On a sleek pedestrian bridge over the Ishim River
Jim models an old Kazakh warrior helmet
At some point our cameras have started doing crazy things, like making images pop out of their surroundings like this. Cool!
Our last stop in Central Asia is Astana, the shiny newish capital of Kazakhstan. If you had trouble coming up with the name of the Kazakh capital, you’d be in good company. To begin with, the capital was moved here from Almaty in 1997. And to make things worse, Astana holds the Guinness Book world record as the capital city with the most name changes in modern times. The town was founded in 1830 as Akmola, and has since been renamed Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, Astana, Nur-Sultan, and then back to Astana.
Astana sits in the vast wide open flat steppes of northern Kazakhstan, so utterly unlike the mountain setting of Almaty. This part of the country is more linked with Russia than the rugged mountains of the south. After independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Kazakh parliament soon planned to move the capital here, no doubt in part to stem any breakaway notions on the part of the large Russian population. Since independence, the percentage of ethnic Kazakhs here jumped from just 17% to over 80% as the city grew dramatically. With 1.3 million people, Astana is now second in size only to Almaty.
We decided to fly way up to Astana just to see the spectacle of it all. Fueled by big ambitions and oil money, this planned city features gleaming architecture, grand vistas, lush parks, and elaborate public art. The skyline is dotted with cranes in every direction, raising countless new luxury apartment blocks. It’s fun to see a place with so much growth, ambition, and energy — even if Astana lacked the culinary charms and inherent culture of a more mature metropolis like Almaty. After a couple days here, we were sufficiently wowed yet ready to move on.
That means making one more stop on the way home – Istanbul for a few days to celebrate my very own birthday.
The Baiterek monument sits at the center of the monumental core of the city
The Khan Shatyry entertainment complex occupies a huge tent-like structure by British star architect Sir Norman Foster
Inside Norman Foster’s entertainment complex
Discovering a patch of bunny rabbits in a huge park
Birch trees line a long lovely embankment on the river
Like so much else here, the National Museum of Kazakhstan occupies a stunning piece of architecture. But once we got beyond this dramatic entry foyer, the collection was super chaotic and did a terrible job of providing any context.
This exhibit at the National Museum had something to do with technology. It was a cool looking room to walk through, but there was little indication of what its point was.
Shiny architecture and cranes everywhere
Fun public art
Jim makes the most of a neighborhood lined with lilacs
The monumental core of the city
So much cool architecture
That’s the presidential palace photo-bombing our selfie