Our hike on Saturday was so enjoyable that we opted to venture out again on Sunday. We’ve noticed that Kazakhs are late risers, which makes mornings the perfect time to go out exploring. This time, our destination was Kok Tobe (literally, blue hill), a 3500 ft mountain at the edge of town that’s accessible by cable car. To reach the start of the cable car, we needed to book our first Yandex ride (Russia’s version of Uber). It was surprisingly slick and very affordable. We will definitely be using that more!
When we arrived at the base of the cable car at 10 AM, we were able to get on immediately. Nia is relatively inexperienced with funiculars/cable cars, so she was busy taking it all in. Nick and I found it helpful getting a bird’s eye view of the city because it helped orient us and grasp the full size of the city. Almaty is a nice medium-sized city with a population of 2,000,000 people (comparable to Houston in the U.S.). Of course, coming from Mumbai with a population 21,000,000, it seems downright small town. (Fun Fact: Mumbai’s population is greater than all of Kazakhstan’s citizens combined.)
Atop the mountain we found a recreation area with attractions for all tastes. For example, one could put on traditional Kazakh dress and get their picture taken with a live eagle (remember: eagle hunting is a big thing here). Or one could visit the Museum of Illusions, take in the petting zoo or scale a climbing wall. For the more traditional amusement-park-types there was a ferris wheel, swings, roller coaster, pirate ship and bumper cars. Our mindset going in was that we’d be coming back plenty of times with visitors, so we mainly wandered around to familiarize ourselves with everything that was available.
During our walk-about, a ropes course caught Nia’s eye. We are always leery of things like this because safety standards vary so much from country to country. She really wanted to try it though, so Nick did a quick inspection and deemed the climbing equipment sufficient. So up Nia went to strap into her climbing harness. The course began easy enough, but by the third or fourth obstacle she was panicking. I could tell she wanted to bail, but the only way out was through now, so she had to press on. Granted, the obstacles did look challenging. And she was 15 feet up in the air, so I’m sure that was adding to the intensity of it all. Nick and I amped up the cheering and she muscled her way through it, even saying she enjoyed it by the end. I know of at least one other obstacle course like this in Almaty, and this was only level 3 of 5, so I think she could work her way up to the hardest ones over our three years here. A good find, especially for $7!
We concluded our visit with lunch at a scenic restaurant up top. The meat options here are plentiful and oh-so-affordable. Nia’s been more adventurous on the food front lately and opted for a Kazakh preparation of veal and potatoes (please notice the absence of fruit/vegetable—that seems very common here). Nick went with a veal salad that looked so good that I was regretting my boring chicken kabob order. Maybe next time I’ll be braver. It made for another great morning and perhaps best of all, we were barely harassed at all despite it being one of the most touristy spots in Almaty! That’s good news.
