Kazakhstan in Pictures
↑ The Ascension or Zenkov Cathedral, supposedly world’s second largest wooden Russian Orthodox cathedral, Almaty
Kazakhstan was my last country on the nearly three-month central Asia silk road tour. By the time I got here, I was pretty exhausted from continuous travel, so I didn’t see as much as I wanted to.
Our trip started from the land border crossing near Tashkent which was a harrowing experience (very crowded, need to be aggressive, and fight off swarms of taxi drivers and money exchange touts). We arrived at Shymkent and enjoyed a relaxing evening around its extensive park system. Unfortunately our trip to Turkestan had to be cancelled the next day because we missed changing the timezone. Rookie mistake!
Almaty is a very large city, and very cosmopolitan too. There were a large number of restaurants, shopping malls, cafes, and tons of recreational activities like museums, parks, etc. The city is surrounded by mountains to the south (there’s lots of pollution), but we were too exhausted to venture out.
I’m sure I’ll visit Kazakhstan once again, probably on a trip that includes Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.
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