The best-value mountain city in Asia
Almaty might be the easiest introduction to Central Asia there is. Visa-free for most nationalities, cheap Yandex taxis, leafy Soviet-grid streets full of coffee shops, and a 4,000-metre wall of the Tian Shan rising straight off the end of the avenues. You can be eating laghman noodles downtown at noon and standing on a glacier-view ridge by three. A week here, split between the city and a two-to-three-day run east to the canyons and lakes, is one of the great underrated backpacker weeks.
Two days in Almaty itself
Start at the Green Bazaar, where dried-apricot sellers press samples on you and the horse-meat counters are a cultural education, then walk to the candy-coloured wooden Zenkov Cathedral in Panfilov Park. Arasan Baths, the huge Soviet-era bathhouse, costs about 3,000 tenge for a few hours of steam and cold plunges and is the best jet-lag cure we know. For the mountains-lite day, city bus number 12 runs to Medeu, the famous high-altitude ice rink, from where a cable car chain lifts you over the dam to Shymbulak ski resort at 2,200 metres and on toward Talgar Pass at 3,200. Return cable car tickets run about 5,000 to 7,000 tenge; in summer the top station puts you amid scree, marmots and serious snow peaks twenty minutes from a city of two million. Dorm beds in Almaty cost 4,000 to 6,000 tenge and the hostel scene is sociable, which matters for the next part.
Getting to the canyon country
The classic overnight loop east, Charyn Canyon, the Kolsai Lakes and Lake Kaindy, is 250 to 300 kilometres each way, and public transport out there is thin. The standard backpacker solutions are a shared tour from a hostel noticeboard, or gathering four people and hiring a driver for two or three days, roughly 25,000 to 35,000 tenge per person for the multi-day version with a homestay night. It feels like cheating until the asphalt ends and you understand why.
Charyn Canyon
Three hours from Almaty, the steppe suddenly cracks open into the Valley of Castles, a red sandstone canyon of towers and fins that runs down to the milky-green Charyn river. The main walk is an easy 2 to 3 kilometres along the canyon floor to an eco-camp by the water, best in the low gold light of early morning or late afternoon; at midday in summer it is a furnace, so carry water and start early. Entry is a small national park fee of a few thousand tenge.
Saty, Kolsai and the sunken forest
Sleep in Saty village, where family homestays charge about 10,000 to 12,000 tenge with dinner and breakfast, and the dinner is the event: mountains of plov or beshbarmak, homemade jam, endless tea. From Saty, a rough road climbs to the first Kolsai Lake, a deep spruce-ringed alpine lake at 1,800 metres. The strong-legged can hike the 8 kilometre trail up to the second lake, quieter and wilder, in about three hours each way; locals rent horses for around 10,000 tenge if you would rather ride. The last morning belongs to Lake Kaindy, reached by a bone-shaking 4x4 track: a lake created by a 1911 earthquake, from whose turquoise surface the bleached trunks of a drowned spruce forest still rise like masts. It is one of the strangest and most beautiful sights in Central Asia, and at 9 am you may share it with nobody but a park ranger.
When to go and what it costs
June to September is prime, with July and August best for the high lakes; Charyn also works in April, May and October. Snow closes the lake roads in winter. All in, city days cost us 15,000 to 20,000 tenge and the mountain loop about 35,000 per person, which at current rates is backpacking at Southeast Asian prices with Switzerland-grade scenery.
