Author: Oli

We arrived in western Kazakhstan by plane from Yerevan, and continued overland by train into Uzbekistan. Our original plan had been to cross the Caspian Sea by ship, but since Azerbaijan’s land borders were still closed, flying from Armenia was our best option.

Emerging from the eastern end of Uzbekistan, we travelled from Shymkent to Almaty via Astana. While it would have been shorter to travel via Almaty and end this leg in Astana (rather than vice versa), this would have drastically reduced our onward flight options, and crucially ruled out direct flights to South Korea.

Throughout Kazakhstan we were amazed at how modern everything was. I’m not sure whether our shock was just due to naivety or the stark contrast with Uzbekistan, but it certainly made getting around relatively stress-free.

Carbon

Our 1 hour flight across the Caspian Sea emitted nearly as much carbon as our train travel throughout Kazakhstan, despite us travelling nearly 5 times further by train than we did by air. We also enjoyed travelling by train a lot more, given that a night spent on a sleeper train was a whole lot more comfortable than a night spent on a flight.

We travelled 4,400 km across the Caspian Sea and through Kazakhstan – our longest distance travelled in any single country so far. This goes some way to explaining why Kazakhstan also tops the carbon leaderboard by a significant margin.

Cost

Kazakhstan was pretty affordable, with us spending almost as little per day as in Georgia. It’s also unsurprising that a large proportion of our expenditure was on transport given that we took our first flight of the trip to get there, as well as travelling the longest distance overall.

In general, we found Kazakhstan to be a very tourist-friendly country. However, our one annoyance was Kaspi – the Kazakh electronic payment system which was pervasive throughout the country, yet completely inaccessible to foreigners. This was brought most painfully to light on a bus journey back from visiting the ALZhIR museum just outside of Astana. Despite paying by cash to the driver on the way, a conductor boarded the bus on our way back who wouldn’t accept our cash, and instead pointed us towards the Kaspi QR code on the wall that everyone else had used to pay. In the end, a couple of kind fellow passengers paid our fares by Kaspi, but then wouldn’t accept our cash in return, and instead wished us all the best and to “stay safe and enjoy Kazakhstan”. This moment was both excruciatingly embarrassing and totally heartwarming in equal parts.

Cats

Sadly, Kazakhstan has taken Italy’s spot with the lowest cat density of any country we’ve visited since leaving London, with only 1.6 cats per day. To be fair, it was incredibly cold when we visited some Kazakh cities, so who can blame the cats for sheltering inside?

Still, we did see some exemplary cats (and an honourable mention) during our two-stage visit to Kazakhstan.

🏅 Floofiest floofer award

At least this chap knew how to dress for the Kazakh winter!

🏅 Best aerial display

While the cat on the left was a little unexpected, we almost missed the owl chilling in a tree outside one of the crypts near Aktau – he was so well camouflaged! Although he didn’t make a sound, his one open eye did watch us everywhere we went.

🏅 best behaved kittens

These cuties were told to “stay put” in the dry while their Mum went off to hunter-gather some dinner outside a restaurant in Aktau. At first we thought they were alone, until we heard their mother padding about on the roof above our heads!

Food

We ate really well in Kazakhstan, although admittedly this was mostly international food. We’ve already talked about our experience with Kurut (Kazakhstan’s national snack), but our train friends also recommended that we try Beshbarmak (the national dish). This comprised of horse meat and sausage in broth, on a bed of wide, flat noodles with a lone boiled potato as the centrepiece. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

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Beyond Kazakhstan, our first choice would have been to continue overland through China, but it’s still not possible to get a tourist visa at the moment. Our backup plan was to fly to Southern Asia, but India’s e-visa system was still suspended for British citizens and we weren’t keen to surrender our passports for a full visa. Instead, we settled for a slightly longer flight to South Korea, the home of K-pop and kimchi 🇰🇷

Our route to Almaty took us back south towards the Kyrgyzstan border, retracing much of our route from Shymkent to Astana.

For the first time on our trip, we treated ourselves to a first class (2-berth) compartment on the overnight train. This was super-cosy, and allowed us to accompany our instant noodles with a few beers while we debated our favourite cities of our trip so far via a “world cup” style knock-out tournament.

Once again, the overnight journey ate up the vast distance and we were back in southern Kazakhstan in no time, where Astana’s pervasive snow drifts and sub-zero temperatures were replaced with slushy pavements and the re-appearance of autumn.

