Astana
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As the world comes to terms with the Coronavirus effect, I’ve been sitting at home, juggling my time between conducting online classes and remotely managing my work. Finding time to write is not the easiest thing to do, but I have finally managed to put together some of the key experiences from my trip to Kazakhstan. “Trip to Kazakhstan” is probably an incorrect phrase to use here. Trips tend to last days and weeks, or months at best. I was in Kazakhstan for almost an entire year — definitely not a tourist. Well, whatever way we put it, visiting Kazakhstan…
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If you ask any Kazakh to pick their favorite city between Nur-Sultan (Astana) and Almaty, the majority will opt for the latter. And when you ask them for the reason, the replies may run as complex as the history of Almaty, and as simple as “it’s just more beautiful”. So when I finally got the chance to visit Almaty, it made sense to indulge in a comparison with Nur-Sultan. After all, mine was a peculiar case — most visitors to Kazakhstan tend to have Almaty as their first point of entry.
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Continuing my travels through the ex-Soviet states, I reached Astana (now, Nur-Sultan City) from Tashkent. This post has been long due, but things kept getting in the way. Nonetheless, since I am not really a “tourist” in Astana, it makes sense to divide the write-ups by the topic, and publish them at regular intervals. Long story short, there will be a series of articles about Astana, this being the first one. Ever wondered what would happen if someone were to play Minecraft in real life? Like, build stuff from the ground up? Visit Astana, and you’d know.