About Kazakhstan

While I continue to prepare for the first trip to Kazakhstan, I want to share with you some basic information about the country. Kazakhstan is a very culture-rich and exciting part of the world, one which is unknown to most travellers. I feel very fortunate and excited to explore this culture which will be new to me in some ways, familiar in others. I am so looking forward to recovering my Russian language skills which were once fluent and are now buried back in the archives of my head. I am very excited to share Kazakhstan with my parents, as each of them will travel with me on one of the trips. I also look forward to helping you learn a bit of what we learn while we are away, so that you too can tell "Lily" about her birth country and heritage. It takes a village, you know...

From Lonely Planet:

The world’s ninth biggest country is one of its last great travel unknowns. Though the outside world is gradually becoming aware of Kazakhstan, largely thanks to its oil and the antics of that pseudo-Kazakh Borat Sagdiyev, few have really explored this country of vastly varied attractions.

Easily the most economically advanced of the ‘stans’, post-Soviet Kazakhstan is reinventing itself as a uniquely prosperous and modern Eurasian nation. The leafy commercial and social hub, Almaty, has an almost European feel with its quality hotels, slick boutiques, chic cafés and streets thick with BMWs and Mercedes. Astana, in the north, is being transformed at quickfire speed into a 21st-century capital with a unique mix of Islamic, Western, Soviet and wacky futuristic architecture. President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since Soviet times, doesn’t encourage political opposition but is managing to forge a peaceful, multiethnic nation – which makes him on the whole pretty popular.

Around the fringes of the great steppes where the once nomadic Kazakh people – still famed for their horse skills and unique equestrian sports – used to roam, Kazakhstan presents an array of surprising adventures. You can trek on foot or horse in the spectacular Tian Shan or Altay Mountains, watch flamingos on steppe lakes or discover mysterious underground mosques near the Caspian Sea. Community ecotourism programmes in some of the most beautiful areas enable travellers to stay with village families at affordable cost.

With travellers still rare here, a foreign guest is usually treated not as just another tourist but with real hospitality, and locals will often go out of their way to help you. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Climate & when to go

Like the rest of Central Asia, Kazakhstan has hot summers and very cold winters. During the hottest months, July and August, average daily maximums reach the high 20°Cs in Almaty and Astana. During the tourist low-season months of November to March, frosty mornings are typical in Almaty and temperatures there typically remain below freezing for much of December, January and February. The ground is snow-covered for an average 111 days a year. In sub-Siberian Astana there’s frost from October to April, with temperatures lurking between -10°C and -20°C from December to February.

Annual precipitation ranges from less than 100mm a year in the deserts to 1500mm in the Altay Mountains. You can travel any time of year with the right preparation and logistics, but the most comfortable months are May to September. July, August and September are best for trekking in the southeastern and eastern mountains.

Excerpts from this blog http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/danielgallegos/yurta2006/1160511000/tpod.html

The town, Semey or Semipalatinsk is named after a fort that was built in 1718 around seven walls or in Russian, Semipalatinsk. The seven walls were an abandoned Buddhist Monastery!

Anyhow, we got a small chance to check out the town. Zhanara and I took a walk and saw some beautiful architecture. A lot of old Tartar merchant buildings. There are some beautiful Mosques and Churches. The Mosques are quite unique actually. They were all built out of wood and are quite ornate and built in a Russian colonial style. This town is the first town I've come to here in Kazakhstan that seems more European to me. Many of the houses are made out of wood and brick. The buildings are smaller in scale yet, some can be several stories high. You can sense that there was an incredible amount of wealth here during the 19th century. Anyhow, the city was founded by the Kazakh Middle Horde(one of the last great nomadic empires) and it has a lot of strong intellectual background. Semey is the birthplace to an important Kazakh poet Abay Kunabaev. and This place was home to many people who lived at the fringe of Tsarist and Soviet society. A town that seemed so far out of St. Petersburg and Moscow's imagination, that it was often a place to send people into exile. It was a home to many artists, writers and musicians because of this. Even Fyodor Doestoevsky was sent here in 1857.

Semey hasn't quite experienced the same prosperity as other parts of Kazakhstan. It doesn't have the oil or the political strength of other parts of Kazakhstan. It was said that there is a rift between the politicians of Semey and Astana for being critical of President Nazarbayev. Some say they are being punished for this.

One of the things we did notice here, is how good the food is. You could get Brioche and more European food here than Almaty. The tea is strong and dark with milk that makes you forget that it's not coffee. We kept on eating in the hotel restaurant because it was so good. The restaurant makes everything from scratch. The bread and pemeny (dumplings with meat), are made by hand. The service is good too.


See Mom? We will be able to eat and like it! I know, I know, no horse sausages!!!

So there you have it! If you are eager to learn more about Kazakhstan, I encourage you to google it and see what you learn! There is so much about this country, its culture and history that I uncover daily. For this blog entry, I took some of the more basic excerpts from information I have found. Hope you enjoyed it!