7 Interactive Maps of Almaty
Made by Walking Almaty
Anybody who has dug around Walking Almaty knows that I believe in the illustrative power of a good digital map. In various entries of my little encyclopedia here, I've supplemented my photo collections and essays with maps of mosaics, pedestrian paths, and canals, all made with delightful ease on Google Maps. There are several more maps that I've designed, though, that I never got around to sharing because I couldn't find place for them in the existing entries of my Walking Almaty "catalog." I still feel like they deserve to see the light so, for your amusement, here are seven interactive maps of Almaty exploring the city's architecture, music, industry and more.
Read on...
7 Things to See Near the Airport on an Almaty Layover
Visit "Airport Village"
Just Across the Parking Lot
Real quick: if you have an Almaty layover for five or more hours, this guide isn't for you. You should grab a map from the tourist information booth, get a taxi (2,000 tenge) or Bus 79 or Bus 86 (80 tenge) to the center and visit the Green Bazaar, Ascension Cathedral, and Kök Töbe. To catch a taxi, avoid the freelancing taxi drivers who will exploit you and go to the one of the taxi stalls for Eko Taxi or City Taxi in the lobby right outside the baggage claim. To catch a bus, walk out the door, follow the cars out of the small parking lot and past the toll booths, and walk two blocks down the street to the bus stop.
But what if you only have a few hours?
This may be the only time you're ever in Kazakhstan, so don't spend it sitting in the tight little terminal! Almaty International Airport (ALA) is special because it's not isolated, surrounded by swamps and fields or knotty highways. Right across the parking lot is a quaint village with beautiful architecture, cafes, and things to see. Locals call it, funnily enough, "Airport Village" [поселок "Aэропорт"; posyolok Aeroport], and it is a fun introduction to Almaty for those pressed for time.
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Odno-Etazhnaya Alma-Ata:
In Praise of a City's Single-Story Sector
There is a tendency, when picturing a place, to envision only its grandest projects. If you were to think of my home country, the United States, for example, you might think of the Manhattan skyline, or the Golden Gate Bridge, or the massive monuments of DC. Yet the soul of a place often lies in the space between the postcards, where overlooked people live overlooked lives. When the Soviet propaganda rag Pravda sent two writers, Ilif and Petrov, to explore the US for an assignment, the men were surprised to find an America that was missing from the legends and movie screens, a land of small towns, with homes no taller than a single floor. They wrote about these places with a fairness that was remarkable for an ideological assignment, and they named their book, now famous, Odno-Etazhnaya Amerika, or "Single-Story America."
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11 Almaty Businesses
You See Over and Over
I’ve long had a page on Walking Almaty called “Almaty Mysteries”, where I’ve set out to solve some puzzles that leave visitors to our city scratching their heads, things like “Why are the trees painted white?” and “Why are the gas lines above ground?” Some of the most frequent questions, I’ve found, revolve around the frequency of certain businesses. Why does one city need so many dental clinics? What’s the deal with all the notaries? Why so many flower shops, and why are many open 24 hours? Some of these things are hard to notice for locals, as they only seem odd if you’re coming from a different urban landscape. A shoe repair stand is an Almaty mainstay, for example, but try finding one in Los Angeles and you’ll be walking so long you won’t have any shoes left to repair.
Here, then, is my attempt to provide some context for some of these most-frequent establishments. Once you start thinking about why some stores are more common than others, you realize that the prevalence of certain businesses says a lot about a culture. What can we learn about Almaty through its storefronts?
Here, then, is my attempt to provide some context for some of these most-frequent establishments. Once you start thinking about why some stores are more common than others, you realize that the prevalence of certain businesses says a lot about a culture. What can we learn about Almaty through its storefronts?
Read on...
9 Spiritual Cousins of
Walking Almaty
Documentary Urbanism in Action
Hoarding photos of random urban phenomena is, I realize, a bit eccentric. Not everybody finds joy in a catalog of coal shed windows, or in carefully documented iterations of downspouts. So when I've found projects that echo my own, I've audibly shrieked, physically trembled, even hyperventilated. "One more member of our lost tribe!"
I've been heartened to learn that the technique I call Documentary Urbanism, where I trace patterns in the urban landscape, is not actually a personal invention or solitary impulse. Given that so many other strangers are out there with the exact same hobby, it seems there's some deeper human predilection at play. Some people just have a need to explore and order their world, to file it into folders and share it with people.
