To Goa or not to Goa

Well, not to Goa, actually. It seemed such a good idea at the time. We have not yet fully absorbed where we are in the world, apparently. First, we discovered there were no train tickets available, as Thursday is the biggest holiday of the year, Nauraz, the Kazakh New Year and Spring Festival. (I asked why is was a Spring Festival when the ground was still frozen solid outside and was told because it is Spring on the western calendar. Of course.).
Bummer. Problem is there are only 2 flights per week to Delhi, Tuesday and Friday. We want to be on Friday’s flight, and that will only happen if we leave Arkalyk on Monday night, as we need to stay one night in Almaty to go to the Indian Embassy and get our visas. We checked the Embassy web site for the U.S., and they said you could walk in and get them.

So, our coordinator suggested we could hire a car and drive, which would only take 10 hours. Probably. If we made it. In a howling blizzard. In the dead of winter. Winds about 70 miles per hour. Five minutes later, she mentioned the road was closed and wouldn’t reopen for 3 days. Maybe. Or, she suggested, she could call the director of the train, and offer him some money, and see if we could get a place in his private cabin. Maybe he would do it. She doesn’t know him,… but…. Maybe. Or, maybe she could offer $100 (instead of the $80 the tickets cost) to the ticket seller, and find some spaces. She would try. We give her our approval. About an hour later, she magically comes back with train tickets, doing a little happy dance. Jaden does a happy dance too, as he is very psyched to go to the beach. We start to pack up some stuff, but still need to check on our visas, book flights, book hotels, and… there must be SOMETHING else we are missing.

In the morning Bruce called the Indian Embassy about a visa. Yes, they said, you can apply for a visa. It will take 5 working days. They accept applications from 10am-12pm on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. This is Monday. And Thursday and Friday are holidays. And the soonest we could get there would be Wednesday. And again, there are only 2 flights a week to Delhi, Friday and Tuesday. No way around this they tell us. So, to get to Goa, we could take a 15 hour train ride to Astana, fly from Astana to Almaty, wait 6 days, go to the Indian Embassy, apply for our visas, wait until the following Monday, fly out Tuesday. It would take 2 weeks to leave the country! Hmmm…. Not to Goa.

We tell Jaden. He cries. He really wants to go to the beach. So does Bruce. Desperately. Anyone who has dealt with Bruce when he’s desperate to have something happen will sympathize here. He starts looking for other options. It’s about 1pm, the train leaves at 6:40, and the Air Astana website was down. Air Astana is about the only way out of here, so this was not a helpful development. We consider flying into Bangkok and going to the beaches of Thailand. Good news, we don’t need visas! But we still can’t check airfares or schedules. Finally, we find out that there is ONE flight a week from Almaty to Bangkok, and it leaves on Wednesdays. Again, we need to be on tonight’s train. Our interpreter, Galina, went back to her full time job of teaching today, so we are winging it with Zhana and the others. Bruce is explaining exactly what we need, when we need it, what should happen, etc. He asks about someone calling Air Astana for us (after we try fruitlessly for an hour) to check flights. They call to the coordinator in Astana. She says she can check with the travel agency. This seems like progress, as do all beginnings.

Several hours and several phone calls later, we get the following information: We can take the train tonight, spend two days in Astana, then fly to Almaty on Thursday, and see if we can find flights to Thailand. What?!? ‘No’, we say, ‘We need to KNOW we have flights to Thailand, and Thursday is too late.’ Bruce is so irritated. “Are they crazy?” he wants to know? ‘No dear, you are.’ The folks here take the train to Astana maybe twice a year. They don’t fly. They don’t price airline tickets, understand connections, etc. To them paying $500 or $5000 for an airline ticket is equally out of reach. This would be like asking us to identify a rare strain of bacteria in a Petri dish with our eyes closed by sniffing it. We tell them ‘never mind’ we will stay here. Zhana is disappointed. “Why don’t you go to Almaty and look for a flight there?” she wants to know, “The travel agent says you can go anywhere in the world from Almaty, flights to Bangkok every day.” Well, there was that other flight… the one that flew from Almaty to Seoul, Seoul to Taipei, Taipei to Bangkok. That could be fun. We cancel our trip. Maybe we will try to think of somewhere to go next week. But alas, it won’t be Goa. Any illusions about parallels between our life and home and life here have been put to rest. Until there is something else Bruce is determined to do.






Where we will be instead of Goa