Alatau
Almaty's Very Own Mountain Village
It only took me dozens of walks, five or six miles each, to finally find a neighborhood I could call my favorite. Alatau, as it's called, really has it all. It's right up the hill from the Kazakhfilm microdistrict, so when you get off the bus you get a peek at a classic Soviet housing project, but wander on and it's like you've entered a proper village, with dirt roads, wandering sheep and gardens and orchards aplenty. You can find hundreds of the beautiful old cottages I love, but then there are ambitious new mansions thrown in too, making for a real insightful contrast. Best of all, it's about as far south as you can get in Almaty without getting in a 4x4, and the snow-slathered mountains lay awesomely close, peeking out over every home and saying hello.
During the reign of the hammer and sickle, this place was a collective farm all its own, called Pyatiletka [Пятилетка], or "Five-Year Plan", named after Stalin's wildly ambitious social blueprints. It was only recently that the adjunct village was swallowed up by Almaty's borders (the place just keeps on growing...did you know that this year they even added a whole new borough, "Nauryzbai"?). One thing it was known for was its minority populations, people shipped here from the Caucasus by a paranoid Stalin during the Great War: Balkars, Meskhetian Turks, entire cultures you've likely never heard of, building lives a long way from their homelands.
Walking Alatau, I saw a beautiful old gate made of spiraling wood slats, and I got brave enough to charge into the courtyard and ask for a historical background. "Who are you looking for?" a man asked suspiciously, sitting on the stoop of his home with a sweet old grandmother in a robe. I told him I just liked his gate and he laughed, and as he laughed, giggles erupted behind me, and I saw that the whole family was out on the patio, modest girls braiding each other's hair and whispering shyly about the funny kid who had just stumbled in. They were Meskhet Turks, he told me, and he showed me around the complex (which included a giant garage and a convenience store), ordered the girls to arrange themselves for a portrait, teased the old grandma and came outside with me to admire his gate again. More Turks came from down the street, ladies holding babies, and I gawked. "You're all related?" I asked. "Yep!" said the big family, smiling and laughing the whole time, one of the sweetest constellations of people that Almaty must have to offer.
During the reign of the hammer and sickle, this place was a collective farm all its own, called Pyatiletka [Пятилетка], or "Five-Year Plan", named after Stalin's wildly ambitious social blueprints. It was only recently that the adjunct village was swallowed up by Almaty's borders (the place just keeps on growing...did you know that this year they even added a whole new borough, "Nauryzbai"?). One thing it was known for was its minority populations, people shipped here from the Caucasus by a paranoid Stalin during the Great War: Balkars, Meskhetian Turks, entire cultures you've likely never heard of, building lives a long way from their homelands.
Walking Alatau, I saw a beautiful old gate made of spiraling wood slats, and I got brave enough to charge into the courtyard and ask for a historical background. "Who are you looking for?" a man asked suspiciously, sitting on the stoop of his home with a sweet old grandmother in a robe. I told him I just liked his gate and he laughed, and as he laughed, giggles erupted behind me, and I saw that the whole family was out on the patio, modest girls braiding each other's hair and whispering shyly about the funny kid who had just stumbled in. They were Meskhet Turks, he told me, and he showed me around the complex (which included a giant garage and a convenience store), ordered the girls to arrange themselves for a portrait, teased the old grandma and came outside with me to admire his gate again. More Turks came from down the street, ladies holding babies, and I gawked. "You're all related?" I asked. "Yep!" said the big family, smiling and laughing the whole time, one of the sweetest constellations of people that Almaty must have to offer.
I loved this human element in the Alatau equation, but awkward as I am, I was soon swept away by the material surroundings, like those awesome wooden doors. Something told me that the homes had a common history, because the older cottages seemed to all have the same red tin roofs, the same tin filigree wrung around the chimneys, and on there was even a date cut out of tin, 1959, with a communist star and a horseman to either side. Like in Plodik (see my report below), there were hand pumps on every block; peoples gates' still sported old metal signs that told the Soviet gas man their meter number. It had that stuck-in-time feel, and the same leisurely pace that we associate with those golden days. Homes had handmade benches out front, where people could sit in the evenings, spit sunflower seeds, and watch the dusk glow.
It was that village way of life, I suppose, that shot Alatau to the top of my list. Of course I love the Soviet highrises of the center, the way design motifs there replicated themselves into ubiquity, the artificial loveliness of tree-lined blocks and neatly-ordered parks. But anywhere you make a life, you will always look for an escape, a taste of something different, and after a days' worth of car horns you may find yourself like me, looking for a place more spread out, where you can listen to the roosters crow and families claim whole blocks.
It was that village way of life, I suppose, that shot Alatau to the top of my list. Of course I love the Soviet highrises of the center, the way design motifs there replicated themselves into ubiquity, the artificial loveliness of tree-lined blocks and neatly-ordered parks. But anywhere you make a life, you will always look for an escape, a taste of something different, and after a days' worth of car horns you may find yourself like me, looking for a place more spread out, where you can listen to the roosters crow and families claim whole blocks.
