When most Westerners hear Kazakhstan, they think Borat (very nice, I like—hopefully you read that in a Borat voice). Borat was filmed in Romania rather than Kazakhstan and Sasha Baron Cohen’s character speaks Hebrew, not Kazakh. Safe to say the portrayal of Kazakhstan in the movie is very different than real life. All Borat aside, after a 23 hour flight with two layovers on three different airlines, I finally arrived in Almaty at 6:40 a.m.
Walking towards customs, I quickly noticed that the officers were wearing Kazakh army uniforms. After filling out my customs form, and pretending I couldn’t understand the man when he asked to borrow my pen (I only brought one pen), I stood in the short queue waiting my turn. Even though there was only four people in front of me, this whole process took roughly 40 minutes.
Taxi, Taxi, Taxi
After going through customs and cleaning myself up a bit, I headed to arrivals and waited for my friend. Of course this is also where all the cab drivers stand, hoping to snare a passenger. Within the first thirty seconds of me standing there, a cab driver approached me and asked if I needed a taxi. I told him no and that I was waiting for someone. Even after my rejection, he decided to stand with me for the next hour while I waited. As a stranger gave me a dirty look only moments before, I didn’t really mind.
The cab driver communicated with me using Google Translate. He asked me why I was in Kazakhstan and mentioned most Kazakh people only travel within their own country and could not fathom what I was doing there. It was in that moment I realized the Stans really are still somewhat off of the western tourist path.
A whole plethora of potential passengers showed up before my friend arrived, but the cab driver continued to stand with me. Finally when my friend arrived, I was hoping we would be able to shake this guy and take an Uber, but no such luck. I also sort of felt bad after he waited with me all that time so we hopped in his car.
Like many other countries I have traveled to, the driver was trying to get more money out of us—offering to drive us around town, take us to a different hotel and mentioning he could pick us up for dinner. We declined all of these offers, but he handed us his business card anyways (which boasted he was a sober driver).
When we arrived to the hotel, he decided to carry my bag up the stairs, to reception and weirdly stand behind us while we checked in. It wasn’t until we were heading to our room that the driver left.
Exploring Almaty
After we relaxed a bit in the hotel we decided to hit the town. We went to a coffee shop and realized we had no cash and needed the currency exchange. We were greeted by two men who were sitting in a corner staring at you in a manner that would make you think twice if you were going to rob the place. Thankfully we are not criminals so we grabbed our Kazakhstani tenge and headed back to the coffee shop. After successfully acquiring coffee, we took a nice stroll to Panfilov Park.
The park is home to the Ascension Cathedral and a WII monument dedicated to the 28 Panfilov soldiers of an Almaty infantry unit who died fighting Nazi invaders outside of Moscow.
After exploring the park we walked to Kok-Tobe mountain. At the bottom of the hill there was a Lada filled with fake apples. Almaty is said to be the birth place of the apple so there are random apple objects throughout the city.
After snapping a pic of the Lada, we took the gondola up to the top of the mountain, where they had random monuments including one dedicated to The Beatles, an amusement park, petting zoo, restaurants and photo-ops with an eagle.
Fly like an eagle
In the photo-op with the eagle you get to dress up in nomadic clothing and a man places a giant eagle on your hand. This is pretty much a modelling shoot where they tell you where to stand, but the professional model you are sharing the spotlight with is an eagle. Oh they also make you pay for your photos.
Not wanting to spend $5, my friend negotiated the 5 photos for $5 to 1 photo for $1. They also agreed to put the photos on his phone vs. giving him the physical print-outs. In the end the guy couldn’t figure out how to select just one photo and put all of the photos from the memory card (including photos of strangers with the eagle) on my friend’s phone and handed him a couple print-outs.
After freezing at the top of the mountain waiting for the photos, we decided to pop into a restaurant to warm up, drink tea, and eat. The restaurant ended up being kind of fancy, and had this amazing truffle chicken. On a good day you would be able to see a view of the city from the restaurant, but it was quite foggy so we had a beautiful view of fog.
After we ate, we headed back down to town and headed to a convenience store to buy supplies for the night train the following day.
All in all, we had a lovely first day in Central Asia. Stay tuned for part two of our Kazakhstan adventure where we got stuck at Big Almaty Lake.
Next Post: Traffic Jam at Big Almaty Lake.
