How to spend 72 hours in Almaty - your 3 day itinerary

Almaty is a great place to base yourself for local day trips, but it is a stunning city in its own right too - beautiful, safe and cosmopolitan. Dedicate a couple of days to the city itself, then take excursions to explore further afield for some of Kazakhstan’s highlights. We really loved our time here and would realistically recommend setting aside 3-5 days in your itinerary for this area.

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Day 1

Ride the Metro

This in itself is somewhat of an activity. There is currently only 1 line so it’s not incredibly useful for navigating the city, but the stations are beautifully decorated and each have a theme (and chandeliers!). We rode the metro in one direction and got off at a couple of stops to admire the mosaics. It cost about £0.50 per person.

Walking tour - not to be missed

“Free” (tip -based) walking tour, booked through Guru Walks. We have done many of

these style of walking tours throughout Europe, and without doubt, this was the best

one we have been on! Our guide, Aiguerim, was so knowledgable and gave us some

more tour contacts to try, when we explained we were struggling to find group trips to

join. The tour lasted 4.5hrs and was really comprehensive, including a visit to the

wooden cathedral and the Green Market. Aiguerim also talked us through many of the

delicacies and obtained samples for us to try. If you visit Almaty, this is not to be missed. Click here to book Aiguerim’s tour.

Day 2

Central Park

We walked around “Central Park” and visited the Dinopark (so bad it was actually quite entertaining) and the Zoo, which wasn’t great compared to UK welfare standards - I wouldn’t recommend.

Kok Tobe

It’s hard to describe this place - it’s a hilltop mini-theme park with panoramic views of

the city, some rides, activities and a Beatles (yes the band) bench. There’s restaurants,

amusements and a bandstand with various performances. It’s worth getting the cable

car up here for the views but the place is a bit bemusing - we went at sunset, and the place just got more lively as it got darker.

Arbat Street

Make sure to stroll along this street in the evening to see numerous musicians, street performers and locals dancing.

Day 3 - take a day trip!

See below for options.

How to get around

As mentioned before, although the metro is worth experiencing, it’s not incredibly useful for getting around. We found the best way to get across the city to anywhere that isn’t walking distance is Yandex, a commonly used ride-hailing app in Central Asia. Most rides cost between £1-£3.

Food/drink recommendations

Sandyq - this is the top rated restaurant in the city and is by far the best place that we ate at in Almaty. Local Kazakh dishes in a stunning environment with a lovely atmosphere. This felt like a really upscale experience for an extremely good price. We ordered a starter to share, 3 main dishes (yes, 3 between the two of us!) and 2 desserts, and it came to around £50 including drinks. Highly recommend - booking is essential.

Nedelka - chain with several locations throughout the city. Great coffee, sandwiches and western dishes.

Navat - the same chain that we dined at in Bishkek. There are a few branches across the city. It was absolutely bustling and there was some live dancing on while we were seated. Luckily we did get a table quickly but booking is recommended.

“Tereze” - a little tucked-away coffee shop not too far from Green Market.

Accommodation options

Ozen Pałace Hotel - £80 - 3 nights - Large Double en suite room with breakfast

included.

• This was a much fancier hotel than we expected - great value for money.

• Huge buffet breakfast. It was little out of the way from the central area, but Yandex rides are inexpensive, so this wasn’t really an issue.

• - The only con was the cost of doing laundry (our idiot tax for the trip), as we foolishly did not check the pricing beforehand. The hotel charged per item and the bill came to around £60! We triple checked the conversion before begrudgingly paying it.

• In summary - great hotel, just don’t do your laundry here.

Kazzhol Hotel - £150 - 2 nights, double ensuite with spa access.

• We booked the last 2 nights here, as this trip was technically our honeymoon, we wanted to end it with a bit of luxury. However, this hotel has the feel of somewhere that was once fancy but is just a little tired now.

• The breakfast was excellent - buffet style with a huge choice of options.

• The “Spa” left something to be desired. Unfortunately the sauna was being repaired and so we could not use it during our stay. There was a small pool and gym, but no spa treatments.

• While the location was good - walkable to the central area, we would have preferred to stay at the Ozen Palace for the whole duration instead.

• This hotel is often recommended in guidebooks and blogs as a good mid-range option (partly why we booked it), but we feel that it just is not good value for money, and perhaps that recommendation is outdated.

Trips and tours from Almaty

• There are many day tours departing from Almaty which visit Charyn Canyon, Kaindy lake and Kolsai lake, but most of these are 16-17 hours long. There are also 2-3 day options - if you’ve got the time, I would recommend this option over squeezing it in to a single day tour.

• Because we had already seen the lakes on our travel day from Karakol to Almaty (read more here), we found a canyons only tour to go back and have more time at Charyn Canyon, as well as the moon canyon and black canyon, which was a great day. Click here for This tour.

• Bear waterfall and Issyk lake - this tour is worth it for the lake alone, it’s probably the most stunning lake we visited in Central Asia (and that’s with some stiff competition).

• Other than these tours, we really struggled to find group tours that we could join. There are lots of tour operators in Almaty, and I contacted several, but most excursions seemed to be private tours only (for example, to Tanbaly petroglyphs). If you had more in your party to split the cost, it may have been worth it, but as a couple, the private tours were a bit out of budget.

Summary

My recommendation would be to spend 2 days in Almaty itself, do a 2-3 day tour with overnight stays to Charyn Canyon and the lakes, and another day trip of your choosing (Issyk lake was well worth it). If you’re short on time, the full day Charyn Canyon and lakes tour plus at least a full day in the city would suffice.

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