Our Kazakhstan trip was the part of a 17 day Central Asia trip that covered Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world by land area, and the largest country in Central Asia. As a country, Kazakhstan was a part of the USSR until 1991 when the USSR collapsed. In 1984, we had read about Rakesh Sharma from India going into space from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on the Soyuz T-11 mission. We never thought of Kazakhstan separately from the Soviet Union at that time. Kazakhstan achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and became a sovereign country with pretty much the same borders when it was a part of USSR. We spent 7 days in Kazakhstan in both the north and the south. Almaty, Charyn Canyon, Lake Kolsay, Astana and Burabay National Park. This blog covers the details of the trip and is best viewed on a laptop or a desktop.
We landed in Almaty, traveled to Charyn Canyon, Lake Kolsay, Lake Kaindy in Eastern Kazakhstan, flew to Astana, visited Lake Burabay and came back to Almaty before flying to Bishek.
Day 1: Fri, May 24: Arrival in Almaty, Ballet Show
We arrived in Almaty at 7.00 pm instead of 4.15 pm because our flight from Dushanbe was delayed by about 3 hours. We had bookings for the ballet show Coppelia at the Abay State Opera House in Almaty at 7 pm. Rather than all 7 of us missing the show, we decided that 3 of us (Anu, Samir, Anjali) would collect all bags from the airport and take it to the Garden Park Inn hotel, while the remaining 4 (Abhay, Maithili, Yash and Sahil) would take a taxi straight to the Opera House to watch the ballet. They were able to get to the opera house by 7.50 pm and watch at least 50 mins of the show.
We retired for the day getting ready for the next day where we were doing a tour of Almaty.
Day 2: Sat, May 25, 2024: Almaty
Our guide Daniyar met us at 9.00 am at the Garden Park Inn. We first went to Panfilov Park, a large park in the middle of Almaty.
Within Panfilov Park, we saw the Ascencion Cathedral, a wooden Ukrainian-baroque Russian Orthodox cathedral that was consecrated in 1907.
Next visit was to the monument of 28 Panfilov, dedicated to and named after the Panfilov heroes which were the 28 soldiers of an Alma-Ata Infantry unit who allegedly died while defending Moscow from the German invasion during the Second World War. The group took its name from Ivan Panfilov, the General commanding the 316th division which, in spite of heavy casualties, believed at that time managed to significantly delay the Germans advance to Moscow, thus buying the time for the defenders of the city.
We proceeded to the Green Bazaar, where we rode scooters. It is possible to ride scooters using the Yandex ride sharing app. However, the prices are slightly high for scooter rides.
We visited the Green Bazaar in Almaty. It is like any other market that you could find in India selling all kinds of items including clothes, groceries, food etc.
There was an old trading market in Almaty. When I asked Daniyar, our guide, he did not know anything about it. For this guided tour, he simply walked from one place to another. He did not explain anything about any place of interest. So we were unhappy about his conduct as a guide. We decided to let him go and continue the rest of the tour on our own.
We had lunch at a pizza place near Green Bazaar. We were done by about 3 pm. We headed out to Falcon Farm Sunkar for a Falcon show at 4 pm. The farm is about 45 mins away from central Almaty. During the show, they demonstrated how they train the falcons, eagles and how the birds swoop down on their prey. It was a pretty cool show.
Next, we visited the Independence Monument where a soaring obelisk honors Kazakhstan’s independence. It features a golden warrior atop a winged leopard.
The sun was setting and we decided to head to Kok Tobe Park, next to the Almaty Television Tower. It is a recreational area in Almaty, Kazakhstan that has a amusement park attractions and restaurants. It is located on top of Kok Tobe mountain and is connected to downtown Almaty by a cable car line. There is a 372 meters tall TV Tower at the foot of the mountain. The tower can be seen from most parts of the city.
It was raining when we got to the top. However, the view of the brightly lit city was very nice.
We got back from Kok Tobe at around 9 pm and retired for the day.
Day 3: Sun, May 26, 2024: Charyn Canyon, Lake Kolsay, Lake Kaindy
After seeing historical sites and city sights, we wanted a feel for the natural places in Kazakhstan. Therefore, we had booked a tour to Charyn Canyon, Lake Kolsay and Lake Kaindy about 300 km to the east of Almaty in eastern Kazakhstan. The tour cost was about $50 per person and was quite good and well conducted, but the bus could have been a little more spacious.
We reached the meeting point near Garden Park Inn hotel at 5.15 am. It was raining heavily, but we were already seeing the light of the day. We were going to be driving nearly 600 km that day. It was going to be a long day.
