I briefly visited Shymkent, also spelled Chimkent or Chymkent, which is in southern Kazakhstan and in the middle of the country. During my visit, I also took a day trip to Turkestan, one of Kazakhstan’s historic cities and a spiritual center of the region.

Shymkent used to be a minor stop on the Silk Road, was taken over by Russia in 1864, and then rebuilt again during Soviet times. Now it is one of the main cities of southern Kazakhstan. It feels more like what I imagined Central Asia to be - a mix of the old and the news in terms of buildings, architecture, and culture - and contrasts sharply with what I left behind in Almaty.

Honestly in hindsight I don’t know if I wouldn’t made the trip to Shymkent again. I ended up leaving Shymkent a day early because I didn’t feel a strong connection to the city and because my intuition was encouraging me to head back east to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where I could resume hiking and be back in my beloved outdoors. However this experience was a lesson in a couple of things: in remembering that with this time off I have the gift of flexibility and can make spontaneous decisions and in reminding myself to trust my gut and follow my instincts - something that I wanted to focus on during my time abroad.