2 Days in Kazakhstan- Exploring Splendid Almaty, the Steppes and Sunken Mountains

‘Thank you Mithun Chakroborty!’, exclaimed the daughter, holding her giant chocolate piece up as trophy outside a clothing store in a mall in Almaty. A manna from heaven after two hours of trying to hunt for a measly jacket in mild desperation in the wrong place. (There were only shops selling very expensive knock offs of obscure, for me, Italian designers!) The owner of this last one where we had walked in was a Mithun fan who could not seem to believe his luck that people from the land of the ‘Disco Dancer’ had come to his store, perhaps for the first time and so had promptly offered a chocolate to the daughter who till this trip had no idea of ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ Chakroborty.

Kazakhstan was added to the holiday itinerary as an appendage I felt, with just two days in Almaty and half a day in Shymkent while crossing over from Uzbekistan. But even though it was no more than ‘dipping the toes’, we got a glimpse of a land that was exactly as one had imagined it to be- wild and vast!

Horsepower

While driving from the border to Shymkent the scenery unfolds a golden, sometimes green, gentle slope at a time. We speed in a vintage Soviet era red Mercedes with the windows down at 140km per hour (It is a wonder my scalp didn’t fly off!) When I ask how do I get the windows up, the driver takes out a rotating handle from the glove compartment with great enthusiasm…

Shymkent is a leafy well laid out city and we have a few hours to spare. The sprawling War Memorial Park is where we head to. Besides a MIG that looks poised to take off and other war machinery, there are endless rows of names of soldiers who died in World War II on a low wall. Later, we catch a very nice train and rock and wind our way through the night to reach Almaty spread on the lower slopes of snow-capped mountains early in the morning.

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Buttery Cathedrals and Cheesecakes

Since our Airbnb is not going to be available till couple of hours later, we leave our luggage at the station. After fortifying ourselves with coffee and snacks from a convenience store nearby, we drive to Panfilov Park. It is like a forest in the middle of the city and we walk down a wide path, crossing well-dressed old women with their tiny pooches, young mothers pushing prams and the odd jogger, in the backdrop we can hear church bells peeling. In a large sunny square stands the buttercup yellow Zenkov cathedral.

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The mirrored crucifixes on top of the wooden church catch the morning rays brilliantly. It sounds and looks like something from a fairytale. Inside this Russian orthodox church Sunday Mass is on and we join in for a bit. The singing is haunting and uplifting at the same time. Later we have the most delicious, melt in the mouth cheesecake, probably home baked, from a stall outside.

War and Glory

A short path leads to the Memorial of Glory, the war memorial. It is a dramatic brutalist composition of men charging. They seem to burst out of the very stone they are hewn from. An eternal flame burns nearby in memory of World War II heroes. Out next stop is the Central Mosque. It’s dome is shiny new, having being built in 1999 in a post-Soviet era revival of religious roots, but after the opulent ones in Uzbekistan it seems a rather drab affair.

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Fresh Greens

Next up is the Green Market which is the go-to place for all kind of shopping. Apart from colourful fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, there are mounds of dry fruits and a whole section dedicated to dairy products including produce from mare’s milk. The caviar looks tempting and surprisingly, thanks to a large Korean population resettled here by the Russians in the 1930s, there is an entire row of women doling out Korean food. It is a feast!

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Art Everywhere

We miss a cable car ride up to Kok Tobe Hill in our wild goose chase for a jacket early in the evening. (Had been told about great and reasonable winterwear available here so in all ‘wiseness’ did not carry one for the daughter!) The rest of the evening is spent at the lively pedestrian Zhebik Zholy Street with its musicians and art stalls on the pavement, and eateries crowded with youngsters and families on the sides. We take the metro to return to our apartment. The chandeliered stations are like nuclear bunkers deep down in the bowls, with vertigo inducing escalators.

Of Steppes, Steep Canyons and Sunken Mountains

Next morning is an early start to a long day in the countryside in a guided trip. We head down the slopes of Almaty and speed through an expansive countryside. There are fields of maize with snow-capped mountains as backdrop on one hand and on the other, the fields roll till a bare horizon.

We cross small cemeteries with miniature monuments, villages with mounds of pumpkins till we start winding up a gentle multi-hued slope. Then the road unrolls through flat land that is heating up to create mirages. The hills in the distance look suspended in the air. We cross golden eagles sitting on the ground. One can just imagine horses in full gallop here…

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Soon the land start to break up and we reach Charyn Canyon. Drained by a namesake river that originates from the Tian Shan mountains, it has over millions of years eroded the red sandstone earth to create this canyon. We explore only a small portion, descending down a gentle gully and scrambling up a narrow shortcut. A scampering gerbil is the only wildlife we spot. A Korean with us plans to camp the night here and will rejoin the next day’s tour.  The narrower Black Canyon cleaved by the same river upstream is our next stop. (No prizes for guessing the colour of the stone there!) We miss seeing the rare Sogdian Ash trees that are only found here.

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In the distance mountains rim the flat land and we cross small herds of horses and solitary ones peacefully grazing, and bales of hay being collected around small villages. We reach Saty village in a valley where we leave our comfortable minibus and get into a matador that does not look like it has seen better days but serves the purpose as we canter up a dirt road going into the mountains and rock and roll through streams lined with seabuckthorn. The last couple of kilometres are an option of a horse ride, a hike or a quick jeep ride up to Kaindy lake.

With white needle-like dead spruce trees piercing the lake’s aqua surface, it makes a pretty picture in a bowl of steep mountains covered with conifer trees. The lake owes its existence to a landslide in 1911. We hike back to the matador van on a path meant for the horses. Back at Saty village lunch is a feast at a local’s house. Its not just the quantity but the layout of the spread that is special as well. Conversation veers to Hindi movies as the guide is a Bollywood fan and vividly remembers Khoon Bhari Maang as one of her favourites. We are asked for the English translation of the title…haha..

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Post lunch we head to the bigger and more touristy Kalsai Lake in the mountains surrounded by thick conifer forest, crossing small yurt settlements. The first and only one accessible by road of a trio of lakes at increasing elevation and of decreasing sizes. The cobalt blue lake stretches into the mountains and the jackets finally come handy!

Geography lessons from another life had described the endless miles of mildly undulating landscape of the steppes and history had told us about the Mongol hordes sweeping across it to murder and create mayhem. It was exactly all of that and more! Okay no, hordes but loads of horses!

Fact File

Getting there-

There are direct flights from Delhi to Almaty.

Staying –

We stayed at a very smart little airbnb in a neighbourhood of Soviet type blocks to get a local feel.

Getting Around-

Yandex app for taxis works out to be very reasonable.

The overnight train from Shymkent to Almaty has very nice coupes and a dining car.

We booked a day trip to the canyons and lakes with Kazakhstan Guided Tours.