Almaty to Turkestan
Another marked contrast to our previous travels in the region – we arrived in Almaty from Bishkek, caught a taxi using our Yandex Go app and found our way to an AirBnB apartment in a modern series of tower blocks, negotiating several electronic entry codes and procedures to get in. Slightly depressingly, from start to finish we didn’t actually need to talk to anyone (though of course we did).
Thankfully, things got more interesting as we attempted to leave our bags at the ‘Almaty 2’ railway station in preparation for our overnight train journey to Turkestan. As we arrived, we encountered a derelict space at left-luggage, but discovered a small woman, Dina, skulking in a corner. We enticed her out. “Can we leave our bags here?” we asked. “Niet”, she replied, “zakrit na remont (closed for repairs)”. We asked if there was anywhere else. “Niet – tolka zdyes (no – only here)”. Two other tourists turned up and started asking the same things. Dina then started rambling in Russian and I had to find an English speaker to help (Google translate failed us!). After a few minutes of back and forth, a small glint appeared in Dina’s eye. “Ah”, she said, “Ya znayoo (I know)”. She took me and one of the other tourists to a huge steel door, unlocked it, looked around suspiciously then led us into an unlit room. This was a full of stacking shelves and was clearly a luggage storeroom in the past. She closed the door and put the light on from her phone. She pointed at me – “How many baggage?”, in English. “Three.” “OK, chetyre tysyachi (4,000).” I gave her the cash. She did the same with the other guy, but he got it cheaper for some reason. Deal in the darkness done, we were made to quickly put our bags inside before the door was swiftly shut with much theatrical looking about. Whether Dina was doing us a favour when she shouldn’t, or was mildly scamming us when she shouldn’t, wasn’t quite clear, but at least we’d got rid of our bags. We took her phone number and agreed times to meet to get the luggage back. We tested her number and she sent back a video of a fat child doing a dance and bowing, naturally. We left, hoping we’d not just surrendered all our luggage to a mad woman never to see it again…
We’ve got several days at different times in Almaty, so decided to take it easy on our first day in the boiling hot weather. We ‘toured’ the metro, taking in 3 of the 9 stations on the only line. Unlike its more famous counterparts in Moscow or St Petersburg, the Almaty metro is miniscule, though its pretensions lead in the same direction – lots of sleek mosaic, Soviet styling and dramatic archways. The whole white elephant of a system was only completed with oil money in the 2000s and we wondered why they’d bothered.
Panfilov Park statuary
Better was the Panfilov Park – a large and cooling space dedicated to a general who commanded troops in the Battle for Moscow in the second world war. Helen kept forgetting how to pronounce it, so by some bizarre interpretation and simplification it’s now officially known in the Gleeson household as ‘fanny-fluff’ park, a slightly less dignified sobriquet for a hero of the Soviet Union, you might argue. Still, the brutalist and monumental architecture lauding the USSR’s victory over the Nazi’s displayed all over the park was immensely impressive – this style of ‘in your face’, no holds barred statuary tries to convince you of the might of the victors and the righteousness of the struggle and it’s arguably pretty successful.
Musical Instrument Museum, Almaty
Zenkov Catherdral, Almaty
Zenkov Cathedral, Almaty
In complete contrast, the park also has a lovely little wooden museum dedicated to the musical instruments of Kazakhstan, with many a dombra on display. It’s also the site of the second largest wooden church in the world, the mightily colourful Zenkov Cathedral, a masterpiece in bright yellow with some seriously fabulous stained glass inside.
Back at the train station we tracked down Dina again, who did actually respond to my messages and quickly let us get our bags back with no further drama. We suspected whomever she was hiding her activities from had left by then. We waited for the train to Turkestan to turn up and it arrived on time. Cue totally mad dash to get on the bugger, a situation made more frustrating as all the carriages had confirmed berths. That didn’t stop an army of sharp elbowed middle-aged women (none of whom you’d fancy your chances with in a fight) ensuring they were getting on before Helen & myself. We discovered Kazakh trains have corridors & compartments that are a fair bit smaller than their Indian counterparts. Helen got wedged in the doorway of ours with her backpack on and had to be pulled in before the elbow brigade got into her. We couldn’t maneuver at all and had to drop our gear, spin on our heels, somehow haul the bags onto the top bunks and shove them into a minuscule overhead storage box.
Our fellow travellers then decided to snore very loudly most of the night. There must have been a gap in a window or door somewhere near to us, creating a loud high-pitched rushing sound like a howling Antarctic wind. Even with earplugs it was noisy. Little sleep was achieved….
Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum, Turkestan
The town of Turkestan was not at all what we expected. We’d come to see the famous Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a wonderous 14th century edifice plonked in the middle of a desert. It was built by Timur (Tamerlane) the Great as an act of devotion to the famous Turkic poet / Sufi mystic and sports the biggest dome in Central Asia. The mausouleum itself was as good as we’d expected, better really, even though it had only recently been restored. Unlike a lot of restoration work in Central Asia, this had been done with much sympathy and the results were simply stunning.
Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum, Turkestan
Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum, Turkestan
What we didn’t expect was the state of the surrounding town. Turkestan has undergone somewhat of a transformaton in the last 3 or 4 years, and this once fairly sleepy town is in the midst of reinventing itself as a rather Gulf-style ‘destination’, complete with a massive, sprawling caravanseria as its centre-piece. Alas, the new attraction has more in common with Walt Disney than Tamerlane the Great. Although at least low-rise, the complex is a confusingly massive series of archways, walkways, waterways, shops, hotels and a few restaurants. Signage is woeful and we got lost several times (we were sure someone had deliberately turned all the signs to point in the wrong direction). At one end is a gigantic golden egg-shaped building, nestling in a ring of massive mock twigs. Inside the egg is an ‘experience’ – a Kazakh history themed ‘flying theatre’. Not our usual thing, but we thought we’d do something different. We were led through a series of rooms with unintelligible montages and displays, then to one end of the egg in which a huge concave cinema screen was situated. We had a 10 minute, strapped-in ride on seats that moved around in front of a fly-through of Kazakh scenery from the perspective of an eagle, giving you a rollercoatser-like sensation as you whizz over Astana or through the Charyn Canyon. Quite effective to be honest, with a dosing of wet mist as you pass through the clouds on screen.
Imagine the size of the goose that laid that…
Turkestan’s ‘Karavanserai’ destination
We visited other sights – a cute 12th Century bath-house, the mausoleum museum with its quite wonderful carved entrance doors and the town library with its displays of ancient Turkic scripts. A strange mix of the rich and rightly celebrated traditions of the town in rather sterile environs where care is needed to avoid being run over by the many executive golf-carts menacing the pavements.
A trip out to the 13th Century remains of a once major Silk Road city, the settlement of Sauran, proved an effective antidote. The city is little more than a decaying circular enclosure of messy mud brick fortifications, morphed into sloppy hillocks in the main, but with a circumference of about 2.5 kilometres, a sympathetic reconstruction of the entrance gates and a section of the grounds showing an ingenious qanat system (underground aqueduct), the site was highly atmospheric, if crushingly hot. There’s a rumour that Tolkein got the name for his arch-evil protagonist in The Lord of the Rings from here, though that’s probably unlikely. It didn’t stop Helen slithering around the site doing Golum impressions though…..
Sauran (less the big flaming eye)
Sauran
After an amusing trip to the post office, where the staff found it hilarious that we were sending our souveniers back to Britain, we caught our train to the city of Karaganda. Unlike last time, we could only get top-bunk tickets in plaskart class, so spent 25 hours trapped in a sweltering, coffin-like space that make a Japanese capsule hotel look cavernous. Like Indian 3rd class sleepers, you get carriages with 4-berth bunks facing 2-berth side bunks with a little corridor between them. Here though, the style seems to be minaturised in an attempt to make your journey as cramped and uncomfortable as possible. With noisy neighbours to complement the experience, and in accordance with the general theme of our train travel thus far, little sleep was possible….. We went to bed breathing a pervading air of horse meat from other passenger’s dinners and awoke to hawkers selling huge dried fish and kiddie clothes. Though this is a modern, wealthy country, centuries old practices seem still very much alive.
From Karaganda, a visit to the Kazakh gulag museum in the town of Dolinka followed by a trip to the heavily polluted industrial sprawl of Temirtau awaits – a no doubt uplifting and enchanting experience in equal measure.
Simon (18th July 2025)
Glad you found the post office, now I can expect my Birthday present.. thank you. Love your bunk.. Now you can’t complain about British Rail !! XXX
Yep – we’ve both got back ache still……
Oh my goodness, even more so now I couldn’t do what you do as I’m claustrophobic so those sleeping arrangements sound horrendous. Bravo once again for an informative read.
Yes it was a bit claustrophibic, not to mention hot. The temparature outside the train was around 41 or 42 degrees. The temperature inside was 30 or 31 degrees. Woeful aircon and no open windows. It was like being in wee mini sauna with all your clothes on…
Looking cosy their Simon, and glad the giant golden goose had moved on 😅
Cosy is not the word!! Squashed….. Ha ha