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So back to before the previous Kazakhstan post we go, just to confuse the heck out of you and make it impossible to keep track of what happened when.  Well, actually, I guess it might not be the best idea to intentionally try to confuse you, dear reader (unless I were a postmodern novelist in [...]

After our relatively short trip from Astana to the Korgalzhyn State Nature Reserve made long by we birders insisting that we stop for every good bird*, we arrived at the headquarters of the park where a bunch of cabins, some larger buildings, and the outhouses are clustered by the lakeshore.  Once we dropped our gear [...]

After our nice drive across the steppe from Astana we arrived at the location where we would eat lunch: the not-yet-opened Korgalzhyn State Nature Reserve Visitor Center where we got a sneak preview tour to see what future visitors would see when visiting this amazing ecosystem.  The center wasn’t scheduled to open for a couple [...]

After a filling breakfast our motley crew was issued the Swarovski scopes and tripods that would be ours to use for the next several days in Kazakhstan.  The new magnesium telescopes were lightweight and sturdy, the new 25-50X wide angle eyepiece allowed for a larger field of view without diminishing the quality of said view, [...]

Our flight from Frankfurt to Astana landed at about 11 PM local time on Monday, May 11.  Having spent a mere twenty-four hours in Frankfurt after the flight from New York I had never really adjusted to the six-hour time difference and now I was a full twelve hours behind and not at all sleepy.  [...]

On our last day in Kazakhstan we birders traveled hundreds of kilometers to the east of Almaty in order to explore the desert environment there.  And while many birds were viewed, none were quite as fascinating to me as the two pink-winged finches we spotted, the Desert Finch and the Mongolian Finch.  This post, of [...]

The title of this blog post is a title I never anticipated using when I started blogging a little over two years ago but am I ever glad that I have the opportunity to use it!  And no, this is not some Borat-like put on, I actually am in Kazakhstan (I wrote this post several [...]