Our first stop through the “5 Stans” in Central Asia last summer was Almaty. When planning the trip, I wasn’t honestly super sure what to expect – my image of the Kazakhstan was one of high desert steppes. I didn’t necessarily envision a bustling city of a few million people by the mountains, one that we liked somewhat more than we expected.

While ethnic Kazakhs are 70% of the country’s population, it also is a melting pot from former Soviet republics, including 15% ethnic Russians, and many Uzbeks and Ukrainians. Because of all this, Russian is very widely understood, with many signs in both Kazakh and Russian. We saw a lot of interesting Soviet-era architecture. If the current (2025) Ukraine conflict had not been going on, we would have been interested in seeing Russia, but Almaty gave us a bit of a feel, albeit admittedly different (we’ve been to both Moscow and Kyiv, but a very long time ago now).

Outline and Logistics

We started the itinerary in Almaty partly because it has more flights from outside the region (Tashkent in Uzbekistan is another such city in Central Asia). Even though Astana is now Kazakhstan’s capital, Almaty as the former capital has more to see. Our plane arrived there at 2am after 18+ hours of flying from Boston via Doha. Our schedule was:

• Day 1: Exploring the city center on our own, knowing we’d be dealing with jet lag.
  • We saw Panfilov Square, Ascension Cathedral, the Green Bazaar, walked through various areas towards the Megamall and had lunch.
  • Taxi to the Kok Tobe cable car, took it to the top, rode the metro, small museum, late afternoon jet lag nap. Traditional Kazakh dinner.
• Day 2: we were met by a local guide, who helped us better explore, particularly outside the center.
  • Started at a mountain resort area a short drive away. Central State Museum of Kazakhstan. Late lunch.
  • Some landmarks (e.g. Republic Square). Falcon Show. Panfilov Square and the bazaar, where we saw some things we’d missed.

Almaty actually felt fairly accessible for a visitor – we would have seem the basics there quite fine independently. But our guide was a lot of fun and helped us see some things we that we would not have otherwise seen.

Some other logistic points:

• Local Transit: The subway is not so useful, and Uber doesn’t work in Almaty. Yandex Go is the most common ride app, but we couldn’t get it to set up with our US number. We did use the “inDrive” ride app a few times.
• Language: Install Google Translate. It’s really helpful to learn some basic Russian travel phrases and to be able to “read” Cyrillic signs. Knowing how to pronounce the Cyrillic alphabet is more helpful than you might think.
• On your phone: Download offline Google Maps for Almaty, consider putting a small power bank in your day bag, and either sign up for mobile data with your home carrier or get a local e-sim (e.g. via Ubigi or similar).

Day 1, City Center

After we woke up and had breakfast, we decided to start wandering from our city center hotel towards Panfilov Square. One thing that immediately came to mind on wandering around the center is the Russian influence on the surrounding. I had been to Russia a several times years ago. The Soviet/Russian influence on architecture of large buildings and monuments was pretty obvious. But beyond that, there were subtle Russian similarities on random things like the little shops, the fences, the plants, the park paths…

In any case, we walked through some parks and squares there on the way to Panfilov Park, until we made our way to the Ascension Cathedral in the middle of the Panfilov Park. Even though Islam is the most common religion in Kazakhstan, there is a decent sized Christian minority. We went into this Ascension Orthodox cathedral, which was quite worth visiting.

The park had various typical park activities in the center – snacks and activities for kids. On the east side of Panfilov Park were some military memorials and monuments, some in the vintage Socialist Realism style.

From there, we wandered towards the Green Bazaar, a huge shopping complex. It had the usual meat and vegetables, but it also had clothing, housewares, and seemed to go on and on.

James decided that he wanted to try McDonalds in Kazakhstan, as it’s the only country in Central Asia with McDonalds. However, that wasn’t quite true anymore – apparently, McDonalds left Kazakhstan in 2022 (along with Russia). All the restaurants are still there, with the same menu, but renamed to “I’m” (as in “I’m loving it”).

