5 Days in Almaty

Almaty sits on a seismic fault, and the first landmark in its main park is a 56 m wooden church painted like a cake. Andrei Zenkov designed the Ascension Cathedral (also called Zenkov Cathedral) in 1904 and it was finished in 1907, built of Tien Shan spruce. On 3 January 1911 an earthquake brought down more than 770 brick buildings in what was then Verny, and the wooden cathedral came through with minimal damage. The story goes that it was built without a single nail.

Inside is the part to see: a gilded iconostasis painted by N. Khludov, and an interior made in workshops in Moscow and Kyiv. After the revolution the Soviet state turned it into a museum and put the city's first radio transmitters in the bell tower. The church went back to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1995, and a restoration that began in 2017 ended in October 2020. It's a working church, so keep your voice down and cover your shoulders.

The cathedral stands in an 18-hectare park that started in the 1870s on the site of an old Cossack cemetery and was renamed Pushkin Garden in 1899. The name you'll hear today comes from the 28 Panfilov Guardsmen, the Soviet legend of 28 soldiers from an Almaty unit who stopped a column of German tanks near Moscow in 1941. In 2015 the Russian state archive published material suggesting that a wartime newspaper had embellished the details. The city still keeps the name, and so does everyone who plays chess here.

Walk the avenue of granite pedestals bearing the 28 names, then the Memorial of Glory on the east side, a triptych of high reliefs unveiled in May 1975 with an eternal flame. It's a good example of the Soviet monument style you'll meet again on day two. The pedestrian stretch of Zhibek Zholy nearby, nicknamed the Arbat, is an artists' row for a coffee break.

On the eastern side of the park, a wooden building put up in 1908, the same year as the cathedral, once hosted the military leadership of the Turkestan governor-generalship for receptions. Later it was the House of Officers, and since 1980 it has been the museum of national instruments, named after the musician Ykylas.

More than 1,000 instruments are shown, in 60 types of Kazakh instrument, and the oldest date from the 17th century. Signs are in Kazakh, Russian and English. It's small, which is the point: an hour is plenty, and it's one of few buildings that survived from Verny.

The Green Bazaar (Zelyony bazar, or Kök bazar in Kazakh) is where Almaty has traded since 1875, when merchants built a courtyard here for caravans. The 1887 earthquake flattened it, a collective-farm market replaced it in 1927, and in 1975 architect Mark Pavlov gave it the concrete building you walk into now, one of the best Soviet brutalist markets in Central Asia. A new pavilion went up next door in 2017.

Come hungry. The hall sells dried apricots and raisins, spices, smoked horse meat and kazy, the horse sausage, and the bakeries around it sell hot samsa. Taste before you buy, bargain gently, and buy a bag of dried fruit to eat on day five. Come before 2pm, when the stalls are full.

Fifteen minutes' walk north is the Central Mosque, built on the site of the Tatar mosque that stood here from 1890 until it burned in 1987. The foundation of the new one was poured in 1993 and the building was finished in 1999. It holds 7,000 worshippers, with a marble-clad interior and a quiet courtyard.

Visit outside prayer times, take off your shoes and dress modestly.

Finish with the national dish at Sandyq on Abylai Khan Avenue, a restaurant of modern Kazakh cooking. Order beshbarmak, boiled meat on flat noodles with onion broth, whose name means five fingers because it was eaten by hand. Here it's served with smoked horse brisket and kazy, which is the version most visitors find easy.

Say yes to the baursak that comes with tea and try the fermented milk drinks on the menu. Booking helps at weekends.

The Central State Museum of Kazakhstan began in 1931 in the old Ascension Cathedral you saw yesterday, and moved in 1985 to this modernist building on Samal. It's the largest museum in Almaty and one of the largest in Central Asia, and the collections cover Kazakh history from prehistory through the Mongol period to the present.

Go for the archaeology and the nomad-life halls, where the story is told with real objects. A guided tour in English may be possible if you call ahead. Tickets are sold at the entrance. Most listings give 500 KZT for foreigners and an English tour at about 1,000 KZT, and two reviews mention 5,000 KZT, so ask at the desk what each ticket includes.

Ten minutes away is Republic Square, laid out under the Communist Party leader Dinmukhamed Kunayev and opened in 1980 as Brezhnev Square, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Kazakh republic. It was renamed several times, and the 1986 Jeltoqsan student protests against Kunayev's dismissal are remembered here. Since 1992 it has hosted the Nauryz spring festival every 22 March.

