Breakfast in Town, Snow by Eleven

Almaty

A green, low-rise city of boulevards and cafés with a four-thousand-metre mountain range immediately behind it. The ski lift is forty minutes from the hotel and the whole thing is three hours from Delhi.

Almaty is the surprise of Central Asia. It is green, low-rise and laid out on a grid up a hillside, with a wall of four-thousand-metre mountains standing directly behind it — close enough that you can have breakfast on a boulevard and be at the top of a ski lift by eleven.

It was the Soviet capital of Kazakhstan and then the national one until 1997, and it kept the institutions, the parks and the restaurants when the government left for the steppe. The result is the best-looking and best-eating city in the region, and one that almost no Indian traveller has been to.

Four nights covers the city, the skating rink at Medeu, the slopes at Shymbulak and the cable car up Kok-Tobe — and it is three hours from Delhi, which is less than Bangkok. Five or six nights buy the Charyn Canyon and the alpine lake, which are the two days people come home talking about.

Airport
Almaty International (ALA)
15 km north of the centre, about 30 minutes. Non-stop from Delhi with Air Astana and IndiGo, roughly three hours.
Best months
April to June, September to October
Two shoulders rather than one season. December to March is snow and a different holiday; July and August are hot in the city and fine in the hills.
Temperature
-9 to 31°C
A genuinely continental range. Almaty is the only place we sell where you might need a down jacket in one month and shorts in another.
Nights to allow
4 to 6
Four covers the city, Medeu, Shymbulak and Kok-Tobe. Five or six add Charyn Canyon and Big Almaty Lake.
Money
Cards, almost everywhere
Contactless works in taxis, cafés and shops. Cash for the Green Bazaar and the mountain cafés, and not much of it.
Getting around
Yandex Go and the metro
Rides are cheap and the app is universal. There is one metro line, which is clean, deep and of limited use to a visitor.

On the ground

Getting in, and getting around

Getting in

For Indian passports

Kazakhstan has moved between an e-visa, a visa on arrival and a visa-free arrangement for Indian passport holders more than once in recent years, and has done it at short notice. We confirm the current position in writing when we quote your dates, and again before you pay, rather than printing a rule here that may already have changed.

Your passport needs six months of validity whichever rule is in force. Immigration may ask for a return ticket and a hotel booking — keep both on your phone.

Almaty is roughly three hours non-stop from Delhi with Air Astana and IndiGo, which makes it closer than Bangkok. From every other Indian city you connect through Delhi, and that usually means an overnight in one direction — worth building into the plan rather than discovering it.

Registration with the migration police, which used to catch visitors out, is handled by your hotel for a short tourist stay.

Getting around

Almaty is laid out on a grid on a slope, which is the single most useful thing to know about it: the mountains are always uphill and always south. You cannot get badly lost, because you can see which way is up.

Yandex Go is what everybody uses and rides across the centre cost a few hundred tenge. Flagging an unmarked car is a local habit we would not recommend to a visitor. There is one metro line — clean, deep, Soviet-monumental and of very little use for the places you actually want to go.

The mountain trips are the ones that need a vehicle for the day. Medeu is 15 km up the gorge and Shymbulak another 5 km above it, connected by a cable car; Big Almaty Lake is an hour up a different road; Charyn is three to four hours east. All of them are private-car days in the itineraries we sell, because the alternative is a marshrutka and a long wait.

Decide first

Where to stay, and who each one suits

The central grid 30 minutes from the airport

Choose it if

  • It is your first visit. Panfilov Park, the wooden cathedral, the Green Bazaar and the best restaurants are all inside a twenty-minute walk.
  • You want to eat well. Almaty is the best restaurant city in Central Asia and this is where that is true.
  • You are here four nights and want none of them spent commuting.
  • The hotels the packages use — Kazzhol, Holiday Inn, Best Western — all sit in or beside this area.

Think twice if

  • You want a mountain view from the room. You are in the city; the mountains are the backdrop, not the outlook.
  • You are a light sleeper on a weekend. The centre is lively and stays that way late.

Decide second

When to travel, month by month

taller bar means more rain

Pick a month to read it in full.

Deep winter

January

Rain
Wet spells
How busy
Steady
Daytime
-9 to -1°C

Cold, snowy and the best of the ski season. The city sightseeing becomes a series of short dashes between warm rooms, which is fine if the mountains are why you came.

Decide third

How long, and what shape

The one we sell

4 nights, 5 days

  1. Day 1 Land, transfer, and dinner. Nothing else — the flight is short but it usually lands late.
  2. Day 2 Almaty on foot and by car: Panfilov Park, the cathedral, Republic Square, the Independence Monument.
  3. Day 3 Up the gorge — Medeu, then the cable car to Shymbulak.
  4. Day 4 Kok-Tobe by cable car, and an afternoon for shopping.
  5. Day 5 Out.

