FREEFORUM

First post, long time reader. I have a dacha in Chu District. Six sotki, forty km east of Nurzhan, you know which road.

For twenty years that road was empty except for us pensioners and the cement lorries. Since February: furniture lorries. Closed vans. Twice a week, always at night, always eastbound. My neighbour counted eleven on one Tuesday.

I am not saying anything. I am saying eleven.

Welcome. Everybody in Nurzhan knows what's at the end of that road. The Herald did the property filings back in 2012, and the family has used the place since 2011. The question is whether "using" has become "living".

Keep counting. Don't stand by the road with a notebook.

The Governor works at Government House in Talas, as he always has. Have a nice day. Remember to vote.

For the newcomers: they moved in years ago. Herald, June 2012: Governor's family takes up residence at Boz-Korgon. Chu_trucker called it from his cab in 2011, there's a thread. The question now is who ELSE is moving there.

Government House car park on Monday: four cars. Last spring you couldn't park a bicycle there. My aunt sells tea to the drivers. Her drivers have gone. She has opinions.

Office plankton report: our ministry liaison now "travels for meetings" two days a week. Comes back with dust on his shoes. Talas dust is grey. His dust is the yellow kind from the Chu side.

I am not a geologist. I am the person who cleans the meeting room.

Dear friends,

When I lived in Alatau Heights in the 1990s, people already whispered that the Bush family had a palace out there. Ak_Shumkar believed it until his last day on this forum, God keep him wherever he posts now. The dates never fitted, the walls were going up before anything was "given" to anybody. So the Bush part was nonsense.

But the walls are real. If the Governor moves behind walls, the question is not where he sleeps. It is who can still knock on his door.

With respect,
Temir

Hello. I look at satellite pictures as a hobby. The public commercial ones, nothing secret, anybody with a credit card can buy them.

Compared the compound, autumn 2022 vs last month:
- a second helipad marking
- more vehicles parked in the north yard
- a long white roof that was a skeleton in October and is finished now

That's all 50 cm pixels can tell you. A roof is a roof. Pixels don't show who is underneath it.

When a herd moves pasture, first the carts go. Then the old horses. Then the foals. You count carts.

Update. Weekend: nine lorries, two refrigerated. Helicopter Thursday 18:00, Friday 18:00, like a bus timetable. My tomatoes are not even planted yet and already they know more than IradOne.

In the valleys the biy pitches his yurt in the middle of the camp so anyone can walk up to the door. A chief who moves behind walls is telling you who he is afraid of.

I don't know who he is afraid of. Maybe the city. Maybe his own house.

New image, May. White roof finished, solar panels on it. And a new fence line a few hundred metres outside the old wall. People don't build a second fence round a weekend house.

Same disclaimer: what it is, I can see. Who is in it, I can't.

Nobody in print will say "they live there now". The tenders say it for them: catering, generators, "secure communications", all delivered to an address in Chu District. Paper doesn't gossip, but it doesn't lie very well either.

Talas is dark, I read in the other thread. Out here: a convoy at two in the morning, westbound this time, lights off for the last kilometre before the checkpoint. Back eastbound at five.

Whoever was deciding about Talas this week was not sleeping in Talas.

read this thread from the start tonight. so in march they moved out, and in october the water cannon came from forty km away. makes sense. you can't hear singing from chu district

Bumping this one. The DPI says "extended health retreat" and won't say where. This thread guessed where in March of last year. Guessing where is the easy part.

Helicopters every evening this week. Not only Thursdays. Every evening. My tomatoes are ripe. Nobody came to buy them, everybody on the road is looking at the sky.

Annual image, April 2025. Third helipad marking. North yard about the same. A big white tent on the lawn that wasn't there in March.

Could be a wedding. Could be a medical tent. Could be a tent. Pixels.

pixel_steppe posted:

Could be a wedding. Could be a medical tent.

[RUMOUR, my eyes only] Could be a set. Two of the recent recorded addresses show daylight in the window when the DPI says he spoke "this evening". Proves nothing. I just notice windows now.

Three and a half years on this road. The furniture lorries stopped long ago. This year fewer helicopters, and more lorries coming OUT than going in. I don't know what that means. I am seventy-one, I don't have to know what things mean. I only count.

I said it in 2023: count the carts. I still don't know which way the herd is going.