Almaty Kazachstan

After a night in the Ak Saray hotel in Tashkent and an excellent breakfast, we head off to the airport. 1st Stop Almaty Kazakhstan. Had to again explain to the reception that the credit card machine does not work unless you switch it on 😉. Check-in takes a while as we have to fill out Covid declarations for all of us for India. (We fly to India with a 1 night stopover in Almaty Kazakhstan). I make that 60 pages we have filled out to be able to enter India (the online forms do not allow simple copy/paste or copying data from one passenger to another), and I expect some more when we actually arrive. Questions included the occupation of my (dead) father and occupation of my (dead) mother. Notes stated the question had to be answered even if they were dead. I had to choose a religion from a list of six or seven choices. None was not an option, and several religions seemed to be missing, and so on….
Kazakhstan has for our family only existed as the caricature Borat (Sasha Baron Cohen). That means a picture of a largely underdeveloped agricultural country with male dominated social standards. His films show Kazakhstan as small villages with small basic houses and horse and cart transport. Well, although we love Borat, because his actual purpose is to tease out bias and racism in the US and Europe, I have to say a side effect is a totally unfair characterisation of Kazakhstan and its people. I suppose there is some basis for the caricatures, but what we see in the capital Almaty could hardly be more different. It’s a well-developed city, with broad tree lined streets and a magnificent backdrop of the Himalayas. The city sits at the northern end of a flat plain, making the steep rise of the mountains all the more dramatic. What is striking is just how green the city is. The streets in typical Soviet style are wide (4 lanes or more) and so despite a large number of cars there is little congestion, but unlike Moscow, Tashkent or other cities (nearly) all streets are tree lined, giving the city a pleasant feel.
We are only in transit for less than a day, so we have the late afternoon in Almaty to explore a little bit and have some food. We take a Taxi the 20 minutes into the city for $4, and we explore the pedestrian area, the green market, some older landmarks and a revolution and war memorial, before we go to eat.
The pedestrian area is the 1st one we have seen in 7 weeks, (though maybe we missed some in Israel), and it gives the centre a pleasant, unstressed feel, as we don’t have to dodge cars, rickshaws and motor bikes, and of course it reduces noise and pollution. It was all obvious and normal to us Europeans, but somehow striking after we missed it for two months.
The green market really is a big market, with a huge floor space and two levels. It would be more aptly named green and red market, as the 2nd floor is mainly a meat market. The smell is for our European noses that are used to highly sanitised environments rather unpleasant, but the kids get to see I think for the 1st time all the parts of sheep, cattle and horses on 1000m2 of market floor. Much more pleasant is the 1st floor, which is a fruit and vegetable market. As we leave the Nora asks for strawberries, so I give her 1000 KST ($2), and say she should see how much she gets. Result 1.5 kg 😊. So the kids stuff their faces on fresh, naturally ripened strawberries.
We stroll through a park with the revolution and war memorial, which is in classic soviet style. It is an almost comical mix of massive cartoons like tough soldiers and a much more tasteful eternal flame, which might be a remembrance of the fallen soldiers.
Around 7:30pm we go for food, we don’t know what the restaurants offer, nothing in English, as there are so few tourists, but luckily the one we choose has some pictures and Flo gets google translate working on her phone. The result is a delicious meal of dumplings, grilled vegetables, kebab on a plate, and a very special dark toasted garlic bread. All washed down with a rather good local lager. Cost for all 6 of us around $40. The restaurant arranges a taxi back for the unbelievably low price of $2.Leia mais