Charyn Canyon, lower route

So there are two entries here, just to accommodate more photos. We drove from Saty to the Charyn Canyon - about a 1.30 drive. We left at 11ish and arrived about 1. Had a bite of lunch at the restaurant there. There were a couple of take away food stalls but for some reason both were shut. Missing out there.

Then made our way down the steps to the canyon floor and walked along for about 2.5km to the river at the end. Very beautiful. And very reminiscent of the Grand Canyon but on a smaller scale. There were a variety of rock formations, some resembling basalt hexagonal extrusions resembling Giants Causeway, and lots of sedimentary formations, some of which looked like they might collapse and squash you at any moment. Any moment in the next 100,000 years anyway. It resembled the kinds of scenes you would get in old Westerns. The valley was a gentle downhill slope which meant that the return was a gentle up hill slope. Rather, we opted for a return trip in a taxi-bus, available for a mere 500 Tenge, which enabled me to capture a video of the whole canyon in one go. Then on to to the top.Read more