Our first stop was Charyn Canyon, a national park in Kazakhstan, stretching along the Charyn River, including Charyn Canyon. The Canyon, with its thinly stratified red sedimentary rock, is said to resemble the Grand Canyon in the US; it is however smaller – 50 km from end to end. I felt that it was similar to Bryce Canyon more than Grand Canyon. It is 200 km to the east of Almaty. On that day, Charyn Canyon was extremely windy, with gusty winds reaching about 50-60 kmph. It was extremely cold and difficult to walk in the canyon. I missed my down jacket with a hood on this walk. It was a 5 km walk (2.5 km each way). It is a small canyon compared to Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon, but very pretty. We reached Charyn Canyon around 8.15 am.
As we were walking back form Charyn Canyon, we saw a taxi vehicle ferrying people between the Charyn Canyon river and the starting point. The taxi starts at 10 am. It was so windy and cold that if we had access to the taxi, we would have taken it. We got back to our van around 10.30 am.
We proceeded to Lake Kolsay National park \located on the north slope of the Tian Shan Mountains, southeast Kazakhstan (10 km from the border with Kyrgyzstan). Often referred to as “Pearls of Tien Shan”, the park’s main feature are the Kolsay Lakes of landslide-tectonic origin, approximately formed in 1887 and 1911 on the Kaindy and Kolsay rivers.
From Lake Kolsay, our next destination was Lake Kaindy (Qaiyñdy kölı, meaning the “birch tree lake” or landslide) is a 1,300 ft lake located 129 kilometers southeast of the city of Almaty 6,600 ft above sea level. Its depth is about 98 ft. The lake contains trunks of submerged birch trees that rise above the surface of the lake. The area is often referred to as a “sunken forest”.
To get to Lake Kaindy, we had to get off from our van and get into a 4×4 vehicle, a bus by a Russian company called UAZ. Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant (UAZ) is a Russian automobile manufacturer that produces 4×4 off-road vehicles, SUVs, trucks, buses, and vans. The company was founded in 1941. UAZ has been a reliable supplier for many countries under state defense orders. UAZ vehicles are mentioned in the popular game PubG, so kids knew about it. It was 30 min ride on the UAZ on extremely unfinished roads. Three times, the UAZ entered a river and waded right through the water.
From the UAZ, we were transferred to a taxi style van. We were taken the last 2 kms in this van.
Lake Kaindy was extremely beautiful and serene. The submerged birch trees presented a very unique sight.
We started from Lake Kaindy around 5.30 pm and it was around 10.30 pm by the time we got back to Almaty. We reached the Garden Park Inn hotel at 10.30 pm. It had been a long day. We slept late at around 11.45 pm hoping for a relaxed next day.
Day 4: Mon, May 27, 2024: Shymbulak Ski Resort (Almaty), Flight to Astana
We started the day in a relaxed manner at 9.45 am. We could see the mountains from our hotel room.
Alisher, my son Aditya’s friend, who lives in Almaty, picked us up in his car. We accompanied him in a Yandex to the Shymbulak, a ski resort 25 km fromAlmaty. It is the largest ski resort in Central Asia. It is located in the upper part of the Medeu Valley in the Zailiisky Alatau mountain range, at an elevation of 7,200 ft above sea level. Starting from 1961, Shymbulak hosted several USSR Championships and skiing competitions. In 1983 it became the Olympic ski training center for the USSR. During this time, various commodities were built including restaurants and hotels.
We reached Shymbulak and took a ski lift to go to the top to above 10,000 ft. The ski lift ride took about 30 mins to the top.
At the top of the lift, the views were spectacular at Shymbulak. It made me think how good the skiing would be in winter. We played in the snow and enjoyed the scenery.
Our flight from Almaty to Astana was at 5.45 pm. This means we had to leave our hotel Garden Park inn at 3 pm latest. However, at around 1.30 pm when I did a quick search, I realized that the time had shifted earlier by 1 hour and the flight was at 4.45 pm instead of 5.45 pm. So we had to move our time up by 1 hour. We had to scramble a little bit. Sahil, Yash and I went directly to the lunch place and picked up food. Anu, Anjali, Abhay and Maithili went to Garden park, picked up the bags and went to the airport. We finally reached the airport at around 3 pm, but it was panic situation.
We boarded our flight to Astana at 4.45 pm and reached Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, at around 6.30 pm. We picked up our bags and booked a Yandex to the Best Western Plus hotel in Astana. We saw many different sights along the way and got a feel for Astana.
