Kazakhstan itineraries on charyn.kz

A Kazakhstan itinerary for 10 days, with four more if you have them

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This Kazakhstan itinerary for 10 days uses three bases, Almaty, Shymkent and Astana, and adds Mangystau in the far west if you can stretch to 14 days. It is a planning skeleton, not a checked route: it tells you which places sit together and in what season they work. Travel times, transport and overnight stays between the bases we could not confirm, so treat every transfer day as something to book and verify yourself.

A Kazakhstan itinerary for 5 days, built around Almaty and its mountains

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A realistic Kazakhstan itinerary for 5 days stays in and around Almaty, where city sights, a cable car, ski slopes, mountain lakes and a Saka gold burial all lie within a day’s reach. Below is a day-by-day order with a summer and a winter version, plus the one long trip worth considering, to Kaindy Lake. Treat it as a skeleton for your own planning: we have not checked road times, transport or places to stay along the way.

A Kazakhstan itinerary for 7 days: Almaty's mountains, then Astana

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A realistic Kazakhstan itinerary for 7 days keeps most of the week around Almaty, where a cable car, a mountain dam, a ski resort and hot springs all sit within about 25 km of the city. The plan below spends days 1–5 in and near Almaty and ends with two days in Astana, the capital. Treat it as a skeleton for planning: we have not checked the transfers between stops, and the gaps are listed at the end.

A Mangystau itinerary for 3 or 5 days, planned out from Aktau

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mangystau is a desert region on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, and a trip there means long off-road days out of the port city of Aktau. This page is a planning skeleton for 3 or 5 days. It puts our Mangystau places in a sensible order, but nobody has checked it as a driven route, and road times, fuel stops and beds are mostly unknown.

What this skeleton is and what it is not

This is an order of places, not a tested route. Every distance below comes from our individual place pages. Some are marked as straight-line figures, others are simply given as distances from Aktau. A straight line in this desert can be far shorter than the track you will actually drive.

A South Kazakhstan itinerary from Shymkent to Turkistan and Otrar, day by day

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This South Kazakhstan itinerary links Shymkent, Turkistan and the ruins of Otrar into a five-day core with optional extensions. It is a planning skeleton built from straight-line distances, not a checked route. Road times, buses and places to stay are not covered here and need confirming before you book anything.

What this route covers and who it suits

The core of the route is the Silk Road and pilgrimage belt around Shymkent and Turkistan. Its anchor is the late-14th-century Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkistan, Kazakhstan’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site (2003). Around it lie the excavated mound of Otrar, the walls of Sauran and several shrines still visited by pilgrims.

Almaty to Bishkek and Karakol: one route through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Almaty to Bishkek is the simplest international trip in the region: board bus 701 at Sairan station, cross at Korday, and arrive about 5 hours later. Bishkek lies about 190 km from Almaty by Wikipedia’s figure. To see more than two cities, go out through Kegen and Karakol and come back through Bishkek. This page sets out that loop and what to check at each crossing. It is a planning skeleton, not a route we have tested, and we describe the Kyrgyz half only as far as our sources allow.

An Almaty itinerary for 3, 5 or 7 days in the city and the mountains

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This Almaty itinerary is a skeleton for 3, 5 or 7 days: the city first, then the mountains that start right at its southern edge, then the longer trips east. Almaty is the gateway city of south-east Kazakhstan, and the Ile-Alatau range rises directly behind it, so several mountain stops are reachable by city bus. It is a planning order, not a route anyone from this site has checked on the ground.

Kazakhstan itinerary: choose 5, 7, 10 or 14 days by what you can reach

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pick your Kazakhstan itinerary by the number of regions you can really reach. Almaty is the start of every plan below, because the mountains begin at its edge and most sights close to it need no flight. Each extra region costs you a flight and a day, so the frames grow in whole bases and not in extra sights. These are planning skeletons: nobody on our team has tested them on the ground as a single trip.