Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country on Earth and one of the least explored — the canyons of Charyn, the futuristic capital Astana, the Silk Road mausoleums of Turkestan, the Altai mountains and even the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Distances are huge; with a private driver and guide, they become part of the adventure.
Nur-Sultan (Astana) Futuristic Capital & Burabay » 7-Day Tour is a 7-day private tour of Kazakhstan, run on your own dates with a private guide and driver. You stay in 4-star hotels in the cities and comfortable guesthouses or yurts in remote areas, with full board on steppe and mountain days.
Prices are per person and drop as your group grows — from $1610 per person for two travellers down to $1050 for a group of seven. Every departure is private: you never share the vehicle or the guide.
7-day Kazakhstan itinerary
Met in Astana, a capital conjured out of bare steppe in 1997 on the personal insistence of one president, and built by the world's most famous architects with oil money and no restraint. The Bayterek is its emblem: a 97-metre white lattice tower holding a golden sphere, representing the tree of life and the mythical bird's egg inside it. Go up at night.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
A day of architecture that should not exist on an empty steppe where the winter hits −40°C. Khan Shatyr is Norman Foster's transparent tent — the largest in the world, a shopping centre with a beach inside it. The Palace of Peace and Reconciliation is Foster again, a pyramid built to host an inter-faith congress. The EXPO 2017 site is a giant glass sphere. The whole city is a statement, and it is worth reading.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
Ak Orda, the presidential palace, and the Grand Mosque, which was the largest in Central Asia when it opened. Then two hours north to Burabay — 'Borovoe' in Russian — where the flat steppe suddenly buckles into granite outcrops, pine forest and lakes.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
Kazakhs call Burabay their Switzerland, which is generous, but the place is genuinely beautiful and it is theirs — this is where the country holidays. Zhumbaktas, the 'sphinx rock', rises straight out of the lake and changes shape depending on where you stand; the legend attached to it involves a girl, three suitors and a decision nobody survived. The afternoon is on horseback through the pines.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
The Kokshetau uplands — 'blue mountain' in Kazakh — and the lakes that give the region its name, then back across the steppe to Astana. The drive itself is the point: hours of absolutely flat, absolutely empty grassland, which is what most of this country actually is.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
The Hazrat Sultan Mosque, which held the title of Central Asia's largest, and the National Museum for the Golden Man — the Saka warrior buried in four thousand gold plaques who is now the face of the republic. Then the flight south to Almaty.
Overnight: 4-star hotel.
A transfer to Almaty airport for your onward flight. End of our services.
