Kazakhstan Mountain Walks: Almaty, Big Almaty Lake and Kolsai, 4 Nights

Your guide meets you at Almaty International Airport, usually in the afternoon, and takes you to the hotel in about half an hour. The rest of the day is free. A short walk through the leafy city centre stretches the legs after the flight, and the snow-streaked mountains filling the southern skyline show you where the next three days are spent.

The first day on foot starts in Butakovka Gorge, a wooded valley in the foothills off the road to Medeu, where a path follows the stream upwards under spruce and birch. Later you drive on to Shymbulak and ride the chain of gondolas to the third and highest station, above 3,000 metres, with glaciers and peaks all round. Take a warm layer: it is cold at the top even in summer.

A day in the Ile-Alatau National Park south of the city. A walk leads to a small cascade that local walkers call the Hobbit Waterfall, and then the road climbs the Big Almaty gorge to Big Almaty Lake, a reservoir at about 2,500 metres whose colour shifts from milky turquoise to deep green through the summer. The altitude slows everyone down, so take the walking gently. The lake is at its best from late May to early October.

The biggest day of the trip, and a very long one: around 600 kilometres by road, leaving at dawn and returning late in the evening. About three hours east is Charyn Canyon, where you walk down through the Valley of Castles between red rock towers. Then it is about two hours on to Kolsai Lake in the spruce forest, before four and a half to five hours back to Almaty. An overnight near the lakes can be quoted instead.

The last morning depends on your flight. Many flights from Almaty leave in the early hours, in which case you have a packed breakfast and an early transfer to the airport, about half an hour away. After yesterday’s late return that is a short night, so with a pre-dawn flight we recommend moving the Charyn and Kolsai day earlier when we quote.