During one of the international students trips into the local mountains, to Big Almaty Lake, Kate, the Hungarian girl, met a Finnish couple with an interesting story. She invited them down to visit us at KIMEP one evening and tell their story. They came, bringing two other couples. The Finnish couple had been traveling in their blue, brightly-painted volkswagen bus for the last year from Finland, south through Eastern Europe, and East across Central Asia, now turning south to go through China and thence to India. They fund this trip through grants. They are both artists. They teach crafts and dance for free to school children they encounter during their travels. They are documenting their trip by video and still cameras. Another couple was a French couple that has been traveling for the last three months, beginning in Eastern Europe, backpacking across Central Asia. Now, they are also turning south and preparing to head into China. The third couple was Belgian. They have been cycling for over a year through Europe and Central Asia. The intersection close to my apartment that turns onto the street that KIMEP is located on seems to be an intersection for these very unusual world travelers. It is not infrequent that I see a beat up old bus or van, some mountain bikes, and some people standing doing repairs on their vehicles who are clearly neither Russian nor Kazakh. As I approach them, I hear accented English. On their meanderings, these people may meet each other in one country or region. Randomly, they will run into one another again several months later hundreds or even thousands of miles away. They also will often choose to travel together for a little bit of time. They decide to leave the modern world behind and go into nature and see parts of the world they have never encountered before, learning survival language for the areas they are traveling through as they travel through them.
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