Today a tall Independence Monument stands in the middle, crowned by the Golden Man, the Saka warrior found in the Issyk burial mound outside Almaty in 1969. It has become one of the symbols of the country. The square also has the Tagzym memorial to the victims of the unrest of January 2022.

Dostyk Avenue 106g holds a bar that does one thing: kumis, the fermented mare's milk of the steppe. The Yurta complex says it serves more than 20 kinds, plus shubat (fermented camel milk) and saumal, from several regions of Kazakhstan, with a koumiss sommelier to pick for you, and it pairs them with a plate of cured meats.

Be brave but careful. Kumis is fizzy, sour and slightly alcoholic, shubat is thicker and saltier, and both can upset a stomach that's not used to them. Order a small glass of each, and ask for the milder one first.

The Palace of the Republic on Abay Avenue was opened in 1970 as the Lenin Palace of Culture, for the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth, and renamed in 1991. Its tent-shaped roof rests on eight concrete pillars and the walls stop short of it, so the whole thing appears to float. In 1978 the international conference on primary health care met here and adopted the Alma-Ata Declaration.

It's a concert hall, so you see it from outside unless you buy a ticket for a show. The statue of the poet Abai in front of it is a good meeting point. On maps it can appear under a newer name, Independence Palace, which is the same building.

Five minutes' walk up Dostyk Avenue stands the symbol of the Brezhnev era: the Hotel Kazakhstan, finished in 1977, 26 floors and 102 m tall, and designed to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake. It's the third-tallest building in the city. Floodlights were added in 2018, so it also looks good after dark.

The Friendship garden beside it has a camels panel and a fountain, and the cable car's lower station is a few minutes' walk away, which is where this walk ends.

Kok-Tobe, the Blue Hill, rises about 200 m above the city, at 1,100 m. Verny merchants called it that, and until the 1960s locals came here to ski and sled in winter. Today a cable car climbs it from a lower station near the Hotel Kazakhstan, and a small park with restaurants, a ferris wheel and viewing platforms sits at the top, around the 371.5 m Almaty Tower, the TV mast, which isn't open to visitors. The park was rebuilt after the 2004 landslide risk closed the hill, and the cable car was overhauled in 2025.

Go up for the view, not the rides. In November you'll see the whole grid of the city, the haze that sits over it in winter, and the Tian Shan above it, with the first snow turning pink at sunset, which is before 4:30pm. Take the cable car up and decide at the top whether to walk down.

Medeu is a name known to every speed skater. The world's largest high-altitude skating rink, at 1,691 m, opened in 1951 and saw dozens of world records on thin mountain air and hard ice. This year it's a building site: the rink closed in March 2025 for a rebuild, and the city expects work to finish in the fourth quarter of 2027. So you can't skate here, and mobile ice arenas elsewhere in town fill the gap.

The other half of Medeu is the dam. It was built in the late 1960s to stop mudflows, has three levels, holds about 6 million cubic meters and has 842 steps up it. In 1973 it stopped some 4.5 million cubic meters of water and debris coming down the gorge. Walk to the dam if the stairs are open, and look up the valley.

The Medeu-Shymbulak gondola is the way to the resort while the road is closed to private cars, and it has been working since the autumn service ended on 2 November. The adult return ticket (12,000 KZT, 24 EUR, 27 USD) covers all three lifts up to the top of Combi-2 and back, and a one-way ticket costs 7,000 KZT. If the budget allows, the 360-degree glass-floor cabin costs 14,000 KZT (28 EUR, 31 USD).

Buy the return ticket at the Medeu base station, wear boots and a windproof layer, and take gloves, because it's colder up there than the bus stop suggests. In winter 2024/25 it ran from 8:30am to 6pm. Check the timetable, and plan your last descent before you go up.

The resort sits at about 2,200 m in the upper part of the valley, on the territory of the Ile-Alatau National Park. The base is a cluster of hotels, restaurants and rental shops, and in November, before the season starts, it can be a quiet place with a few families and photographers. The resort has 10 lifts and 17-20 km of pistes.

The open chairlift KKD-4 was due to reopen on 10 November after maintenance, and the return ticket costs 6,000 KZT. It has its own safety rules, so read them at the ticket window. Dress for wind, because chairlift rides are slower and colder than the gondola.

The resort lists Tenir as its highest restaurant, at 3,200 m, at the top of the Combi lifts. The Combi-1 and Combi-2 lifts take you up from the base, and the return ticket from the gondola stop is meant to cover them, so confirm at the window. Other places lower down include La Skala at 2,850 m, which sits at the landing zone of the cable car.

