Today I want to tell you a bit about the complex process involved in getting our things from here to there. As many of you may remember, each post we’re given a certain amount of poundage that we can bring with us. The poundage falls into three categories–hand carry (suitcases), air freight, and ground freight.
For hand carrying, we each get two suitcases with 50 pounds a piece, so 300 pounds in total. In those we pack our most precious things (important documents, health records, medicine, electronics–anything we can’t chance losing). For air freight, the poundage is determined by the number of people. So with three people, we get 600 pounds. Air freight typically comes within two to four weeks of arriving in country and is meant to help get you through the first few months until your ground shipment arrives. Ground freight is broken into two categories. The first is regular household effects (HHE), which make up 7000 pounds. The other is called Consumables and is given in postings where you can’t find many western products on the local economy. That allowance is 2000 pounds.
This is one of our more complex moves with shipments coming from three different places. Because of that, we will receive our things in five different shipments:
- HHE from Mumbai,
- HHE and Consumables from Minnesota,
- Air Freight from D.C.,
- HHE Air from D.C. (will explain what that is in a bit),
- and our car from D.C.
Due to the fact that Kazakhstan is landlocked, our Consumables and HHE will go over a ridiculous route to get here. I’ve drawn a map to help you understand the complexity of it.
Our ground freight will cross the Atlantic ocean on a boat, enter the Mediterranean Sea, pass through the Bosphorus straight in Istanbul and traverse the Black Sea. When it arrives in Georgia (the country, not the city), the containers are transferred to a truck and driven across Georgia and Azerbaijan. Because the cargo can’t be driven through Russia (to the North) or Iran (to the South), it has to get on a boat again to cross the Caspian sea. But the journey is not yet done; even though the cargo has reached Kazakhstan, it still has a 1200 mile journey to reach the Eastern part of Kazakhstan where Almaty is located. Isn’t that wild?! I am still marveling at what an adventure our stuff goes through!
So, because of this crazy-complex routing, ground freight often takes 4-6 months to get here. And if it gets into the winter months, the trucks may be delayed due to unpassable mountain passes. Because of this, our post receives an additional unique allowance called HHE Air, which means that 750 pounds of stuff that would have usually arrived via ground comes via air instead.
Now here’s where it gets crazy. Last Friday (just two days after arriving), we were told that our Mumbai HHE was here and ready to be delivered. To refresh your memory, this freight had gone from Mumbai to Belgium a year ago when we left India and has been sitting in a warehouse ever since. In past posts, they won’t release the shipment until you physically arrive in country but I guess Kazakhstan is different. So this freight started making the above journey 3-4 months ago to arrive at the same time we did. Suffice to say, we were very surprised.
But that wasn’t all . . . on Tuesday morning we got a message that our D.C. Air Freight had arrived and could be delivered that afternoon. More shock. It seemed too good to be true that we could take in two of our five shipments in our first week!
The picture below shows how air freight comes. It’s packed into giant boxes that end up weighing roughly 150 pounds each. We usually include clothes, shoes, kitchen supplies, and toys. What we can’t include: kitchen knives, aerosol cans, batteries, or liquids.
I wasn’t even done putting the Air Freight away when the HHE delivery team showed up Wednesday morning at 8 AM.
The Mumbai shipment was a bit over 3000 pounds and consisted of 90 boxes in three giant, wooden crates.
There were six people unpacking, all of whom were amazingly efficient. They delivered all the boxes to our desired destinations, unpacked them, and took away all the packing material within 2 hours! Hard not to be impressed by that. Here’s what we’re left with to sort through this weekend.
So between the air freight and Mumbai goods, we’ve already received over half of our stuff. I anticipate that the HHE Air Freight from D.C. will come in the next month, but that the car and the 1300 pounds of Consumables and HHE from Minnesota will arrive around Thanksgiving or Christmas. We’ll see how it all shakes out. Major kudos to our shipping team here, who have made everything so easy. Being able to set up house immediately versus 3-4 months after arriving makes such a difference in our comfort level and ability to acclimate.
