After Tamgaly Tas we drove 260 km north of Almaty to the Altyn Emel National Park. We planned to stay at a local homestay for the night and take two days exploring it. First stop was the visitor’s center to get tickets. Nice faux snow leopard outside.
Snow leopard – Altyn Emel National Park
I visited the Tamgaly-Tas petroglyph site on the banks of the Ili River at the beginning of a two-day trip to the Altyn-Emel National Park. Here follows a quote from an article entitled Kazakhstan: The Petroglyph Site of Tamgaly-Tas, in the book Heritage at Risk:
Tamgaly Tas
I first read about the Tamgaly Petroglyphs, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in a book on the Bronze Age archaeology of the Scythian Nomads called Kurgans, ritual sites, and settlements — Edited by Jeannine Davis-Kimball
Visiting that site was the main purpose of my trip to Kazakhstan, and it wasn’t easy to reach. No tours or tourists were interested in such a place, so I had to hire my own driver to get out there.
Tamgaly Petroglyphs
I visited Kazakhstan during the summer of 2017, basing myself in the old captital of Almaty. I stayed in a dorm at the Almaty Backpacker’s Hostel, and it was about a twenty minute walk to the center of town. One of my first trips was to the Central Museum to see their collection of Scythian gold.
Almaty is the cultural center of the country and it looks like a modern overlay on an old Russian city. Blonde Blue-eyed Russians seemed to outnumber the native Kazakhs in the city.
Almaty, Kazakhstan – August 2017
I’m off to Central Asia next week and decided that my usual necklace is too valuable for adventure travel. Thus I created a new one specifically for this trip. One of my goals is to buy more ancient beads and I need examples to show the merchants.
This necklace has a Bronze Age pendant–thogchag; from the Gobi Desert, approximately 500BC; a 2,500 BC ceramic bead from Balkh; Tibetan coral; Tibetan turquoise; Afghan agates and lapis lazuli; Etched carnelians from Taxila, 2,000 years old; Afghan turquoise, 2,000 BC; and Kazakh coral. If anyone is interested it is for sale–$2,500.00!
Antique Bead Necklace
(1977)
THE ARDENT ENTHUSIAST 