Here, I present to you nine projects that are uncannily close cousins to Walking Almaty. If you're a fan of my project, these will be easy recommendations.
I've been heartened to learn that the technique I call Documentary Urbanism, where I trace patterns in the urban landscape, is not actually a personal invention or solitary impulse. Given that so many other strangers are out there with the exact same hobby, it seems there's some deeper human predilection at play. Some people just have a need to explore and order their world, to file it into folders and share it with people.
Here, I present to you nine projects that are uncannily close cousins to Walking Almaty. If you're a fan of my project, these will be easy recommendations.
1. "Walking Karakemer" by Sardar Baimoldin
Sardar is a talented young photographer from Almaty who has been similarly seduced by shuba, nalichniki, and the architectural surfaces that give homes here their distinct character. As part of a workshop with the famous Russian photojournalist Valery Nistratov, organized by TEDx Almaty last year, Sardar and several other promising artists documented life in the nearby village of Karakemer. Some of the participants focused on social issues, others on personal portraits, but Sardar was drawn to the place's built environment, and the work he produced, published here for the first time, is impressive in its framing and warmth.
photo courtesy of Sardar Baimoldin
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6 Principles of Documentary Urbanism
How can you use photography to see your city with new eyes?
Sometimes, when people ask me about Walking Almaty, I don’t quite know how to frame it. It doesn’t seem to be a “blog,” because it avoids some elements of the form: most of the material I’ve collected isn’t organized chronologically, and it’s usually not driven by narrative. Nor is it “street photography.” Street photographers, traditionally defined, tend to take candid pictures of strangers or wide-lens landscapes, while the photos I share highlight details, surfaces…the subject matter is markedly different Okay, so then “urban exploration” sounds close! I have spent hundreds of hours exploring my urban home…but, strangely enough, the UrbEx tag usually gets applied only to people documenting the abandoned corners of urbanity, while I like to focus on a city in its entirety. So what are we left with? What is it, exactly, that I do?
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13 Historic Maps of Verny, Alma-Ata, and Almaty
What can we learn about the city's growth through its cartography?
I'm a map dork. If that isn't clear by now, look at the maps I've made of Almaty alleikas, ear graffiti, and mosaics, or check out the map that really motivates this whole project: the progress map that shows the streets in Almaty I've walked so far. The more I've added those red trails to the map with my footsteps, the more I've discovered new districts, explored new frontiers, and found that the map of Almaty is one that doesn't stay stable for long. Just last year the city swallowed two dozen villages and added a whole new borough! This impressive growth, I realized, is something that I could comprehend by harnessing my passion for cartography, looking at historic maps and tracking how the city's shape has changed from one era to the next.
To do this, I found thirteen historic maps of Almaty online and used my knowledge of the city's geography to pinpoint what exactly was changing from one year to the next. Some of the maps were meagerly labeled, so I used a cool trick: I uploaded them as image overlays to Google Earth and played with their transparency, so that I could line up the old maps with the new. What a revelation that was! With the pale outline of a 19th century map hovering over a modern satellite image, I could see the historic roots of the city's grid, the core that existed before the sprawl.
The oldest maps I could find were not old, per se, but mostly Soviet-era reconstructions of former city plans. Let's start with this first map below, showing Almaty's humble beginnings as a border fortification and cossack village in the Russian Empire.
To do this, I found thirteen historic maps of Almaty online and used my knowledge of the city's geography to pinpoint what exactly was changing from one year to the next. Some of the maps were meagerly labeled, so I used a cool trick: I uploaded them as image overlays to Google Earth and played with their transparency, so that I could line up the old maps with the new. What a revelation that was! With the pale outline of a 19th century map hovering over a modern satellite image, I could see the historic roots of the city's grid, the core that existed before the sprawl.
The oldest maps I could find were not old, per se, but mostly Soviet-era reconstructions of former city plans. Let's start with this first map below, showing Almaty's humble beginnings as a border fortification and cossack village in the Russian Empire.
Read on...
10 Almaty Sights for Fans of Kazakh Falconry
It's one of Kazakhstan's big cultural calling cards - the noble hunter with the eagle on his arm. Many people have seen it on BBC or read about it somewhere when they were kids, and when they get to Almaty, they're a bit bummed that falconers aren't found on ever street corner. You can find entrepreneurial men offering eagle photos at tourist sites, but real eagle hunters are hard to find. I know, because I spent years of my life doing research for something I called the Central Asian Falconry Project. Now my obsession has shifted from birds to brickwork, but I thought Walking Almaty readers might appreciate this one sub-project I worked on last year, a guide to falconry-related sites in Almaty. Even if you can't find a living, breathing eagle man in the city, at least you can find the cultural artifacts that this ancient tradition has left behind.
