KZBlog

Bozaigyr: A small beach next to a lake north of Astana. There’s a cafe that serves food–shashlik and so on. There is also a grill so you can bring your own food and grill it up right there. There’s even a nice little yurt which can be used. Other than that, it’s just a beach and a lake on the steppes. You can also see cows grazing near by and it might be a chance to talk to a real Kazakh cowboy! Nice people run the beach area and they hope to expand it a bit more and add more services. As of last year it was free to enter.

To get there from Astana, go east along Bogen-bai Batyr Avenue til you get out near Shanghai. From there take the road to Akkol and Buraboe. About 30 minutes out of town, you should see the lake and the yurt on your left, near a small village, Bozaigyr. There is an exit there.

Obviously, probably only good for the summer. But there is a hunting zone there so you might be able to do some winter hunting in the area.

ALZHIR ALZHIR was the Akmola labour camp for wives of political dissidents during Soviet times. Shockingly, not only “traitors to the motherland” but also their families were often arrested and sentenced to camps–separate camps of course. Now on the site of this camp, just outside Astana is a nice little museum and a memorial.

The museum includes information about the camp and the women’s lives as well as details of their lives and their crimes. There are also recreations of the cells and personal objects owned by these women. The memorial lists the names of all the women who stayed in this camp. The museum is small but it gives you a good idea of what a gulag was really like.

To get there, go along Kurgalzhinskoe Shosse (Go down Sara-Arka and at the corner where Mega and Kermet Sauna stand, turn away from the city heading west). About 30 kms out of town, past the border checkpoint, you will come to the village of Akmol (formerly Malinovka). You should see a small stele that says Akmol on it. You will then see a road with a gate across it and an arch-like thing behind it. That arch is part of the museum complex. If the gate is closed, I recommend finding a place to park and walking to the museum. There is no good road from the village to the museum itself and we end up dinging the underside of our car trying to get there. It might be worth asking at the museum if they can open the gate.