The point is the view, not the menu. On a clear day the Zailiysky Alatau ridge lines up in front of you, with the city lost in haze at the bottom. Order a hot soup and tea. If the top lift is closed for wind or weather, the restaurant is likely shut too.

If the season has opened, this is the afternoon to ski. The resort's own site announces the start, which depends on snow. Last year's technical opening in November used only a few slopes, including the beginner runs White Bear and Snake, and the official opening came in December. Rental, a ski school and a kids' club are on site.

If the season hasn't started, ride the lifts for the views and stay for sunset. Either way, leave the mountain with time to spare: the last gondola down leaves in the late afternoon, and the sun sets before 4:30pm. For passes, rental and the season, see the ski box above.

The cheapest way into the Big Almaty Gorge is city bus 28, which runs from near the First President's Park to its last stop at Kokshoky. From there a taxi can take you up to the barrier on the road, and guides put the barrier about 7-8 km short of the lake. A taxi won't go past it.

Pay with an Onay card, or book a taxi in Yandex Go and arrange a pickup time, because there's little traffic at the barrier in the cold months. Start by 8am, so you're back at the barrier before dark.

Since 2020 the road up the gorge has been closed to private vehicles, and the park added a full ban on all transport in August 2025, including bicycles. Only pedestrians can reach the lake. Park staff, border guards and meteorologists can drive it.

Guides give 2.5 to 4 hours uphill from the barrier, mostly on the asphalt road that climbs through spruce forest. In November that can mean ice, snow and a short day. A new 5.3 km trail has been planned for the lake, and works were due to finish in late 2026, but there's no confirmation that it has opened. Carry water, a hat, gloves and a headlamp. Set a turnaround time of 1pm: if you aren't at the lake by then, walk back down.

The lake lies at 2,511 m in the Ile-Alatau National Park, about 1.6 km long and up to 40 m deep, and it formed in an earthquake like most lakes in the Tian Shan. Three peaks rise above it, the highest 4,317 m. It supplies drinking water to the city, so swimming is banned, and its color changes with the season, from light green to turquoise.

In November the water may be dark and part-frozen, but the snow on the peaks makes up for it. Stay half an hour, take the pictures and start down. The dome of the Tian Shan Astronomical Observatory sits above the lake.

There are very few facilities at the lake, so eat what you carry. A few things from the Green Bazaar travel well: baursak, the fried dough puffs, dried apricots and nuts, a block of hard cheese, and flatbread.

Pack a thermos of tea. Take your trash down with you, because the lake is a drinking-water source.

Back in the city, treat yourself to the Abai Kazakh State Opera and Ballet Theatre, which has been the center of the city's stage scene since 1934. The program mixes classical ballet and opera with Kazakh works, and a seat is usually a small part of what the same show costs in Europe.

Look at the program the day before and take a taxi home. If the lake is out because of snow, the Kasteyev State Museum of Arts, the largest art museum in Kazakhstan, is the daytime alternative. Check its opening days before you go.

The main road runs east through Shelek, Baiseit and Kokpek, then turns onto a signposted road of 9 km to the canyon car park, inside Charyn National Park. The canyon sits about 200 km from Almaty, close to the Chinese border. After the suburbs the flat steppe opens up, with the Tian Shan on the south side of the road.

Take a thermos, snacks and a charged phone. Bring your passport: this is a border region, and checkpoints are possible. The Charyn park says its routes are open all year, and an ID card is enough for a ticket.

The Charyn River has cut a canyon about 80 km long through red sandstone, up to 150-300 m deep in places, and the best-known stretch is the Valley of Castles, where wind and water have carved the rock into towers, walls and arches. The canyon is often compared to the Grand Canyon. It is much smaller, and that's fine: it's more walkable and less crowded.

There are five canyons in all, including Temirlik, Yellow, Red and Bestamak. Start at the viewpoints, then walk. Vehicles have been restricted inside since 2019, so you walk from the car park. Light is best late in the morning, when the rock turns orange.

From the car park a path leads down into the canyon, and another of about 1 km goes to a better viewpoint. The track to the river is steep in places, and in November it can be icy in the shade, so wear boots with a grip.

At the bottom the canyon opens out by the green river, and the walls rise above you on both sides. Turn around when your energy is half gone, because the climb back is longer than the way down. About 20 km from the canyon is a relic ash grove that is part of the park, a forest of Sogdian ash from the Ice Age, which is worth asking the rangers about.

The Eco-Park Charyn Canyon tourist complex by the park gate has cafes and, in warmer months, yurts. Opening hours in November are unknown, so bring a back-up lunch: the dried fruit and baursak from the bazaar.

Order tea and a hot meal if it's open, then start back by 3pm.