The Stans 2026

 Good evening from Almaty International Airport (ALA). We've quite liked Almaty. To be honest, that might be partly because it's quite modern and this makes it much more like the cities we're used to. Though the traffic and car horns could be improved.  This is despite it still having an authoritarian regime - the lack of freedom etc is not apparent at a tourist level. It has been a pretty quiet day with little to report, so you might want to skip over today. We (Lynn) spent the morning organising and re-packing for the flights home. Eventually we checked out and wandered about the town for as long as we could. Lynn had looked forward to visiting the Marks & Spencer but was very disappointed with the contents, so we walked up the pedestrian mall and around the town generally.     When we ran out of things to do we read in the hotel until we were picked up and taken to the airport where, as already explained, I am writing this. Our flight out on Air Astana, KC 909...

 I was pleased to discover yesterday's belief that there's not much to see in Almaty was wrong; we had a very pleasant day today. I am also coming to like Almaty. It has far too many cars - traffic is slow everywhere and cars frequently double park which slows it even more. But in the city centre, where we are staying, there are many crumbling old soviet apartment blocks and there are now shops with neon signs in their entries, so it is developing an interesting character. There are many coffee shops and beyond the area we're in are lots of shiny new developments. We started the day going to the Medeu cable car, up a long valley. Near the cable car station is a huge icerink (currently dry, as it's too warm) which was a high altitude eastern bloc training camp, and there are ski jumps on another hill. It skimmed the treetops, kind of slowly, for 4.5 km up to the Shymbulak ski resort, which of course had no snow at this time of year. Then we took another two cable cars an...

 A pleasantly easy day today - which is good because we're tired. We got the whole morning off and used it to sleep in and catch up on things. We've also got a couple more days here and I don't think there's that much to see (based on today's outing) so no rush. When we did go out, we started at 28 Panfilov Guardsmen Park. Named after some soldiers from the Battle of Moscow, which was a big deal in the USSR, it is largely a war memorial with suitably ugly sculptures. But in the middle of the park is a wooden Russian Orthodox Church. This was quite attractive but the interior was over the top with the gilded theme. Then we walked the couple of blocks to the Green Bazaar. We're pretty much over bazaars but to be honest this was better than most. It smelt better, was tidy and practically hygienic. When we wandered beyond the main building the rest was all drab, cheap clothes from China. We went to the chocolate factory and shop next door, but it was pretty underwhe...

 Today was essentially a bus day, travelling into Kazakhstan. Other than the time looking at highways, we're only seeing one city in Kazakhstan, Almaty. While Almaty is the biggest city, this is a very big country so I'm not sure that I can say we'll know much about it by the time we leave. We started by driving an hour or so to the border. This turned out to be  a random-seeming point on the highway, on the middle of a wide flat plain. It really makes you wonder how they decide where these borders should be. We showed our passports, put our bags through the x-ray machine, but it was actually the quickest and easiest border we've encountered so far. Then we got on a new bus and carried on. We're really on the steppe now, so it's mostly flat with some distant mountains. After another hour or so we reached Charyn Canyon, which was quite impressive and seems to be a significant tourist attraction. Like our stops yesterday, it seems to be all about what you can make...