With it’s location on the Silk Road, nomads of the steppes, mix of ethnicities and vast network of lakes and rivers there are many interesting places to visit within Kazakhstan:
This list will grow, I am sure.
- Stay in a Yurt on the steppes
- Eat and drink local delicacies – horse and fermented milk! Have eaten horse – avoided the milk so far…
- Baikonur Cosmodrom – I want to see a launch to International Space Station! as well as the museum etc. (20th October 2016)
- Visit Sayram, the city of countless mausoleums of saints. This city was mentioned in the Zoroastrian Holy Book and a key staging post on the Silk Road
- Visit the Saryarka Plains
- Go skiing (well perhaps just the apres ski scene) in Shymkent
- Visit Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s home in Semey
- Visit the historic cities of Taraz and Turkestan (21st and 23rd October 2016)
- See the Caspian Sea and port of Atyrau
- Visit Charyn Canyon (April 2018), the valley of castles and walk through the pre-historic aspen groves
- Saka Mounds
- Karabulak Gorge
- Borovoe National Reserve, pine forests and health spas. -Yes!
- See the petroglyphs of Tamgali-Tas, an UNESCO site of natural beauty
- Otrar, monument to Ghengis Khan and the Mausoleum of Sufi poet and mystic, Khoja Ahmed Yassavy – UNESCO cultural site (21st October 2016)
- Aisha-Bibi mausoleum and it’s fretted teracotta
- Babdya Khatun for it’s intricate umbrella dome
- Visit Aksu-Dzhabagly reserve – Giant Asku Canyon
- Altyn-Emel National Park to see the Bronze Age relics and structures
- Aqsu-Zhabaghly Nature Reserve and the Asku River
As for slightly further afield focusing on the Silk Road:
- Samarkand
- Khiva
- Bukhara
- Tashkent
- Tblisi
- Bishkek
- Karakol
…lots am sure I have not heard of yet!
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