Top Secret Photos smuggled for Almaty, Kazakhstan!!

On my first full day in Almaty, I toured around a bunch of the city, seeing many of the sights. One of the places I was taken to is the “Green Bazaar,” or Зеленый Базар in Russian. It was very similar to other bazaars that I have been to in Russia, but I still found it interesting enough to take a few pictures. So, here, you can see the first two pictures that I took. Well, right after I took the second one (we were at this time on the second floor which looks down on the actual bazaar—none of the traders were on this floor, it was simply a few diners and stores up there), two men came up to me and told me that I wasn’t supposed to take pictures in the bazaar. They pointed me to the one sign on the wall, halfway across the bazaar that was on one of the sides that I wasn’t directly facing which showed a camera with the red circle with a diagonal line running through it—the universal sign for “NO!” The weird thing about the whole exchange was that at first I didn’t get what they were trying to tell me, as they were pointing to their jackets and saying “No pictures” and “Security”—as if they had a loaded gun, or nightstick or something under their jackets. Of course, I wasn’t anxious to find out what was under there, so I decided not to take any more photos.

That is, until I walked to the other end of the hall. On that side was where they were butchering all sort of meats, but the one that was most interesting to me was horse. HORSE! How do I know that I was horse? Well, they had little signs above each row of the meat that was being butchered, with pictures showing the animal that was now being made into steaks, and roasts, and sausages. Well, I counted the number of rows, and they numbered 16, and 7 of those were devoted to horse. The remaining 9 were split between chicken, beef, sheep, and pork. Which, of course, meant that I had to get this photo—illegally, I might add!—of the butchers working on the horse meat. It isn’t the best picture, but I had to take it quick, lest I find out what was underneath the security guys’ jackets!