Talk:Almaty/Travelogue

Moved from Almaty by (WT-en) Evan; kept here as a basis for a travel guide.

I was in Almaty, September 5 - 14, 2003. Mostly for work, but here are two excerpts from my playing-around time.

Saturday - Trip to the Mountains

Almaty's roads are lined with trees and the road to the mountains is green with woods and streams, even after the hot summer. Along the way we passed numerous wedding parties. It seems posing for pictures up in the alpine park is popular. As we wound up into the mountains we came to a very large ice skating stadium, which was the base for a large stairway up the valley to a flood reservoir. We climbed only the last section, which was enough in the thinner air. Almaty is at 800 meters and we were at 2000 meters at that point. We then drove up to the ski village of Chibuluk (sp?) where we parked to take a ski lift to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, the top two of the three lift sections were closed, so we boarded to go up to about 3000 meters and hike a bit in the sub-alpine meadows. It was a calm, lovely and gentle trip up with our feet dangling in the sunny day. To our backs we could look down the valley to the skating stadium and into the haze, which masked the city.

We walked a bit up the hill (thin air) and heard chatter in Russian, Kazak and English (more American visitors). There were crews breaking from their construction of an additional tramline up a second valley. Based on the rows of new, posh ski chalets, business was booming. My host said skiing is an expensive sport, but there are enough people with money to do it. Lift ticket prices were comparable with the US. But Kazak salaries aren&#8217;t!

It was quiet and lovely. After our short hike, we descended and headed back to the city for a traditional Kazak lunch. Again, we passed many festooned, honking wedding parties on the road.

Back in the city we passed the presidential palace, the blue roofed Kazak museum, my friend&#8217;s office and apartment building in the heart of the city. New buildings were going up everywhere, some very sleek and modern looking. We stopped off to stroll through the Memorial Park which honors the men from Kazakstan who were slain during Hitler&#8217;s march on Moscow. In the park is also an orthodox church built in 1870 without a single nail. Painted in dollhouse colors with a metallic steeple, it glowed in the park. More wedding parties streamed in and out of the church for photo opportunities. We must have seen 15 or 20 wedding parties in our stroll through he park.

Next stop - food! Greeted at the door in Kazak, we entered a modern restaurant designed to carry the feeling of a Kazak yurt. We sat down ordered a cold Russian soup, salad and the traditional Kazak dish of Five Fingers

The soup came with dollops of sour cream and laced with dill. It contained diced potatoes, cucumber, meat and peppers and was delicious. The salad was ripe Roma tomatoes and slices of crisp cucumber. On the table was a basket of traditional fried Kazak bread and little globes that were dried goat cheese curd; salty and said to be tasty with beer. I did not need beer but I bet it would have been good. I gulped mineral water instead, quite dry from our warm hike in the mountains. We also shared a dish of four kinds of rich, oily smoked fish which was delicious. I recognized salmon, but not the other three.

Kazak cuisine reflects the nomadic heritage of the Kazaks who ranged with their livestock and eschewed cultivation and farming. The diet is centered on meat and milk products from camels, beef, goat, lamb and horse. Five fingers is lamb, goat, camel and horse meat that is cooked in broth for at least three hours. The broth is changed a number of times and the period sees the addition of sliced onions and squares of thin pasta. The dish is served on a platter. Traditionally you take the meat and onions, roll them up in the cooked pasta sheets and eat them with your fingers but now forks and knives are acceptable. After you finish the platter of meat and pasta, the condensed broth is served in bowls for sipping or spooning, quite rich with flavor, meat fat and salt.

As I was served a heaping plate, I realized I did not know which meat was which and decided not knowing was an advantage. I sampled them all, knowing I was having my first taste of both camel and horse. The meat ranged from a light, pork color with a rim of fat, to dark red meat that appeared to be processed into a skin with smaller chunks forming the sausage, which was sliced in the dish. I liked the camel meat quite a lot!

