What we would skip in Kazakhstan

Very little in Kazakhstan is bad. What there is, in quantity, is things that cost more hours than they return, and in the ninth largest country on earth hours are the only currency that matters. Almost everything on this list is here because of the travel rather than the destination.

Where we would skip something, we say what to do with the day instead. If you disagree, tell us and we will build it anyway.

Charyn and Kolsai as a single day trip from Almaty

The most common mistake in Kazakhstan itineraries and the one we correct most often.

Every operator in Almaty sells it, and it is twelve to fourteen hours in a vehicle. You reach Charyn around midday, when the sun is overhead and the red sandstone goes flat and grey, walk the Valley of Castles in ninety minutes, drive two more hours to the first Kolsai lake, arrive at three, have an hour, and drive five hours back in the dark. Kaindy, the best thing in the area, does not fit at all.

Instead: leave Almaty after lunch, walk Charyn in the late afternoon light, and sleep at Saty, the village below the lakes. One night in a simple guesthouse at thirty to fifty-five dollars a room buys you Kaindy at eight in the morning when the water is still, and the walk to the second Kolsai lake with a whole day in front of you. We will not build the day-trip version. The reasoning is in walking the Kolsai lakes and Kaindy.

Driving Almaty to Astana

Roughly 750 miles (1,200 km) of flat steppe. A full day, not scenic in a way that survives hour six, and almost nobody who does it says afterwards that they are glad they did.

Instead: fly, 1 hour 50 minutes and often under a hundred dollars, or take the overnight Talgo train, which is comfortable, punctual, saves a hotel night, and is the one land alternative here we genuinely recommend. Using internal flights in Kazakhstan is not cutting corners. It is the design.

Astana, if you came for landscape

Not because it is bad. Because travellers split on it more sharply than on anything else we sell.

Astana became the capital in 1997 and has been built almost entirely since: Bayterek tower, the Khan Shatyr tent, Norman Foster’s Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, and a ceremonial axis of ministries designed to be photographed. Some travellers find it a fascinating piece of deliberate nation-building. Others find the scale inhuman and the streets empty and spend two days wishing they were in the mountains. We ask rather than guess. But under time pressure on a fourteen-day trip we would take Astana out, because those two days plus two flights are what makes the Caspian desert possible, as argued in the best two-week route through Kazakhstan.

Instead: Altyn Emel, with the Singing Dune and the coloured Aktau hills, or two more nights in the Tian Shan.

Borovoe, as a destination

Lakes, pine forest and granite outcrops three hours north of Astana. It is a domestic holiday area with sanatoria, pedalos and a busy shoreline in summer, and the comparison to Switzerland made locally does it no favours.

Instead: a night if you are in Astana anyway and want to see how Kazakhs holiday, which is genuinely interesting. Never a flight of its own.

The Karavansaray complex at Turkistan

Turkistan itself is not on this list. The mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a fourteenth-century Timurid building left unfinished at Timur’s death, is the finest single building in Kazakhstan and a legitimate reason to fly to Shymkent.

Next to it there is now a large themed visitor complex with a hotel, a canal, a flying theatre and an evening show. It is recent, commercial, and has nothing to do with the reason you came.

Instead: an hour at the mausoleum early, before the pilgrim coaches, an hour in the small archaeological museum, and the drive out to Otrar, the ruined Silk Road city Timur died on his way to, which has almost nobody in it.

The Aral Sea, on a first visit

Reachable, at Aralsk, and we build it for people who specifically want it.

Understand what it is: a very long journey across flat ground for a landscape that is largely an absence. Ship hulls on dry seabed, a shoreline that has moved tens of miles, a partial recovery in the north behind the Kokaral dam. As an environmental pilgrimage it is powerful. As a sight on a first trip it costs three days and returns an idea.

Instead: Mangystau. Also desert, also remote, and landscape rather than the memory of one.

Mangystau in July and August

The desert on the Caspian is the most remarkable landscape in the country and we would send you there before anywhere else. In midsummer we will not. No shade, no water, no mobile coverage across much of it, five to six hours a day in a 4×4 on rough track, and a temperature that makes the whole thing an endurance exercise by the second afternoon.

Instead: late April to May, or September. If your dates are fixed in July we build the mountains and say so, rather than selling you a desert you will not enjoy. The calendar is in Kazakhstan month by month.

Staged nomad shows and ethno-villages near Almaty

There are set-ups within an hour of the city where yurts are erected for coach groups, an eagle is held up for photographs, someone plays a dombra and lunch is served at one. They are harmless and they are a stage set.

The eagle hunting tradition is real and still practised in the east and the Almaty region, and the difference between a hunter you visit at home in winter and a bird on a gloved arm in a car park is the difference between a memory and a photograph.

Instead: a guesthouse dinner at Saty with the family who cooked it, an hour on a horse with a handler who actually herds, or, if eagles matter to you, a properly arranged visit in the right season.

Kok Tobe, as a morning

The hill above Almaty with a cable car, a TV tower, a small fairground and a Beatles statue. The attractions at the top are ordinary.

Instead: go up at five for the light on the mountains, stay forty minutes, come down.

Self-drive

Possible on the main corridors and we usually advise against it. Distances are long, fuel stations and mobile coverage are far apart outside the corridors, signage is in Kazakh and Russian, and the tracks to Kaindy, to the upper Kolsai lakes and throughout Mangystau need a 4×4 and someone who has driven them.

Instead: a car and driver, seventy to a hundred and eighty dollars a day depending on the vehicle and the ground, included in our costings, and one of the reasons Kazakhstan is cheaper than people expect. The breakdown is in what a trip to Kazakhstan costs.

Baikonur

Not a matter of opinion. The cosmodrome is a restricted area leased to Russia, access requires a permit process with months of lead time and no guarantee of approval, and it does not belong in a normal itinerary. We mention it only because we are asked regularly.

Trying to cover five regions in fourteen days

The structural mistake behind most of the others. Almaty, Kolsai, Astana, Turkistan, Borovoe and Mangystau in a fortnight is nine flights, four hotel changes and a holiday defined by departure boards. Every region added costs a flight, two airport transfers, a new ground team and most of a day.

Instead: two regions properly in ten days, three at a push in fourteen. Anyone offering you five is selling you airports. The lengths are compared in how many days do you need in Kazakhstan.

A quick verdict table

What we never skip

For balance, the things that stay in every route we build.

Three nights in Almaty rather than two. The Green Bazaar first thing. A night at Saty, always. Kaindy at eight in the morning. Charyn in the last two hours of daylight. The mausoleum at Turkistan. Big Almaty Lake on a clear day. A guesthouse dinner where the family eats with you. Dinner booked in Almaty rather than eaten in a hotel. And the Caspian desert, in the right month, which is the one place here we would go back for.

Related

• Kazakhstan: the complete guide to planning your trip
• How many days do you need in Kazakhstan?
• The best two-week route through Kazakhstan
• What a trip to Kazakhstan really costs
• All our Kazakhstan trips

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