The Silk Road took me out of China and brought me to Kazakhstan where I experienced a huge culture shock. In a few kilometers, I had the feeling of suddenly leaving Asia and arriving in Europe ... It even made me feel homesick for a few days. It was strange to see so many blonde people with blue eyes, to eat cheese, bread, kebabs and potatoes. No more rice and paddy fields, no more budhas and dragons, no more paparazzi and celebrity (strangers often took pictures of me in the street, more or less discreetly).

 

But the slanted eyes and the yurts reminded me that I was in Central Asia. One day, a Kazakh yealed me to climb on his horse. For thirty minutes, we walked along a large blue lake in the shadow of the mountain. The sun was about to set. Without a saddle, I almost slip back on each climb. This is how I had my first horse-hitchhiking experience! (there will even be a second). We arrived at this family yurt at the top of a hill. “Look what I'm bringing back” (I imagine he said something like that). His children welcomed me completely hilarious. His wife a little less. The elder son taught me to count in Russian.

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It was so difficult to communicate in Chinese that I felt like I was becoming bilingual in Russian. Yes, in this former USSR country, Russian is spoken just as much as Kazakh. Moreover, the country seems to be stuck in the Soviet era: social housing of the 60s, dachas, lada cars, statues of heroes of the Nation, small shops without showcases, and even a few Orthodox churches among all the mosques. Southern Kazakhstan looks a lot like the neighbor country Kyrgyzstan , where I pursued my hitchhiking world tour.