It is not easy being a pescetarian in Astana, or in Central Asia, and it is even harder to be a vegetarian. Now, I am a pescetarian, but even then, you probably realized that my lists of places to eat in Astana hardly includes much seafood. After all, it is far away from the sea. […]
Beyond Pizza and Pasta: A Vegetarian’s Guide to Astana Read More »
Pizza is love; pizza is life. Though some may think that I should add the restaurants below to my “occidental restaurants in Astana” article, I beg to differ. I spent way too much time trying so many different pizzerias in town that they simply deserve a royal treatment, in the form of getting a separate
Best Pizzas of the Steppe: Astana’s Top Pizzerias Read More »
Though occidental food has its charms, it is the orient that truly knows what it is doing. Sue me. I have always been a huge fan of noodles, ramen, sushi, and so on, and I am glad to report that Astana will sate your appetite for some decent oriental cuisines, as far as the more
East of the Tian Shan Mountains: Best Oriental Restaurants in Astana Read More »
I prefer making my short articles here as thematic as possible. For that end, for the next six weeks, I will go over some of the finest eateries of Astana in a very categorical way. We will start by looking west, beyond the Caspian Sea, which is what “the West” is for those of us
Beyond the Caspian Sea: Best Occidental Restaurants in Astana Read More »
After hearing that Nursultan Nazarbayev himself wanted to be buried in Turkistan, I knew that I had to visit that little yet famous town no matter what. It was already a rather big destination among Turkish visitors of Kazakhstan, and as they introduce more and more flights to its small local airport, I can already
As the third biggest city in Kazakhstan, I had some high hopes for the food scene in Shymkent. Though I know that as a pescetarian choices would be limited for me, its sheer size could help me overcome some such limitations with my diet. This turned out to be true, but compared to the likes
Restaurants of Shymkent: Which to Frequent and Which to Avoid? Read More »
Despite it often being joked about as being mostly populated by Uzbeks, Shymkent stood out in my travels around Kazakhstan as the city with most Kazakh speakers. This is not to say that there are not any Uzbeks in town, in fact, there are quite a lot of them. But what really grabbed my attention
Astana, being the capital of Kazakhstan, is home to a surprisingly few number of museums. There are certainly a few good ones, but the numbers are certainly not on Astana’s side, especially if you are interested in museums with a more historical focus. I am more in favour of the museum scene in Almaty, and
With almost 1.3 million people living in it, Astana is by no means a small city. This combined with the fact that it is a recently planned capital city means that there is a lot of “stuff” to see in it for travellers of all kinds. In this article, we will be covering the best
Astana has a few things to offer to its visitors. I would not necessarily call it a tourist destination, planes that fly here are often full of suits not holidaymakers, but I suppose it does have its advantages for that reason alone. For example, being able to see pretty much anything I list in this