im planning on visiting kz in september.. do you have any tips for me? im an american female traveling alone, you think it will be relatively safe for me to travel around alone? can you recommend any good hostels or tour companies for getting around? thank!
Hello and sorry for taking a long time to answer – I have been incredibly busy with helping with a wedding the last couple weeks.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ll be much help here, I have barely traveled within Kazakhstan. I know the biggest cities, Almaty and Astana, but hardly anyplace else. And the question of safety really depends on where exactly you are planning to travel and how much of the country you wish to see.
For the aforementioned big cities, and also Shymkent, Semei, Oskemen, I would say it’s pretty safe to walk around anywhere, there aren’t really discernable ”bad neighborhoods“ or anything of that kind. Be careful during the night as you would be in any city, use well-lit roads, don’t listen to music, and such. Any local troublemakers will probably be intimidated enough by you being foreign to try anything, but there might be some unpleasant catcalls/attempts to flirt.
The safest mode of transportation between cities (aside from plane ofc) are trains, though they are not very comfortable. KZ is huge and getting from a city to city can take a day or more. I wouldn’t advice hiring a driver to take you between cities unless you hire them from a traveling agency/your hotel. Loaning out a car and driving around yourself might work if you are a very experienced driver – drives are long and tiring, and some highways leave much to be desired in terms of quality. I definitely wouldn’t advice hitchhiking alone – maybe, MAYBE if you find ppl to do it with and they are experienced.
Overall people are fairly friendly, especially if you approach women/families for help. Be prepared to gesture and draw pics to communicate though, because in smaller cities the chance of people understanding English is minuscule. When buying stuff/getting into a car, and just generally getting around, try to project confidence – it will be less likely you will be messed with.
I’m sorry but I don’t think I can recommend you any traveling agencies. What little traveling within KZ that I did, I did with my family who are pretty experienced. And we always stayed with my extended family wherever we traveled.
Hope this helped a bit!