The supplier itinerary, and a sensible first visit.

With the canyon

5 nights, 6 days

  1. Day 1 Arrive.
  2. Day 2 The city.
  3. Day 3 Medeu and Shymbulak.
  4. Day 4 Charyn Canyon — a full twelve hours out and back.
  5. Day 5 Kok-Tobe, the Green Bazaar and the last of the shopping.
  6. Day 6 Out.

The extra night is what makes the canyon possible without losing the mountains.

Mountains properly

6 nights, 7 days

  1. Day 1 Arrive.
  2. Day 2 The city.
  3. Day 3 Medeu and Shymbulak.
  4. Day 4 Big Almaty Lake and the observatory road.
  5. Day 5 Charyn Canyon.
  6. Day 6 Kok-Tobe and a free afternoon.
  7. Day 7 Out.

Everything in one trip, with a day that is not scheduled. Best in May, June or September.

What you came for

Popular places to see in Almaty

  1. Shymbulak, by cable car

    A ski resort in a ravine of the Zailiysky Alatau at 2,260 metres, with lifts running to 3,163. The gondola climbs from Medeu and the view back down the gorge is the reason to ride it whether or not there is snow.

    It runs all year — in summer it is a mountain walk rather than a ski day. Take a layer: the top is often fifteen degrees colder than the city.

  2. Medeu skating rink

    The highest-altitude Olympic-size ice rink in the world, built in 1972 at 1,691 metres in the gorge above the city. More than a hundred world speed-skating records have been set on it, on meltwater ice off the mountain.

    The building is a plain Soviet slab from the outside. The setting is the point, and it is on the way to Shymbulak anyway.

  3. Kok-Tobe by cable car

    A wooded hill on the southern edge of the city with a 372-metre television tower on top, reached by a cable car from the centre. Because the hill is already at 1,100 metres, the tower stands higher above sea level than almost any other on earth.

    Go for sunset. There is a small fairground and a Beatles statue up there, which is odder than it sounds and pleasant enough.

  4. Zenkov Cathedral, Panfilov Park

    A Russian Orthodox cathedral of 1907 painted in sherbet colours, and one of the tallest wooden buildings in the world. It came through the 1911 earthquake that flattened most of the city around it.

    Free, working, and quiet on a weekday morning. The park it stands in has the war memorial and the eternal flame.

  5. Big Almaty Lake

    A turquoise reservoir at 2,511 metres in a bowl of peaks, an hour up a mountain road from the city. The colour is glacial rock flour and it changes through the day.

    High enough to leave you short of breath, and cold at any time of year. The road is sometimes closed in deep winter — we check before we sell the day.

  6. Charyn Canyon

    Red sandstone gorges cut into the steppe three to four hours east, the best-known stretch called the Valley of Castles. It looks like Arizona and almost nobody outside Kazakhstan has heard of it.

    A full twelve-hour day out and back. Worth it, but not on a four-night trip that also wants the mountains.

Small print

Worth knowing

Take the altitude seriously

The Shymbulak lifts top out at 3,163 metres and Big Almaty Lake sits at 2,511. That is high enough to leave a fit person breathless and to give anyone with a heart or lung condition a genuinely bad afternoon. Go up slowly, drink water, and tell us in advance if it is a concern — we can reorder the days so the high one is not the first one.

Vegetarians: let us book the restaurants

Kazakh food is meat, and improvising as a vegetarian here is much harder than in Thailand or Sri Lanka. Our itineraries take every meal at Indian restaurants in Almaty for exactly that reason. It looks unadventurous written down and it is the thing travellers thank us for most.

Cyrillic, and twenty minutes on the plane

Street signs, menus and metro stations are in Cyrillic. Learning ten letters on the flight turns an illegible city into a readable one — Р is R, С is S, Н is N, and В is V. English is thinner here than anywhere else we sell, which is why a guide is worth having rather than an extravagance.

Pack for two seasons on the same day

The city can be 28°C while the top of the cable car is 12°C with wind. Every mountain day wants a warm layer in the bag regardless of what the morning looks like, and the sun at that altitude burns far harder than the air temperature suggests.

Ready to book

Almaty packages

All packages
The Almaty skyline seen from Kok-Tobe hill, the Tien Shan range hazy behind it. 4N / 5D

Almaty in Four Nights — Medeu, Shymbulak and the Cable Cars

Almaty 4N

from ₹59,500 per person

Not sure where to start?

Talk to someone who has been. We will tell you honestly whether Almaty suits the trip you have in mind.

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