Kazakhstan with children in 10 days
The obstacle to family travel in Kazakhstan is not safety, food, hygiene or attitude. Kazakh families are large, children go everywhere, and nobody will mind yours in a restaurant at ten at night. The obstacle is distance, and it is a real one: this is the ninth largest country on earth and the stan
- Duration
- 10 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 4
- Best months
- Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep
- From
- $2,000 per person
So this route solves for that first. It uses one internal flight, keeps the longest single drive to about three and a half hours split with stops, stays two nights in every base except one, and puts something physical in every day: a cable car, a chairlift, a canyon walk, a lake you can swim in, a sand dune that makes a noise, and a skating rink at 5,500 feet (1,690 m).
Who it suits: families with children roughly six to fifteen. Longest drive about three and a half hours, broken. One walk of two hours and several shorter ones.
Your specialist: a named Kazakhstan specialist here, with our long-standing Almaty partner running the ground.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Almaty. Flights land in the small hours or very early morning, which is the hardest single fact about family travel here and which we tell you before you book. The room is held from the previous night so you go straight to bed. Nothing scheduled. A gentle evening in Panfilov Park and dinner nearby.
Day 2: Almaty, gently. A late start. The Green Bazaar in the morning, where the stallholders will hand your children dried apricots, kurt and horse sausage to taste and be delighted if they try it. Zenkov’s wooden cathedral in the park, which is bright pink and built without nails. Lunch, then the Kok-Tobe cable car up the hill in the afternoon, which has a small funfair, a view over the city and the mountains behind it. Free evening.
Day 3: Medeu and Shymbulak. Twenty-five minutes up the gorge to the Medeu skating rink, an Olympic-size outdoor rink at about 5,500 feet (1,690 m), where skates are hired at the door and it is open much of the year. Then the cable car in two stages to Shymbulak at about 7,400 feet (2,260 m) and the chairlift above it. In summer there is walking on the ridge, a bike park and an alpine slide; in winter this is a functioning ski resort. Back down mid-afternoon.
Day 4: Big Almaty Lake, then east. An hour up a gorge road to a turquoise reservoir at about 8,200 feet (2,500 m) in a bowl of peaks, with a short walk along the shore and the observatory above it. Note that swimming is not permitted here because it supplies the city, and children need to know that in advance. Lunch back in town, then three and a half hours east to Charyn, arriving for the late afternoon. The Valley of Castles walk is about ninety minutes down and back on a wide path, and children generally run it. Two hours on to Saty village. Guesthouse night.
Day 5: Kaindy and Kolsai. Kaindy lake in the morning, up a rough track in a 4×4 that bounces, which is half the fun, to a lake with the bare trunks of a drowned spruce forest standing straight out of the water, drowned by a landslide in 1911. Then the first Kolsai lake, where there are rowing boats and horses, and a shore walk of an hour that is flat and easy. Older children can do the climb to the second lake, four hours return, and we will provide a second guide so the party can split. Second night at Saty.
Day 6: Back to Almaty. Five hours west, broken with a long lunch stop and a bazaar. Afternoon at the hotel pool. Almaty for two nights.
Day 7: Fly to Shymkent, or Altyn Emel by road. Two options and we will help you choose. The flight south takes an hour and twenty minutes and puts you within reach of Turkistan and the Sayram-Ugam park. The road option is Altyn Emel national park, four hours from Almaty, which is the better one for children and which this route assumes: the Singing Dune, a sand ridge about 500 feet (150 m) high that hums audibly when the sand slides, and it is the single most memorable thing on the trip for anyone under sixteen. Simple park accommodation. Two nights.
Day 8: Altyn Emel. The Aktau hills in the morning, striped white, red and green like a layer cake, reached by 4×4 across the flats. Ancient rock carvings at Tamgaly Tas by the Ili river in the afternoon, and the Besshatyr Saka burial mounds. There are gazelles and kulan, the wild ass, in the park and you may or may not see them, which we say in advance so that nobody is promised a safari.
Day 9: Back to Almaty. Four hours west. Afternoon at the Arasan baths, which children over about eight enjoy, or the aquapark, or simply the hotel pool. A last good dinner.
Day 10: Departure. A free morning, a day room held because most flights leave at night, and the transfer.
What is included
Nine nights of accommodation with breakfast in rooms that genuinely fit a family, a private car or minibus with an English-speaking driver on every day of travel, 4×4 vehicles on the Kaindy, Big Almaty Lake and Altyn Emel tracks, licensed English-speaking guides on five days chosen for being good with children, the Kok-Tobe, Medeu and Shymbulak lifts, skate hire, all park permits and entries, a second guide on the Kolsai climb if the party splits, a day-by-day document with honest drive times, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Almaty partner team for the whole trip.
What we would change, and when
- Children under six? Cut Altyn Emel and Saty. Stay in Almaty and its mountains for a week, with two nights at Charyn instead. It is a much gentler trip and the mountains carry it.
- Teenagers who walk? Add the Kolsai passes properly with a mountain guide and two nights higher up. That is closer to our trekking route.
- Want Astana? We will add it and we will ask first whether your children will enjoy two days of monumental architecture, because in our experience most under-twelves do not.
- Travelling in winter? Shymbulak is a real ski resort with modern lifts, low prices and short queues, and a family ski week out of Almaty is a genuinely good and cheap trip. It is a different itinerary and we will write it.
Honest notes
The arrival is genuinely hard. Long-haul flights into Almaty land between two and six in the morning almost without exception. We hold the room from the night before and build nothing into day one. It costs an extra night and it is worth it.
The distances are the constraint and we have solved for them by covering less country. A ten-day family route here sees the southeast properly and not much else. Any itinerary that promises you Almaty, Astana, Turkistan and Mangystau with children is promising you airports.
Swimming is limited. Big Almaty Lake is a drinking water reservoir and swimming is prohibited. Kolsai is very cold. The realistic swimming on this trip is the hotel pool, and we choose Almaty hotels accordingly.
Car seats are not standard here. We specify vehicles with working rear belts and we can supply seats, and we would rather you asked at the enquiry stage than found out on day one.
Saty and Altyn Emel are simple. Clean, warm, welcoming, sometimes a shared bathroom, and a set dinner. There is no upgrade to buy in either place.
Built by your named Kazakhstan specialist.
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