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Almaty is the largest city in Kazakhstan by some margin, and was the nation’s capital for 55 years before it moved to Astana. Almaty’s milder temperatures put outside activities back on the agenda, and we headed straight to Medeu – the highest ice rink in the world, at 1,691 metres above sea level. We’d seen the rink described as a host of “mass skating” which didn’t sound too appealing until we witnessed its size – it’s essentially a speed-skating stadium with space in the middle for a cafe and ad-hoc skating.

While the setting was stunning, as always it was the general carnage on the ice that provided the most entertainment.

The following day, we spent some time acquainting ourselves with Almaty via a walking tour. Our route started in Panfilov Park, which contained a typical memorial statue, along with a brightly coloured cathedral built entirely from wood – even down to every nail! We were also taken by some of the park’s resident red squirrels, who had ridiculously long fur on their ears. The route continued through the city past the Opera and Ballet Theatre, backed by the beautiful Trans-Ili Alatau mountain range. We also paused to admire the mosaics representing traditional Kazakh life and myths on the walls of the Hotel Almaty.

Our walking tour ended with a cable car ride up to Kók Tóbe Park – a small amusement park perched on the side of a mountain above Almaty.

While the amusements themselves looked passable, the views over the city were the real reason for visiting. Although there wasn’t much of a sunset to speak of, we did enjoy watching the lights of Almaty come on as dusk fell.

As the evening arrived, we rushed back down the mountain to catch England’s first World Cup game against Iran. Rather than watch the game from our apartment, we found an English pub called The Shakespeare, and happily watched England trounce Iran over a British-Indian curry, surrounded by a fairly well-behaved crowd of England fans.

It was pouring with rain on our last day in Kazakhstan, but this didn’t matter too much as we had grand indoor plans to visit the Green Market and the Arasan baths.

The market was a collection of huge halls of fresh produce connected by a labyrinth of tunnels, some of which went underground through what felt like a military bunker! Despite a snack of deep-friend dough strings, our stomachs were still rumbling as we toured the stalls. We settled on a tiny restaurant overlooking the dairy and meat stalls, at which we devoured two huge bowls of Laghman (meat, vegetables and noodle soup).

Our next stop was the Soviet-era Arasan baths. These were built in the 1980s, taking inspiration from bathhouses as far away as Baku, Yerevan, Leningrad, Moscow and Budapest. The result is a vast complex of domed plunge pools, scorching saunas and communal treatment rooms. We’d read that a popular treatment included being whipped by a professional with birch branches, which we saw for sale outside. To be honest, this felt like something I’d need to be paid for rather than the other way around.

One Google review had rather concerningly summarised the bathhouse as “very authentic, very clean and very naked”, though Sara assured me that everyone would be naked and I’d get used to it in no time, so we parted ways in the bathhouse’s grand atrium into the separate male and female areas. However, after removing my clothes and storing them in a locker, I realised that everyone else around me had changed into swimming shorts, and was not naked at all. I started to panic and concluded Sara had (unintentionally?) set me up. It was only as a very naked old dude walked past that I realised that there seemed to be an idealogical divide – the men older than me were naked while the men younger than me were in swimming shorts. I relaxed a little and proceeded into the baths.

Sara and I met up again two hours later to exchange experiences. It turned out that the nudity was absolute in the women’s area, so she hadn’t thought anything of sending me in au-naturel. I told her about the friend I’d made in the bathhouse who actually complimented the bath sheet I’d rented to cover my modesty. Apparently, covering yourself to below the knee (when not swimming) was the proper way of dressing in a Kazakh bathhouse, as opposed to modern swimming shorts. This seemed a surprising detail given the general nudity, but I was relieved to have got something right.

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With the Central Asian section of our trip coming to an end, the far-eastern leg was about to begin. We were sad not to be able to continue overland, but with China still largely closed to foreign tourists since the pandemic, we opted to fly from Almaty to Seoul. The abundance of Korean food throughout Astana and Almaty had already whet our appetite, and little makes Sara as excited as endless rice and noodle options. South Korea here we come! 🇰🇷

We spent 3 days covering the 1,630 km between Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan) and Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan). This journey rather neatly falls into 3 parts: crossing the border by road at Chernayevka, spending two nights in the modern city of Shymkent, and travelling the final stretch to Astana on a sleeper train.

Part 1: Crossing the border

We took a 20 minute taxi from Tashkent to the border crossing at Chernayevka. For many years, this border was notorious for its lengthy delays, during which foreign travellers would have their registration records and customs forms scrutinised, their currencies counted, bags searched and phone photos inspected as they exited Uzbekistan. However, the Uzbek government’s recent efforts to encourage tourists have done away with this bureaucracy, and our experience was no different to any other international border’s customary passport stamping and luggage scanning. Not wanting to push our luck, we refrained from taking any photos as we sped through the formalities.

