The Stans 2026

 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...