1. The Golden Man Statue
It is only sensible to begin our guide with the Altyn Adam, or Golden Man, an icon of Almaty in its central square. The statue is devoted to a Scythian warrier whose burial mound was excavated in a town outside of Almaty in 1970. Found on accident while planning a parking lot, the mound turned out to contain some of the best-preserved gold armor ever found (it had until then gone mysteriously unraided). The “Golden Man” became a symbol of nomadism’s past glories, and in 1996 a monument to the hero was erected in the Square of the Republic. The sculpture, designed by Shoti Walikhanov, is a fanciful interpetation – the Scythian is shown riding a flying snow leopard like a surfboard, a falcon perched on his fist. Who decided that the Golden Man was a falconer? I posed this question when I visited the Golden Man Museum at the excavation site, and the confident tour guide responded that a hunting eagle had been discovered in another burial site in Mangyshlak, Western Kazakhstan. “Okay, then why did they give him a falcon and not an eagle?” I nitpicked. “That’s a question for the sculptor!” said the guide.
Below the stela that lifts the falconer sculpture to the sky is a semi-circle of bronze, with several panels showing Kazakh history from its earliest Scythian roots to the trials of Russian colonialism and independence. On one panel is an archer, again with a falcon on hand. What do these artists have against eagles? Too big too carve?
Below the stela that lifts the falconer sculpture to the sky is a semi-circle of bronze, with several panels showing Kazakh history from its earliest Scythian roots to the trials of Russian colonialism and independence. On one panel is an archer, again with a falcon on hand. What do these artists have against eagles? Too big too carve?
Read on...
12 Bus Routes That Go to the Mountains in Almaty
Fifty cents, half an hour, and you're hiking in the Tien Shan
Visiting Almaty, it's hard not to notice the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains that serve as the city's constant backdrop. Locals call them their pride and joy, and tourists want desperately to visit them for a hike or just a look-around. Yet it's often tricky figuring out how to get there if you don't have a friend with a car - and if you're just a tourist, well, you probably don't have a friend with a car. That leaves Almaty's fantastic bus system. Many locals and guides can get you on a bus to Medeo, the city's most famous mountain site, but beyond that, it's as if the foothills and peaks of the city are reserved for the privileged few who can hire a driver or splurge on a taxi. Fear not though, fellow cheapskates! I've found twelve bus routes that can take you to the mountains for just 80 tenge, or less than 50 cents, and I've spent the spring and summer riding each one myself to bring you this report.
Bus 12 to Medeo
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The 10 Best Places
to Walk in Almaty
1. The Golden Quarter
The Draw: If a visitor comes to Almaty and exclaims "It's positively European!", chances are you'll find them in the Golden Quarter [Золотой Квадрат; Zolotoi Kvadrat]. This patch of downtown Almaty, bordered by Zheltoqsan, Bogenbai, Kunaeva, and Abaya, was the lair of the elites during Almaty's midcentury heyday, when the city was Kazakhstan's capital and every poet, pianist and politician seemed to live down the block. The Stalin-era houses, with their plaster ornamentation and pastel paint jobs, are exquisite, and there seems to be more space devoted to parks, fountains, and alleikas than there is to actual buildings. The aryks here run thick with glacial water, ancient flowerpots sit on every corner, and nearly every building has a commemorative plaque telling you which famous opera singer or dombraist used to call it home.
Nearby Attractions: If you're here, you're at the very center of the world, and almost everything is in reach: the Opera Theater, the Old Square, the tree-lined parkway Tolebaeva. This is a walk for somebody with a whole day on their hands, because so much history is packed into such a golden little square.
How to Get There: Most visitors stay within walking distance of the Golden Quarter, but if need be, the tram and the metro both run through this hood; the Almaly station puts you right in the heart of things.
Nearby Attractions: If you're here, you're at the very center of the world, and almost everything is in reach: the Opera Theater, the Old Square, the tree-lined parkway Tolebaeva. This is a walk for somebody with a whole day on their hands, because so much history is packed into such a golden little square.
How to Get There: Most visitors stay within walking distance of the Golden Quarter, but if need be, the tram and the metro both run through this hood; the Almaly station puts you right in the heart of things.