Emerging onto the Kazakh side of the border, we were greeted by some of the most intense taxi and money changing hustling to date. Circles of hawkers followed us all the way to the “official” money changers, where we converted our remaining (Uz) Soum into (Kz) Tenge. Rather helpfully, we think the lady who changed our money told the taxi drivers that we didn’t have enough Tenge for the extortionate prices they were asking, and a few drivers lost interest in us.

We eventually found a taxi share with a Swiss-American couple who had been in Central Asia for the last few months and were heading north-east to Taraz. The negotiation was made much easier by the fact that the American chap spoke fluent Russian, so despite his hangover, he became our chief communicator, and we had a fun couple of hours exchanging stories and tips.

Part 2: Relaxing in Shymkent

Shymkent is Kazakhstan’s third largest city, and its modern amenities and food options felt like the land of plenty after a few weeks in Uzbekistan. On top of this, our comfortable hotel room bizarrely had a small washing machine in its bathroom, and we took delight in washing as many of our clothes as we could find hanging space for around our room. It’s the small things!

Since both of Shymkent’s museums were closed during our visit, we spent a good chunk of our time exploring the city’s parks. Like many other ex-Soviet cities, its vast parks were scattered with a handful of monuments and memorials, respectively celebrating independence and remembering lives lost in wars. First up was Abay park, which included yet another fighter jet, a tank and a few armoured vehicles, as well as various artillery.

However, it didn’t take long for the cold to get to us, and we retreated to the warmth of a shopping centre for food and to browse cosy winter clothes that had no chance of fitting in our backpacks.

We then followed the Koshkar-Ata canal through pre-Russian Shymkent with the hope of seeing some local life and potentially even making a feline friend. The quiet streets and village-like atmosphere were quite a contrast to the rest of Shymkent’s wide and busy roads, but sadly all the cats seemed to be hiding inside from the cold weather.

We emerged from this enclave of old Shymkent at Independence Park to take in the panoramic views and get up close to the park’s centre piece – a colossal torch-like monument which apparently represents the centre opening of a yurt.

With the obligatory parks and memorials ticked off, we had some time to stroll along Beybitshilik Avenue – a popular pedestrianised street flanked by various fairground-style attractions as well as some beautiful murals.

One attraction in particular caught our eye – a roller-disco blaring out cheesy-pop on its echoey PA system. This felt like a great opportunity to get the blood pumping in our legs again, and despite dragging up the average age by some margin, we donned some incredibly uncomfortable roller blades and hit the Rolik. Even though there were relatively few others at the roller-disco, there was no shortage of chaos provided by our fellow roller skaters, bladers, scooterers and skateboarders. We spent our allotted half-hour avoiding collisions and pondering the provenance of the red stains on the concrete floor…

Part 3: Shymkent to Astana

We managed to snag the last two same-compartment beds on the modern and relatively high-speed 15 hour train to Astana. Having taken a few trains over the past fortnight, we confidently boarded the train, met our compartment mates, and began the process of stowing our luggage and making our beds. However, I’d just about managed to wedge Sara’s bag firmly under one of the beds when it became clear that we were in the wrong wagon altogether. We apologised profusely and retrieved our luggage with some difficulty, before heading off in search of the compartment we’d actually booked.

Our actual compartment buddies turned out to be a super-friendly family of four, who (slightly confusingly) occupied the two lower berths of our four-berth compartment. Once again, Google translate came to our rescue as we covered the standard topics of the weather and the Premier League. They also generously shared with us their bag of Kurut, an Uzbek national snack of dried yoghurt resembling a golf ball, which our book helpfully described as “having the half-life of uranium.” Without this knowledge, I naively popped the whole thing in my mouth, before casually reaching for my water to try to replace some of the moisture that had been absorbed by the dry, salty gobstopper. Sara watched me with some amusement (she said I looked like a Blue Peter presenter trying desperately to hide my true feelings), before realising she would also need to eat hers to avoid causing any offence. I’m not sure that her strategy of washing small pieces down with an entire 500 ml bottle of water was any better, but we both got there in the end.

The train itself was delightfully fast, clean and modern, especially after the number of ancient trains we’d taken throughout Uzbekistan. On top of all this, it even had a dining car, which we were keen to experience. Despite the overpriced traditional fare, it felt pretty decadent to dine at a spacious table as the train whizzed through the night.

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Although we felt a bit mad for squeezing such a long journey into our remaining time in Central Asia, the speedy overnight train ate up the miles in what felt like no time at all. And my goodness was it worth it when we emerged into the snow-white and completely frozen futuristic city that is Astana.