Category: 2022-10 Aktau to Almaty

Astana is the capital city of Kazakhstan and at 51 degrees north, is a long, long way up from where we’d been travelling east (at around 37-45 degrees) since we left London.

This probably should have served as a bit of a clue that the November weather might be rather chilly, but somehow this didn’t factor into our conversation at all when I was trying to persuade Oli that it was a great idea to go!

Actually, it turned out that the snowy weather really made our visit, and our careful packing for four seasons just about kept us warm enough. It did make walking everywhere a bit of a challenge – we still tried but the buses were pretty enticing at times!

It turns out that Astana holds the Guinness World Record for the capital city with the most name changes, having first been called Akmolinsk, then Tselinograd, then Akmola, then Astana and finally Nur-Sultan. In fact, the city has had another name change even since we left home in August – we’d been there a few days before we realised that it had in fact reverted to being called Astana from Nur-Sultan (we just assumed everyone referred to it by its old name still). It’s hard to keep up!

Our first activity when we stepped off our overnight train was to visit the iconic Khan Shatyr shopping centre. This might sound like an odd place to start, but it was warm inside and apparently of architectural merit (having been designed by the British architect Norman Foster).

Of more interest to us was that it had a monorail running around the interior, which we just had to ride.

One of Astana’s most iconic buildings (and the one I’d seen in photos that really made me want to visit) is the Bayterek Monument, which sits right in the centre of the city. We took a lift to the top, which had great views of the snowy surrounds and gridlocked traffic, and saw former President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s golden handprint. The idea is that you place your hand in the print while looking towards the palace (if this seems a little egotistical, that probably does a good job of summing up how presidents are treated here – after all, the whole city of Astana was named after him for three years).

We saw more cool architecture surrounding Independence Square – the city really has gone big on futuristic buildings.

Although we’d normally love to take our time walking around an area like this, it was bloody cold! Oli resorted to Labrador techniques to keep warm (and my fingers nearly fell off taking this video).

Instead, we spent a few hours exploring the National Museum, and I promise that this wasn’t just because it was lovely and warm. It was one of the most wide-ranging museums I’ve ever visited and I think we only scratched the surface before closing time, but we still saw exhibits on archeology, nomadic life, the Second World War, space travel, fine art, 21st century Kazakhstan, and more.

We even found some information about the three people pictured in the huge murals we’d seen in Aktau in the museum. The portrait on the building closest to the eternal flame in Aktau was Khiuaz Dospanova, the first female officer in the Soviet Air Force, who was named a People’s Hero of Kazakhstan in 2004 for her heroic missions and perseverance after terrible injury.

We’d read that a short distance outside of the city was the site of a Gulag (labour camp) for wives of political prisoners during the Stalin years, who were sentenced to 5-8 years for being the “enemy of the people” without any evidence of guilt. We decided to visit the ALZhIR museum and memorial to learn more and pay our respects.

I think it was even more chilling to see the site in the snow, since the conditions at these camps were poor and we read that the women collected reeds from the nearby lake to attempt to insulate their huts. It must have been so cold. Unfortunately, the museum itself was a bit of a disappointment, but it did give us some context about what happened during this period in Kazakhstan, and we read some interesting material about collectivisation on the return bus journey. It was also good to get out of the city and see some everyday life in the town in which the camp had been located.

Our final stop before catching our overnight train was the NUR ALEM Future Energy museum. In 2017, the World Expo came to Astana and its theme was Future Energy (somewhat ironically, in a country where renewables comprised only 3% of its electricity generation mix in 2020), and this museum was its legacy. It was housed in one of the buildings from the Expo, an enormous glass sphere that was genuinely impressive and worth a visit for the building alone.

The eight floors, covering future plans for Astana as well as solar, wind, biomass, space, water and kinetic energy, were just the cherry on top. Oli was like a kid in a sweetshop, and described it as “cooler than he could ever have imagined”. Bless him! To be fair, it was a really good museum. I think my favourite thing (which didn’t really relate to energy, but did relate to coffee, one of my great loves) was the exhibit showing the coffee machine that Lavazza have made for astronauts called the ISSpresso – great name! However, the exhibits did leave us wondering why some of the ideas for energy generation weren’t being more widely adopted, if they really were such silver bullets. Oli found a disclaimer on one of the wind power exhibits that answered some of our questions (last slide)…

We loved Astana and were really glad we visited. But from everything we’d read, Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan in name only and Almaty is the real cultural and historical centre. It was there that we were headed next.

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.

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.