards me, and asked me something seemingly simple. “Richard,” I answered/guessed.

“Richard?” Lady A asked Lady B.

“Ree-shard?” Lady B asked Lady A.

“Roo-kard?” They asked each other.

“Ruski?” They asked us.

“Oh, English” Cindy added.

Having established that we cannot communicate with each other, we spent the rest of the time pantomiming. Cindy saw that one of the women had a yoga mat and asked, “Yoga?” After a few minutes of talking to each other and trying to decipher what Cindy meant, the woman with the mat mimed a sleeping motion, which elicited laughter. She saw Cindy sitting cross-legged, pointed to her own leg, raised it a bit, and indicated with her hands that it would break, which elicited more laughter.

After reaching Chimbaluk, one of the women pointed towards the right, twittered her fingers to indicate walking, and gave us a thumbs up signal. Good enough. We headed in that direction.

The hike was basically following ski trails up the mountain. Being a warm day, much of the melted snow had turned the terrain into mud, making for arduous slogging. A location that I thought we could reach in less than an hour became unattainable. The views, nevertheless, were pretty awesome.

At around 3 PM we headed back towards the cable car. Going down, unsurprisingly, was not nearly as hard as going up, save for some butt to ground contact. With some time to spare, we grabbed a coffee at the resort and chilled a bit before heading back to Almaty.