Snow Leopard Country

I may be leaving for Almaty, Kazakhstan in less than a week (although I don't know the exact date yet), so I'm trying to get everything prepared and organized before I go.

I didn't know much of anything about Kazakhstan or Central Asia before I was considering this job, so lately I've been doing a large amount of reading up on it. Like anywhere, there are pros and cons.

Here's a recent New York Times article.

And here's a 4-page photo gallery from a guy who spent some time around Almaty while renewing his Chinese visa. I got especially excited looking at his photos of the surrounding mountains and lakes on Page 2. It will be nice to be around large mountains again (they're an hour's drive away). And I was also excited to learn that this part of Kazakhstan is habitat for the almost mythical snow leopard.

I recently saw the first close-up footage of a snow leopard ever filmed in its natural habital on the BBC Planet Earth documentary. They're amazing and rare animals, I thought I'd share that exact excerpt (which I found on YouTube):



And I discovered that the snow leopard is on the seal of Almaty:

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to seeing that part of the world. It's really not that far (relatively speaking, at least - Asia is pretty large) from Tibet or Mongolia, and it's not too far north of the Silk Road (the trade route that connected China to the Mediterannean). So it seems pretty exotic and exciting, even though Almaty is supposed to feel more European in many ways, so it hopefully won't feel like too much of a culture shock.

So while a large part of me is sad to leave my life in Edinburgh (it's the most interesting place I've lived), and of course to leave my partner of the last nine years - another part of me is excited to discover and experience this new part of the world, and to see what the future holds as I begin my (yikes!) fifth decade on this earth.

Finally, for those of you that need a brief geography lesson of Central Asia (like I did), here's a map to help orient you where Kazakhstan and the city of Almaty is. Almaty is near the center of the highlighted circle, in the Southeast of Kazakhstan near the Kyrgyzstan border (I know the text is small - it's the only city shown in SE Kazakhstan though).