Medeu Walks

Medeu on a clear frozen morning

The bus up Dostyk Avenue was half empty and fogged on the inside. By the time the road left the last apartment blocks behind and started climbing along the Malaya Almatinka river, the windows had cleared and the spruce on the slopes were white to the tips. The air at Medeu, roughly 1,700 metres up, is thinner and colder than in town, and it smells of snow and of the smoke from a kiosk grilling corn.

The rink itself is enormous, a great flat oval of ice laid in a bowl between steep hillsides. Even on a weekday morning there were families going round in slow loops, a man in a fur hat skating backwards with his hands behind him, and teenagers racing along the outer lane. The loudspeakers were playing something from the eighties. Skate hire was near the entrance; the boots were stiff and a little damp, which seems to be part of the tradition.

After an hour my ankles gave up and I sat on the stands with a paper cup of tea, watching the sun come over the ridge and turn the ice from grey to a glassy blue.

• Skating sessions run in blocks, with a break for resurfacing; check the schedule at the ticket office on the day.
• Bring your own thin gloves; the hired skates do not come with any warmth.
• The rink can close in warm spells or very heavy snow, so ask before making the trip.

The steps up the dam

Behind the rink rises the mudflow dam, a huge earth wall built to protect the valley and the city below from the debris flows that come down after heavy rain or a burst glacial lake. A long concrete staircase goes straight up its face. People quote different numbers for it; the sign I saw said a little over eight hundred steps, and my legs agreed with every one.

There is no trick to it. You climb, you stop at one of the landings, you pretend to admire the view while getting your breath back, and you climb again. Old men in tracksuits passed me without any visible effort. A woman near the top was doing it with a small dog tucked inside her jacket. It took me about twenty-five minutes with plenty of stops.

At the top the wind arrives all at once. On one side the rink lies far below like a coin; on the other side there is a quiet reservoir basin and the gorge running on towards Shymbulak. Coming down is harder on the knees than going up, so I took the road that winds down the side instead.

• The steps are open-air and can be icy from late autumn to spring; wear shoes with real grip.
• Take water. There is usually nothing to buy at the top.
• The winding service road is longer but much gentler for the descent.

Up to Shymbulak by cable car

The gondola starts a short walk above the rink and lifts you over the gorge in stages. The first section floats over dark spruce forest and the tops of the avalanche barriers; the second opens onto the bare white bowl of Shymbulak with the ski runs fanning out below the Talgar pass. From the cabin you can sometimes see back down the valley to the haze lying over the city, flat and brownish, like a lake of its own.

I am not a skier, so I spent the day walking the paths near the base station, drinking tea at a wooden café and watching the beginners slide sideways down the gentle slope. Up there the sun is fierce even in March. I came back with a sunburned nose and the particular tiredness that comes from altitude rather than distance.

Heights are approximate and from signs and maps I saw; the upper lifts depend on weather and may be closed in wind.

Walking down from Medeu to the city

One of my favourite long days is not a climb at all. I took the bus up in the morning and walked back down along the road and the river, letting gravity do most of the work. The first stretch passes dachas with blue-painted fences, guest houses, a horse grazing on a narrow strip of grass, and the river loud and milky with snowmelt.

Lower down, the gorge widens and the first apple trees appear in gardens, in May still covered in pale blossom. Somewhere around the sanatorium buildings the traffic gets heavier and the pavement becomes intermittent, so I crossed to the riverside paths where I could. Eventually Dostyk Avenue straightens and the city begins properly, with plane trees, coffee kiosks and the low hum of cars.

• The road has stretches with no pavement; walk facing traffic and keep to the edge.
• Descending for hours is harder on the knees than it sounds; walking poles help.
• Buses run down the same road, so you can give up at almost any point.

Kok-Tobe at sunset

Kok-Tobe is the green hill with the television tower on the south-eastern edge of the city. The cable car leaves from near the Palace of the Republic on Abay Avenue and glides in a long line over rooftops, gardens and swimming pools that you never knew were there. Below, the city looks orderly and leafy in a way it never does from street level.