We decided to walk a little while through the city center area from the park to the “I’m” in a large mall. We were not taking so many photos then. Below is a picture of our “I’m” meal and a picture from the Green Bazaar:

Kok Tobe Park Area

After lunch, we used the inDrive ride app to get a 10 minute ride to the Kok Tobe cable car area on the other side of town.

We took a gondola up to a large park area on a hill on the east of the city, with cafes, slightly creaky rides, and other weekend type activities.

The Kok Tobe park area was a nice place to spend some time. As it was a hot day, we got some drinks to cool off and stay hydrated. We saw some panoramic views of the city, as well as of the surrounding mountains that were further away.

Given Kazakhstan’s reputation of being full of desert, I was expecting Almaty to be drier than it was. What I learned was that while the region is full of deserts, a lot of the actual cities are nearer to the mountains, which provide water for irrigation.

Capping off Day 1

After riding the gondola down, we saw the adjacent metro stop, and decided to ride the subway 2 stops back to the Panfilov area. We learned that their metro is relatively small and only opened in 2011, partly because of how prone the area is to earthquakes. We briefly visited a small museum (of music instruments), but with it getting later in the afternoon, we felt our jet lag kicking in, and used our ride share app to go back to our hotel for a nap.

Waking up from the nap, we realized that it was almost dinner time, so we dragged ourselves to a traditional Kazakh restaurant (“Navat” is apparently a local chain) near our hotel. We had our first plate of “Plov,” which is a regional slow-cooked rice dish with meat. We picked up some snacks on the way back and turned in for the evening.

Day 2:

The next morning, after a nice breakfast in the hotel, we met our local guide from the agency in the lobby at 9am. Our guide asked us what we saw the previous day, and told us that she’d change things up to avoid duplication.

Shymbulak Mountain Area

Our first stop was in the Shymbulak mountain resort area, roughly a 25 km drive outside of Almaty. The area was built up by the Soviets, and in the 1980’s became the Olympic ski training area for the USSR, partly due its long ski season and above average sunshine.

We took 3 different gondolas up to the highest area, which went up for quite a while. The area reminded me a bit of Switzerland, it was an interesting double-take, compared to my expectations for Kazakhstan. As it was June, most people where there to admire the mountains and take some souvenir photos. As we looked down from the gondolas, plenty of folks were hiking. When we left at the end, the gondola line up had grown fairly long. That was a fun stop!

Central State Museum of Kazakhstan

From there, we went to the Central State Museum of Kazakhstan. We were met with one of the museum’s guides, who gave us a tour in English. We got an interesting overview of the Kazakh people, and saw one of our first of many traditional yurts, where they had lived as nomads.

After the museum, we had a late lunch and had traditional Kazakh food. We liked the main food, but our guide had us try traditional fermented horse milk (which was unpleasant) and horse sausage (only James tried that).

Republic Square Monuments

From the restaurant, we were driven to the Republic Square, and learned some about the square during Soviet times, as well as Kazakhstan’s independence in the 90’s.

Falcon Show

When I saw the falcon show on our suggested itinerary, I was wondering if it would be somewhat of a tourist trap. While the entire audience was tourists, it was still a lot of fun.

Traditionally, birds like falcons were used by the nomadic Kazakh people to hunt small animals. With their keen eyesight and sense of smell, the birds were quite adept and swooping down and carrying away small animals. The large ones were quite scary, though trained well. One demonstration that was hard to believe was of a falcon swallowing a full-sized bone.

Winding down

After that, we were driven to Panfilov Square in the center. We’d already seen some of the sites there the previous day, but for completeness, our guide gave some better background context on a few of the sites there, which was nice. At James’ request, we went into a large chocolate store which was just outside the bazaar. We then made our way back to the hotel, saying goodbye to our guide. Having had a large lunch, we just ask small snacks for dinner.

In any case, we really liked our introduction to Central Asia in Almaty!

More From Our Blog

Keep reading our travel blog for more adventures in Central Asia: