Tailor Made Holidays in Kazakhstan: Highlights

See Khan Tengri from a helicopter

This excursion, only for the true adventurer, allows you a good look at one of the world's great peaks - Khan Tengri. The locals call it "Peak of Blood" in reference to its colour at sunset, though its formidable mountaineering reputation might lead you to a different conclusion. Reinhold Messner called it one of the world's most beautiful mountains and looking at its pyramidal apex it is not difficult to see why. The base camp, to which the Mi-8 Kyrgyz Army helicopter takes you, is situated on the fourth largest non-polar glacier on earth, the Inylchek, a vast ice flow that helps to shape the climate of all of Central Asia and western China.

 
Take a tour of the Tian Shan Astronomical Observatory

High up in the mountains to the south of Almaty is this relic of a former era, when the Soviet Union was a scientific powerhouse. The main telescope is the second biggest in the former USSR, with 600 times magnification. From a mountain side above the site it looks like a SMERSH hideout.

 
Bathe at the Arasan Baths

Central Asia has only a handful of public baths that are worth a special visit, and these are one example. This is the traditional Soviet way to bathe, with a mixture of Russian, Finnish and Turkish saunas and pools, and the requisite burly Russian men and women on hand to thwack you with birch or oak branches.

 
Visit the mausoleum of Ahmad Yassaui

The mausoleum of the first great Turkic Muslim holyman, Ahmad Yassaui, is widely regarded as one of the most impressive sights in the whole of Kazakhstan. Following his death around 1166, his small and fairly inconspicuous tomb became an important point of Muslim pilgrimage. However, the massive building present today was constructed during the industrious Timurid era, under the watchful eye of Tamerlane himself. Tamerlane died before the mausoleum was finished and consequently the facia remains largely incomplete. The tomb has recently been renovated, primarily with money from Turkey, returning much of the tile work to its former splendour.

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