Recap Amazing Race 13, episode 8 By Arthur Perkins
 
Teams were released from the pit stop in Delhi India and sent to Almaty (Ala Ata for those who remember the 1960s Russian missile program there), Kazakhstan starting:
Nick/Starr 1014pm
Toni/Dallas 1024 pm
Terence/Sarah 1043pm
Ken/Tina 1118pm
Andrew/Dan 1200am
 
I have a few comments about the filming of this episode. First is that there were many references to the film Borat because it was theoretically set in Kazakhstan. My research has shown that scenes showing Borat's home village were filmed in the Gypsy village of Glod, Romania. Also the television footage used was from Estonia and Azerbaijan, not Kazakhstan. CBS played up the Borat aspect in its commercials for this episode, but did use the real Almaty.
 
The Amazing Race producers went for admirable slapstick comedy and splashy scenes. This episode was centered in Kazakhstan. Teams took late-night flights from Delhi to Dubai, Frankfurt or Moscow and transferred from there to Almaty. Nick/Starr, Toni/Dallas and Ken/Tina chose Frankfurt, which had the earliest arrival at 1155pm although my studies of flights indicated that through Dubai should arrive 7 hours earlier than that. Terence/Sarah elected Moscow and arrived at 110am  on the following day. Andrew/Dan did not arrive through Dubai until about 6am the next day. They just made the taxi drive to the Chicken Farm that was the first Roadblock in time for its opening at 0730.
 
All teams sprint to clue box inside the gate of the Chicken Farm. Dan is first, but Nick inches behind grabs it away from him. It offers both the Roadblock task and the final Fast Forward of AR13. That Roadblock is for a selected team member to Find a Golden Egg among 7 dispersed among 30,000 chickens in a huge henhouse. Toni, Andrew and Tina all go for this luck-based task. The only skill involved is good eyesight and ability to clear chickens out of your way to move anywhere as they are quite packed. They all complete this roadblock without incident.
 
The Fast Forward is for each team member to eat a traditional Kazahh dish based on the rear end of a sheep and also involving the head of a sheep. Nick/Starr and Terence/Sarah went for it. Now both teams need to know that the odds are against the loser in a 2-way battle for Fast Forward surviving. I can understand Terence/Sarah in Terence's desperate move to get on top would attempt it, but it made no sense to me that Nick/Starr did. Apparently they are big-time risk-takers. Nick moved along, but Starr finished in half the time it took him. Terence is a vegetarian and had not eaten meat in 15 years. I have no idea when arriving and finding out the details why he did not just jump back into the taxi and return to the Roadblock. Sarah was not far along when he decided to abandon the Fast forward attempt (which they were not going to win anyway based on the eating patterns I observed). They returned to the Roadblock a major time gap behind. Was this one hour? I don't know but I know it had to be substantial. Nick/Starr proceed to Old Square park where the pit stop for leg 8 is. They win a 180hp WaveRunner each.
 
The other 3 teams were struggling with the task. The clue sent them to Koktobe Mountain in a crane vehicle. The trick was that the provided driver's were instructed only to follow the instructions of the teams to get there. Navigating in the Cyrillic language must have been interesting. Many people on the side of the road didn't know or wouldn't say how to get there. Eventually they all did get there. The task there was absolutely ridiculous. Walk up a mountain road so that 2 Mongol warriors can escort you to a site whether there are 2 falcon handlers and one falcon. Handler #1 releases the bird, which flies maybe 100 feet to Handler #2, who presents the clue to the teammates. Why go through all that rigamarole just to do what a clue box normally does? What a waste of talent just to show falcons and Mongol warriors! All 3 teams did this without incident, although Andrew/Dan were behind.
 
The next task was a DETOUR. Teams had to choose between Play Like Mad(go to the Museum of Instruments, pick two specific ones, and learn how to play a simple tune on them, then perform it to win $1.50 change in Kazakh money on the street) of Act Like Bulls (get a 2 person cow costume at the Marionette theatre, put it on and navigate the streets to find a specific milk vendor, then drink a glass of milk and use the clue in the glass at the bottom to get directions to a meat vendor in a special Meat Market which you had to walk to. No team chose Play Like Mad, probably due to the uncertainty of learning to play an instrument (which is quite easy if you have almost any music training). All went for Act Like Bulls and it was truly a comedy of errors. Navigation was the problem, then following the clue was the problem. So Toni/Dallas start out and they have some minor navigational problems but continue on through. Ken/Tina are right behind them and even get ahead slightly at one point, but they have more serious navigational issues. They drank the milk but did not look at all on the bottom where the prior clue said the new clue would be. They abandoned their cow costume too soon even though Ken had questioned if that was right. Then then got to the Meat Market and found out that they would not receive the clue unless than were in the cow costume. They fixed that but had cost themselves precious time. Andrew/Dan were bumbling all the way, with many navigational errors. They were being portrayed as a team with Terence/Sarah right behind them, but I think that was CBS editing and not the reality of the episode. We may find out when Sarah/Terence are questioned on how much they lost by. Andrew/Dan wasted time by taking a taxi to the pit stop when the clue directed them to walk. they had to take a taxi back and then walk back. Editing shows Terence/Sarah were shown flying through the tasks, but I have a hard time believing that was what really happened. If you look at the probabilities for a team looking for one of four Golden Eggs vs. that for one of three Golden Eggs, on average there would be a considerably shorter time for Andrew/Dan there than for Terence/Sarah. On the DETOUR I can believe that Terence/Sarah was shorter than Andrew/Dan, but off a base of maybe 30 minutes they could not catch up any significant amount of their maybe 1 hour late start at the Roadblock.
 
The final clue sends teams to the Old Square pit stop. The arrival order is:
Nick/Starr, my guess 2.5 hours ahead of the next team
Toni/Dallas, maybe 10 minutes ahead of
Ken/Tina, maybe 30 minutes ahead of
Andrew/Dan, who were at least 30 minutes ahead of
Terence/Sarah, who were hoping for a non-elimination but got eliminated instead.
 
Phil had the line of the day at the pit stop: Why couldn't you eat meat for $1 million? Terence took full responsibility for his decision to go for the Fast Forward over Sarah's objections and for the ultimate elimination. He said that he did not want a future without Sarah. Sarah stated that their relationship is very good.
 
This was a visually colorful and appealing episode. I thought the Golden Egg search was fabulous. I did not understand why the falcons and Mongol warriors in the next task. Act Like Bulls was totally comical and provided some insight into the difficulties of reading clues properly (note that both Andrew/Dan and Ken/Tina made big mistakes on this) and cross-cultural communications. The people of Almaty come across as able to enjoy a good laugh with the teams and of being variable in their helpfulness to provide directions locally.
 
Next is Moscow, where the preview shows Andrew and Dan marching with the Red Army and Nick/Starr's taxi driver lost on the way to Viktoria Prospekt.

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