July 16 2024

Almaty – Here South is the New North!

Hello! from this Beautiful City of Kazakhstan.

You must be wondering about the meaning of the heading above, right? Well, the beauty of this city lies in its geographical uniqueness. If you see the compass of the map, you will notice the south side at the top and the north at the bottom. This small detail was enticing because of the mountain’s location. The people here also use the hills to help with locations saying “Go up for 3 blocks” or “Walk down to 2 lanes”.

Almaty originally known as Alma-Ata. This refers to “Mountain of Apples” . Legend also says the first apple was discovered here.

Almaty as a city is very diverse. We find the history going back to the Neanderthal ruins to the modernization of lifestyles. The same variation is also seen in the locals here, we experienced from getting scammed to the people helping us till the destination. This city of Kazakhstan is a beautiful start to see the country. The capital city is Astana, selecting Almaty is off-course due to flight connectivity and budget.

We were greeted by mighty, snow-covered mountains when we exited the airport and waited for our taxi at 4.15 am. The day starts around 4-4.30 am and goes till 8 pm for the sunset during the Summer. We observed there are more hostels than hotels in this city. We spent 5 days in Almaty and the best location was our path. We chose to walk for all the spots in the range of 5km. The lush green forest covers between blocks made us. We used the local bus for 2 spots (Issyk Lake, Big-Almaty Lake).

We chose our hostel in Karmysova St (*link below), reaching very early at 5am. The hostel was welcoming and provided us bunkbeds to rest until our room gets ready by 12 noon. Sunked in our bunk 😛 we got up and fresh by 10 am. We decided to go out for coffee and breakfast. Hitting the footpath made us hit the reality of “Language Barrier”. It was hard to find a breakfast place. We went to the nearest outlet. It was a Georgian Restaurant (*names below). We had Kachapuri, but No Coffee. During this trip, we tried Kazakhi, Korean, Indian, Italian, Georgian cuisines.

After the brunch, we started our journey to explore this city and around. We saw lakes, cathedral, gondola rides, canyons, lived the rural life, museums, parks, zoo etc.

Almaty is also famous for its fountains. There are 120 fountains around the city.

In upcoming blogs we will take you to our experience of Kazakhstan. Stay Tuned!