Lunch was topped by bowls of milky Kazak tea. The waitress said the exact recipe of the tea is a secret. The base is black tea, but there were other flavors. It was delicious and much tastier than the Kazak tea at the hotel. I was stuffed as we headed back out into the sunshine.

We had intended to go to the Kazak museum and a chocolate factory, but the day was slipping away. I needed to change some money and buy an alarm clock, as I had forgotten mine. After these errands we headed back to the hotel and finished up some work, then had supper in a secondary dining room while a wedding party pounded overhead. In the hall outside of the wedding party, traditional Kazak musicians played the dombek, a two stringed guitar like instrument, accordion and violin, emitting a sweet, melancholy music of the steppes.

Sunday - In Town Sightseeing

Today we went downtown. We passed the old orchards which gave Almaty it&#8217;s name (mother of apples) and then went to the newest square of the city where the former capital administration buildings are. Since the capital was moved to Astana, these are now additional presidential offices and other administrative offices. It seems the TV stations have rented space in the former Agricultural ministry offices. The mountains, close but fuzzy through the haze, backed the buildings. Flower gardens framed the front. We walked across the street to a memorial, centered on a tall statue of the golden boy, an early Kazak figure, and circled by metal bas relief panels recounting the history of Kazakhstan, from the time of the fierce Amazon-like queen, to independence 10 years ago. I snapped some pictures, as they were remarkable in their emotion and force. Clearly a land where many have come to dominate over time.

Then we went to the Kazak museum, where we were two of very few visitors on a Sunday midday. We had a guided tour (in Russian, translation by my friend) which started in the pre-history wing where we learned about the dinosaurs that roamed this area, and through the early development of man in this region. In quite a bit of detail I might add. The 45 minute tour of the museum too 90 minutes in the first wing alone! Then it got interesting as our guide showed how the European and Asian blood lines mixed and varied over the centuries. We went through the stone tool age, the bronze age, the arrival of pottery, plumbing, decorated pottery. Artifacts from archaeological digs increased until we found ourselves in the watershed period of Genghis Khan and the great battles fought in this area under his flag and the flag of his sons. There were some moments of hilarity as my friend used literature tips and metaphors to help us identify a word. The identification of a raven came through the memory of Edgar Allen Poe &#8211; you know, that poem about the bird? And Robin Hood&#8217;s name was evoked to describe a hood!

At the end of this gallery (one of 4) we bid goodbye to our tolerant and knowledgeable guide and decided to just walk through the rest of the galleries on our own.

Next stop was a Georgian restaurant for lunch where we had excellent katchipuri, salty hot cheese filled bread, some lovely eggplant stuffed with nuts, spinach and nuts and a few other dishes. We chatted and enjoyed the meal, then headed to the Arbot, Almaty&#8217;s artist row on a tree-lined pedestrian street. We browsed at paintings of Kazak yurts and horses, some pretty bad still lifes, then went in a doorway that led to a veritable indoor mall of small, independent merchants, booth after booth. The first floor was dominated by cell phone merchants and small appliances. We strolled up to the second floor for house wares and tourist &#8216;stuff&#8217; where I bought some souvenirs and then we eyeballed all the jewelry booths. Mmmmm&#8230; some nice contemporary stuff. I bought a ring and a tea cosy.

Our final stop was the green market &#8211; my kind of place. Crowded with shoppers, it is divided into two main sections: food and non food items. We started in the food hall loaded with fruit and vegetable stalls, glorious piles of summer fruit at the peak, rows of glistening spicy cold Korean dishes (there is a large Korean population here), fresh cheeses, yogurt from sheep, cow, goat and mare, multihued honeys sold by a babushka&#8217;ed grandmother, nuts, dried fruits and at the far end, meat, meat, meat. Kazak&#8217;s love their meat.

Knowing I liked chocolate, the next stop was a chocolate shop where I bought a sampling, then we strolled through the non food section, admiring piles of rainbow colored plastic sandals, housewares and pantyhose. Wonderful. I only wish I could have bought some of the luscious melons and salads. Ohhhh&#8230;.