Kazakhstan

The Kazakh steppe was the domain of nomadic horse peoples for thousands of years — Scythians, Turkic khanates, and, from the fifteenth century, the Kazakh Khanate, whose people were organised into three "hordes" (zhuz) grazing herds across enormous distances. The Silk Road passed through the southern oasis cities of Otrar, Taraz, and Turkestan.

The Russian Empire absorbed the khanates through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, building forts and settling Slavic farmers. Soviet rule brought catastrophe: Stalin's forced collectivisation and settlement of the nomads in the early 1930s caused a famine that killed perhaps 1.5 million Kazakhs, a quarter or more of the ethnic Kazakh population, and made Kazakhs a minority in their own republic for decades. The USSR also used Kazakhstan for the Karlag labour camps, the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, and the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Independence came in 1991. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the last Soviet-era leader, ruled for almost three decades, moving the capital in 1997 from Almaty to a new city on the northern steppe, later named after him, and building an oil-funded authoritarian state. He handed the presidency to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in 2019 but kept influence until the "Bloody January" protests of 2022, sparked by fuel prices, turned into deadly unrest and sidelined his family.

Kazakh culture descends from the nomadic life of the steppe, still celebrated in the yurt, the horse, hunting with golden eagles, the two-stringed dombra lute, and kymyz, fermented mare's milk. Nauryz, the spring new-year festival, is the biggest holiday, with feasting, games, and the ritual dish nauryz köje.

Society is Muslim by heritage — Sunni, and generally moderate and secular after seventy Soviet years — with a large Russian Orthodox minority in the north and a patchwork of other groups (Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Uyghurs, Germans, Koreans) left by deportations and migrations. Respect for elders, generous hospitality, and the importance of knowing one's ancestry seven generations back are enduring values.

The country presents two faces: cosmopolitan, Russian-speaking Almaty and the show-piece architecture of Astana on one side, and a rural, Kazakh-speaking life of herding and small towns on the other. A national revival since independence has promoted the Kazakh language, history, and the reclaiming of figures like the poet Abai.

Almaty, in the far southeast beneath the snow-capped Tian Shan, is the largest city and the cultural and financial centre — tree-lined, café-filled, and framed by mountains. Astana, on the flat northern steppe, is the young capital, a planned city of glass towers, ministries, and monuments that fills with civil servants and empties on weekends. Shymkent in the south is the third city, more Central Asian in feel.

The economy runs on oil and gas from the Caspian region, on uranium (Kazakhstan is the world's largest producer), and on other metals and grain, which has made it the wealthiest of the Central Asian states but left it exposed to commodity prices and to corruption. Much of the population still lives modestly in the regions.

Daily life mixes Soviet-era apartment blocks and stolovaya canteens with new malls and coffee chains, the marshrutka minibus, and, in the countryside, the herding calendar and the move to summer pastures.

Kazakh cooking is meat-heavy, a legacy of the herding life. The national dish is beshbarmak — "five fingers" — boiled horse or lamb served over wide flat noodles and eaten by hand, with the broth (sorpa) drunk afterwards. Kazy (horsemeat sausage), kuyrdak (fried offal), and baursak (fried dough) are staples of a feast.

Central Asian dishes are everywhere too: plov (rice pilaf), manty (steamed dumplings), lagman (hand-pulled noodles), and samsa baked in a tandoor, reflecting Uzbek, Uyghur, and Dungan influence in the south. Russian salads, soups, and pelmeni are equally normal in the cities.

Kymyz and shubat (fermented camel's milk) are the traditional drinks; tea, usually black with milk, is served constantly; and vodka and Kazakh beer and wine are widely available.

Almaty is the base for the mountains: the Medeu skating rink and Shymbulak ski resort in a gorge above the city, the alpine meadows of Big Almaty Lake, and, further out, the turquoise Kolsai Lakes and the sunken forest of Lake Kaindy in the Tian Shan foothills. East toward the Chinese border, Charyn Canyon's "Valley of Castles" and the "Singing Dunes" of the Altyn-Emel park are classic day trips.

Astana is a sightseeing curiosity in its own right — the Bayterek tower, the tent-shaped Khan Shatyr mall, the pyramid Palace of Peace, and the sweeping government axis, all built from nothing since the late 1990s. Turkestan, in the south, has the great Timurid mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a UNESCO site and a major place of Muslim pilgrimage.

For something stranger, the Mangystau region on the Caspian is a desert of chalk-white cliffs, isolated rock formations, and underground mosques, and the dried bed of the Aral Sea, with its rusting ship graveyard near Aralsk, is a monument to Soviet environmental disaster. The Altai mountains in the northeast and the Borovoe lake district add forest and granite scenery to a country better known for its emptiness.