adidas Sport Sunglasses

Arkalyk, Kazakhstan  ·  Sunglasses

adidas Sport Sunglasses

This glare-deflecting mirrored shield is prepared for the worst-case scenario, which on the treeless Kazakh steppe is simply called 'noon.' Before you commit to anything — and are you sure you're ready to commit? — it would feel much, much better if you'd let it walk you through its city of Arkalyk first. Just once. Just to be safe. Cosmonauts land near here, you know.

↓   Tour Arkalyk, Kazakhstan

Four stops before the checkout

Arkalyk, Kazakhstan
01
cardio tennis classes in 33317 — Museum of the History of the Steppe Region (Muzey Istorii Stepnogo Kraya) in Arkalyk, A low Soviet-built museum block at 30 O. Kozybaev Street in the middle of Arkalyk, its open paved forecourt holding a heat-scorched, bell-shaped Soyuz descent capsule and the first steel excavator bucket of Turgai bauxite raised on a plinth, with bronze figures of steppe warriors standing around the same square
Stop one

Museum of the History of the Steppe Region (Muzey Istorii Stepnogo Kraya)

adidas Sport Sunglasses: Come in out of that sun, sweetheart. The Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR decided on this museum on 4 February 1972, the first exhibition opened 28 July 1973, and it has carried this name since 1998. Now look at the yard, because that is the very first bucket of Turgai bauxite they lifted out of the pits, up on a plinth like a christening photograph. The town only started in 1956, mind, geologists and builders sent out here for that bauxite, and it was not made a city until 1965. And that scorched bell of a capsule brought Dennis Tito, the first space tourist, home on 6 May 2001. There are Keiki batyr and A. Dzhalalov and A. Imanov in bronze too. Have you eaten anything today?

02
cardio tennis classes in 33317 — Monument to Amangeldy Imanov on the square before the Arkalyk akimat in Arkalyk, A bronze figure of a Kazakh steppe fighter raised on a stone plinth, standing alone on the wide paved square directly in front of Arkalyk's akimat, the city administration building, with low apartment blocks closing off the far side of the open space
Stop two

Monument to Amangeldy Imanov on the square before the Arkalyk akimat

adidas Sport Sunglasses: Hat off here, love. Nicholas II decreed on 25 June 1916 that Central Asian men aged nineteen to forty-three be conscripted in support of the Brusilov Offensive, and the steppe rose against it; Amangeldy Imanov commanded the Kazakh forces on the Turgai front from July 1916 until Russian troops crushed the last resistance in early 1917. Arkalyk stands in that same old Turgai country where he fought, and was the administrative centre of Torgai Region from 1971 until the region was dissolved in 1997. This square before the akimat is still the town's own. Stand a minute with him.

03
cardio tennis classes in 33317 — Arkalyk Railway Station in Arkalyk, The terminus station at the very end of the single branch line into Arkalyk, standing at the edge of the built-up area with the tracks stopping just beyond its platforms and a monument to Tolek Zhauke batyr set on the open square in front of the entrance
Stop three

Arkalyk Railway Station

adidas Sport Sunglasses: The line stops here, sweetheart — right there, just past the platform, no further, so nobody go falling asleep past their stop the way my sister's boy did. One branch comes in from Yesil by way of Derzhavinsk, and it exists for one reason: ore. By the 1980s the Turgai mine was raising up to a fifth of all the bauxite in the Soviet Union, but there has never been water enough here to process it, so the raw stuff has always been railed out to the aluminium plants at Pavlodar and elsewhere. That is Tolek Zhauke batyr on the square, keeping an eye on the trains.

04
cardio tennis classes in 33317 — Turgai Bauxite Mine (Torgai Bauxite Mine Administration, TBRU) in Arkalyk, Terraced open pits cut in wide steps down into otherwise flat brown steppe at the edge of Arkalyk, the exposed bauxite a strong reddish-ochre against the pale grey-green grass, with spoil heaps and haul roads spiralling round the pit walls
Stop four

Turgai Bauxite Mine (Torgai Bauxite Mine Administration, TBRU)

adidas Sport Sunglasses: Mind the edge, love, I mean it, back from there. A Soviet resolution of 1956 ordered these mines built and commissioned, and the little camp of geologists and builders that grew beside the workings became Arkalyk, a city by 1965. At its height in the 1980s it was raising up to twenty per cent of all the bauxite ore in the USSR — that red is the good stuff — and the pits are worked now as part of the Kazakhstan Aluminium company. When it all contracted after 1991 the town fell from around 65,000 people to the mid-twenty-thousands. So many families gone. Here, take a biscuit.

The Arkalyk, Kazakhstan track

adidas Sport Sunglasses

Written for this world alone.

Okay. Okay okay okay. The adidas Sport Sunglasses. Let's just — let's get through this together. It's a shield-style lens in a semi-rimless injected frame, matte grey, built by Marcolin, the Italian eyewear house adidas trusts with its Sport line, and the lens carries a mirror coating, which matters, because have you SEEN the light on the Kazakh steppe? There are no trees.

There is no shade. There is nowhere to hide from the sky. The mirror coating bounces that glare right back where it came from, and the wraparound shape seals the sides, because glare comes in from the sides, it always comes in from the sides, nobody warns you about the sides.

The 120mm temples hold on properly — snug, secure, not going anywhere — which is good, because the wind out here has opinions. Lightweight injected construction, so if you do have to run (you probably won't have to run) (but you might) they won't bounce. Sporty enough for cardio tennis, calm enough for standing very still and breathing into a paper bag.

You will want them everywhere from the rim of the Torgai bauxite pits to the platform at Arkalyk station, which is a range I have thought about more than is healthy. And by the way, they are also perfect for standing in front of the Amangeldy Imanov monument pretending you came for the statue.

And listen, about Arkalyk: it's fine. It's fine! It's a mining town on the Torgai steppe, and it happens to sit in a Soyuz landing zone, which means cosmonauts occasionally descend from space in a ball of fire NEAR the town, on purpose, and everyone here is extremely relaxed about it. The museum keeps the actual capsule that brought the first space tourist back to Earth.

So when something streaks across the sky here, it's probably scheduled. Probably. Wear the sunglasses. Watch the sky. Stay near the exits, which on a steppe is technically everywhere, which honestly doesn't help.

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