Kasachstan Revisited

From Lepsy, Alfred Brehm and the other expedition members moved on to the north-east, over the Altai Mountains to Obdorsk in Siberia. Our journey, on the other hand, ended in the south-east of Kazakhstan – in the city of Almaty. The city lies on the mountain range of the Tian Shan – Transili-Alatau. This mighty…

The small town of Usharal lies near the lake. We stayed here for a few days to explore the area as Brehm once did. The large Lake Alakol is connected by a marshland with Lakes Kosharkol and Sasykkol to the northwest. We met Erzahn in a small fishing village on Lake Kosharkol. But everyone calls…

Brehm already wrote that the town of Ajagös could be uncomfortable because of its dust and was somewhat barren. Nothing has changed in 144 years. The wind was constantly whirling a lot of dust through the air here, so we were actually quite happy to have masks in front of our noses. And you don’t…

As soon as we left Ulken Narym, a new, almost maritime landscape met our eyes. The river Irtysh has been accompanying us for weeks now, and yet it knows how to amaze us anew every time: whether as a city river lined with promenades, in the idyllic Buchtarma reservoir or the mighty Lake Zaysan. The…

That was it for the city for now. We left Oskemen and headed for the Altai Mountains. The Katon-Karagay region was advertised to us as the Switzerland of Kazakhstan. It is located at the easternmost end of the country, where it borders China, Mongolia and Russia. Well, what can we say… the scenery is breathtaking.…

In the evening we arrived in Oskemen, the capital of the East Kazakhstan region. We could not even dream of all that was to happen to us the next day. We had two destinations on the plan: my mother’s home village, not far from Oskemen (by Kazakh distance standards), and the Arkat Mountains. This rock…

Our next stop is Semey. The town on the Irtysh River used to be called Semipalatinsk, because at its foundation in 1718 it consisted of a fortress surrounded by seven (Russian: sem) tents (Russian: palatki). After a drive of several hours through the once again breathtakingly beautiful, but this time quite varied steppe landscape, we…

After picking up the car from the rental company, we were ready to get started. Our first Brehm stop: the East Kazakh city of Pavlodar. Five and a half hours of driving through the steppe lay ahead of us. The view from the car: sky, endless, light blue sky. Somewhere in the far distance it…

Nur-Sultan, formerly Astana, is the capital of Kazakhstan – and an architectural wonderland. After Kazakhstan’s independence, it was decided in the late 1990s to make the city then known as Aqmola the capital and rename it Astana. Within just a few years, an ultra-modern, very sprawling metropolis was built out of the ground in the…