Category archive for ‘Tourism’ 
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Ice Village
One of the things I am looking forward to for New Years is the Ice Town. Although I hear that they do this in Scandinavian countries, I have never seen it anywhere but Astana so I like to think of it as a unique attraction in Kazakhstan. They’ve probably already started digging ice up out [...]
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A Beach 30 Minutes from Astana
Another comment I’m reposting from the Tourism page–leave a comment there on your recommendations of what to do in Kazakhstan and I’ll repost it on my blog, plus give you a credit/link of your choice.
Bozaigyr: A small beach next to a lake north of Astana. There’s a cafe that serves food–shashlik and so on. [...] -
Eco Village
Obviously it’s getting a bit cold for outside activities, but in a blatant attempt to promote my Tourism page, I’m republishing my comment on Ecovillage. Feel free to add information here or on the Tourism page about Ecovillage or other things to do in and around Astana. I’m also planning to repost the best comments [...]
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Tourism Page
Of all the cool new things that come with having my own domain and a proper version of Wordpress, one of the best is that the Tourism Page is up and works accepting comments. When my friend came to visit me this summer one of the frustrations we had was that once we’d done Bayterek [...]
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The Road to Beket-Ata
As promised in my post on Aktau, I want to write about the road trip to Beket-Ata. In Western Kazakhstan, there were a number of Sufi teachers who came and lived in caves in the area, running medressahs, consulting on difficult matters and healing people. They say there are 365 of these cave complexes (sometimes [...]
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Your Eyes are as Deep as the Caspian Sea
As part of my aforementioned vacation, I went to Aktau in Western Kazakhstan. The main reason for this was to finally get a chance to swim in the Caspian Sea at long last. Interestingly while the Caspian has some romantic and poetic value in the West (I think of Jill Sobule’s Good Person Inside as [...]
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ALZHIR
ALZHIR was the Akmola Labour Camp for Wives of Political Dissidents during Soviet times. Shockingly, not only “traitors to the motherland” but also their families were often arrested and sentenced to camps–-separate camps of course. Now on the site of this camp, just outside Astana, is a nice little museum and a memorial.
The museum includes [...] -
Tourism in Kazakhstan: Almatau
Merry Christmas today to any Orthodox readers. We had a lovely Christmas/New Years holiday, spent mostly with family. However we did get away to Almatau, a ski base near Almaty for a few days. It was lovely to be up in the mountains and we had a lot of fun skiing and walking around. [...]
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Culture in Mongolia: A Model for Central Asia
Haven’t posted in a while because I took a trip to Mongolia last week. Of course nothing casts a pall on travel plans like political protest that ends with the burning of the leading political party’s building and sacking of the nearby Culture Palace. Assured by my friend in Ulaan …
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Falconry on the BBC
The BBC is reporting on falcon hunting in Kazakhstan, specifically problems with finding funding to keep the birds. So now they are catering to the elite, selling hunting trips which subsidizes falcon preserves.
Check out the video here
And if anyone knows a good place I can go falcon hunting near Astana, let me know. It’s one [...]