At the top there is a small amusement park, a few cafés, a little zoo-like enclosure, souvenir stalls and the famous bronze statue of the Beatles on a bench, where couples queue to sit next to them. It is touristy and slightly silly and I like it very much. The best part is the terrace at dusk, when the lights of Almaty come on block by block and the mountains behind turn pink, then purple, then disappear.

I walked down instead of taking the cable car back, along the winding road past private houses with dogs barking behind tall gates. It took about forty minutes to reach the bottom.

• Weekends and holidays bring long queues for the cable car; weekday evenings are calmer.
• It is noticeably cooler on top, even in summer. Bring a light jacket.

The road to Big Almaty Lake

The lake lies in a separate gorge to the south-west, at roughly 2,500 metres, and reaching it is half the adventure. The road climbs along the Bolshaya Almatinka river through birch and spruce, past a small hydro station and a scattering of picnic spots where families were already setting up samovars and grills at ten in the morning.

We took a taxi part of the way and walked the last few kilometres, which climb steadily on rough asphalt and gravel. The lake appears suddenly over a rise: an unreal turquoise, the colour of glacier milk, with bare peaks standing straight up behind it. It is a reservoir that supplies the city, so swimming is not allowed and there are rangers to remind you.

The wind off the water was cold enough that we ate our sandwiches with our hoods up. On the way back the light turned golden in the birches and the river was roaring.

• Access rules and checkpoints change over time; ask locally whether the road is open and whether a fee is charged.
• Start early. Afternoon clouds often hide the peaks and can bring sudden rain.
• The altitude is noticeable; walk slowly and drink plenty of water.
• Do not go near the water's edge on steep banks; the rangers mean it.

Apples, and the orchards that remain

The name Almaty is usually explained as something like "full of apples", and the wild apple forests of these foothills are often described as one of the ancestral homes of the fruit. Most of the old commercial orchards have long since been built over, but in autumn you still notice apples everywhere: on trees overhanging garden walls in the upper districts, in buckets on the roadside towards the mountains, in heaps at the bazaar.

I walked up through the private-house streets above Al-Farabi Avenue one October afternoon, and nearly every second garden had a tree bent under fruit. A grandmother sweeping her doorstep handed me two apples without a word and went back to her broom. They were small, a little sour, and very crisp.

The famous large apple of the region is the aport, red-striped and heavy, sometimes the size of a small melon. Genuine old-style aports are said to be rare now, and the sellers will all swear that theirs are the real ones.

On the way down I passed a whole family sorting apples into crates on the pavement by size, the smallest ones going into a sack for the neighbour's horse.

• Roadside sellers on the way up to the mountains usually have the best prices in early autumn.
• Wild apple trees in the foothills are protected in places; admire them, do not break branches.
• Late September to mid-October is the peak of the season, though it varies from year to year.

Green Bazaar, slowly

The Green Bazaar, Zelyony Bazar, is a big covered market in the old centre with stalls spilling out into the surrounding streets. Inside, the hall is bright and noisy and divided by trade: dried fruit and nuts in tidy pyramids, honey from the mountains in jars of every shade, piles of spices, the dairy section with kurt balls, cream and white cheeses, and the meat hall, which is not for the squeamish.

Sellers call out to you and offer a taste of everything: a dried apricot, a sliver of smoked horse sausage, a spoon of honey, a cube of sweet halva. Taking a taste does not commit you to buying, but it is polite to buy something if you have tasted a lot. I came away with walnuts, a jar of dark mountain honey and more dried apples than one person needs.

• Mornings are busiest and freshest; the market winds down in the late afternoon.
• Prices are usually displayed but small discounts are fine to ask for at the dried-fruit stalls.
• Hold on to bags and pockets in the crowded aisles, as in any market.
• The bazaar is closed one day a week; check locally which day.

