Hanno's blog

After Astana I went on to Almaty, which is the former capital of Kazakhstan. As I already wrote my previous two stops (Petropavl and Astana) were sharp contrasts, Almaty again was a completely different place. While also relatively expensive, it doesn't have the kind of "artificial" feeling that is present in Astana.

I spend two days here. Almaty has some mountains surrounding it. There are two hilltops that one can reach via cable car. One is Koktobe, which has something like a small amusement park on the top. But due to lots of snow, most things there were closed. For the free software fans upon my readers: I saw an arcade machine with Tuxracer there. Never seen Tuxracer in an arcade machien before (however, I have seen an arcade machine with the free software game Stepmania on my last trip).

The other cable car starts near the ice skating stadium Medeo (which can be reached via public bus line 6) and goes to the ski ressort Shymbulak. The ski resort was closed and sadly, this meant that also the second cable car, which could bring one even more up the hills, was also closed. Still I had some stunning views on the mountains. In the gondola, I talked to a local who spoke a bit of English. He said they call it the "little Alps". I found that quite described it well. It really looked like you were in Austria or Switzerland. To make this impression complete, the cable car was even built in Switzerland.

Pictures from Almaty