Astana became the capital of Kazakhstan in 1997; since then it has grown and developed economically into one of the most modern cities in Central Asia. Modern Astana is a planned city, following the process of other planned capitals. After it became the capital of Kazakhstan, the city dramatically changed shape with its master-plan designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. As the seat of the government of Kazakhstan, Astana is the site of the Parliament House, Supreme Court, Ak Orda Presidential Palace and numerous government departments and agencies. It is home to a range of futuristic buildings, including many skyscrapers. It looks like Dubai in its planning and development. After independence in 1991, Almaty was the capital. In 1997, the capital was moved to Astana further north so that it would be strategically placed in the center of the country, rather than Almaty, which is to the south.
We retired at night excited our guided day tour in Astana the next day.
Day 5: Tue, May 28, 2024: Astana City Tour
Our guide in Astana was Didara. She was a history student at the local university. She did a great job at the guided tour of Astana. She met us at 9 am at our hotel, Best Western Plus in Astana.
We first went to old town Astana. The settlement of Akmoly was founded in 1830, possibly named after a local landmark—Akmola literally means white grave in Kazakh. In 1832, it was granted town status and renamed Akmolinsk. In 1961, under Nikita Khrushchev, it was renamed Tselinograd, Russian for “City of Virgin Lands”. In 1991, following Kazakhstan’s independence, the name was changed to Akmola. In 1998, it was renamed as Astana, means “capital city”.
We walked along the walking path towards the river.
We saw a statue of Kenesary Khan, the last khan of the Kazakh Khanate, grandson of Ablai Khan. In modern Kazakhstan, he is revered at the state level as the leader of the National Liberation Movement of the Kazakhs in 1837–1847 for Independence from the Russian Empire. In Soviet historiography, Kenesary was characterized as the leader of the reactionary feudal-monarchist movement aimed at separating Kazakhstan from Russia.
Next stop was the Khan Shatyr market. It is a transparent tent-shaped Entertainment Center located in Astana. Built in a neo-futurist style, the architectural project was unveiled by the first President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev on December 9, 2006.
From Khan Shatyr market, we proceeded to the Baiterek a monument and observation tower in Astana. There are some great views of Astana from this tower. The tower is about 330 ft tall.
After coming down from Baiterek, we visited the Astana Central Mosque, the largest mosque in Central Asia and the second largest mosque outside West Asia, and one of the largest in the world. It is supposed to be able to house 200,000 people for prayer at a single time. It was built at a cost of over $2 billion.
Our last stop of the Astana Guided tour was the Expo Center, built to host the Astana expo in 2017. The expo’s theme was “Future Energy”, and aimed to create a global debate between countries, nongovernmental organizations, companies and the general public on the crucial question: “How do we ensure safe and sustainable access to energy for all while reducing CO2 emissions?” It has beautifully done exhibits. A must visit for Astana. There are multiple floors, each dedicated to a different theme.
We ended our guided tour at the Expo Center and headed back to the hotel. Sahil, Yash and Anu visited a McDonald’s, branded a IM in Kazakhstan.
We had a great day in Astana and we retired for the night, excited to go to Burabay National Park the next day.
Day 6: Wed, May 29, 2024: Burabay National Park
Burabay National Park is located about 200 km north of Astana. It is only about 300 km from the Southern Russian border. We started at 8.30 am from our hotel in Astana. It was a 13 person minivan.
Ablai Khan was the ruler of the Kazakhs in the late 1700s. Polyana Ablai Khan hosts the throne of Ablai Khan in Burabay National Park.
We did some archery practice and then took some photos in the local Kazakh costumes. The warm furs felt very good in the cold temperature.
We stopped for coffee at a local coffee shop.
We then stopped at the Zhumbaktas rock on the Burabay Lake. It is a Sphinx-like rock sticking out of the lake. It is a striking 380m-tall rock pile rising on the shore behind it.
We ate lunch at a local food court. They were able to serve us vegetarian food. The server even wrote in Devnagari script asking us to enjoy the food.
We drove back to Astana and reached around 6 pm to catch the night lights.
Day 7: Thu, May 30, 2024: Astana to Bishkek Flight
We took a Yandex taxi early morning at 5.15 am to reach Astana airport by 5.45 am. Our flight to Almaty was at 7.55 am.
Our flight landed at Almaty at around 9.30 am. We spent about 6 hours at Almaty airport and took the 4.30 pm and reached Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan.
\It was a wonderful 7 day trip to Kazakhstan. We were able to cover a lot of places and saw a combination of city, history and nature. This trip was a part of a larger Central Asia 17 day itinerary which covered Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Click here if you are interested to read about the entire itinerary.