Panfilov Park and the wooden cathedral

A few blocks from the bazaar is Panfilov Park, a large shady square of old trees, paths and benches, with a war memorial and an eternal flame at one end. Pigeons, wedding parties and elderly chess players share it in roughly equal measure. In October the leaves fall in great yellow drifts and the park keepers rake them into piles that children immediately ruin.

In the middle stands the Ascension Cathedral, usually called Zenkov Cathedral after its architect. It is built mostly of wood, painted in candy colours of yellow, pink and white, and it is often said to have survived a severe earthquake in the early twentieth century when much of the town was destroyed. Inside it is dim, warm and smells of wax and incense. Visitors are welcome outside service times; women usually cover their heads and nobody takes photographs during worship.

I like to sit on a bench facing the west front with a cup of coffee from one of the carts, watching the light move over the domes.

Trolleybus days and the metro

For a while I made a point of riding the old trolleybuses whenever I could, partly for nostalgia and partly because they are slow enough to actually see the city. The older ones hum and creak; the newer ones are quieter and warmer. Both glide up the long avenues towards the mountains with the poles on the roof crackling occasionally on frozen wires.

The metro is short, a single line running roughly east to west under the city, but the stations are worth a visit for themselves: marble, mosaic, stained glass and bronze, each one decorated around its own theme. It is warm in winter and cool in summer, and on a slushy February day I rode it end to end simply to stay dry and look at the ceilings.

• Most city transport now works with a transport card or a phone payment; ask at a kiosk how to top up.
• Rush hours on the bus routes up Dostyk and Furmanov can be very full.
• Photography rules in the metro have changed over the years; follow what the staff say.

First snow on the Medeu road

The forecast promised rain in the city, which in November usually means snow higher up, so I took the morning bus to Medeu just to see it arrive. At the bottom of Dostyk the pavements were wet and black; by the sanatorium the verges were grey with slush; by the last bend before the rink everything was white and silent, and the bus slowed to a careful crawl behind a gritting lorry.

The rink was not yet open for the season, and the stands and the dam steps were empty except for one determined runner in a red hat. Snow sat on every branch of the spruce, and the river below the road ran dark and fast between new white banks. I walked up the service road beside the dam, leaving the first footprints of the day, and the only sounds were my boots, the water and, now and then, a lump of snow sliding off a tree.

In the small café by the bus stop the windows were steamed up and the radio was playing quietly. A plate of hot baursaki, the puffy fried dough that comes with almost every meal here, and a pot of black tea with milk cost very little and felt like a feast. I watched the snow get heavier, then caught the bus back down into the rain.

• Early snow can close the upper road and the gondola without much notice; check before setting out.
• Even a light covering makes the dam steps slippery. Small slip-on crampons are worth having in winter.
• Bus timetables thin out in the off-season; note the time of the last bus down.

Seasons in the foothills

People in Almaty talk about the weather constantly, with reason. The city can swing from summer to snow in a week in spring or autumn, and the mountains are always a season behind the streets below. This is my rough sense of what to expect, with plenty of exceptions.

The one constant is that the sun at altitude is strong. Even on a cold day in January I have come down from Shymbulak with a red face.

Practical things I keep relearning

None of this is expert advice, just what I wish I had told myself on earlier trips.

• Layers, always. It can be about ten degrees colder at Medeu than in the centre, and more again at Shymbulak.
• Sunglasses and sun cream are not optional at altitude, especially with snow on the ground.
• Carry some cash in small notes for kiosks, bus tickets bought on board and roadside apple sellers.
• Start walks early. Afternoon cloud and thunderstorms are common in the warmer months.
• Stay on marked paths near the gorges; the slopes are steep and the rivers are cold and fast.
• Learn a few words of Russian or Kazakh: hello, thank you, how much. People appreciate the effort.
• In spring and early summer, ticks are a real concern in the foothill grass; check yourself after walks.
• Opening hours, ticket prices and access rules for the rink, the cable cars and the lake change often. Check them locally before you set out.

Everything here is from personal experience and may be out of date by the time you read it. Ask at your guest house, look at the notices at the ticket offices, and use your own judgement in the mountains.