Exploring Almaty on Whoosh

After crossing the border in Korday, It was a long boring ride to Almaty where the landscape changed drastically to open grassy plains. 

I met up with Chye & May in Almaty joining up with them at their preferred hostel which was quite a distance away from downtown city center. That night was chores as usual, sim card obtained and food stocked up, the next day I went exploring.

Chye & May was already in Almaty for nearly a week and they were doing maintenance to the Camper Van while applying for their Russian Visa. Hence I had a day to explore Almaty on my own. 

Almaty was the largest city in Kazakhstan and I did not want to ride around in a busy city. I noticed they had electric kick scooters everywhere and decided to try registering with the app WHOOSH to access the system.

Almaty

Picked up a Whoosh electric kick scooter in Almaty

It required a local Kazakhstan number to register and luckily the new simcard did the trick. The cost on the high end side if compared to busses yet it was cheap enough that a 10km journey which usually took 15 minutes would cost about 1000 tenge. (Around SGD 3) The taxi would maybe cost 2000 tenge and the bus 100 tenge.

The crazy thing was, the scooter was the fastest means of transportation in Almaty during rush hour. The traffic jams in Almaty could rival those in KL and after getting caught in one for an hour I decided to stick to the scooters especially when the weather was 24 degrees outside.

Apparently its a Strip Club. I thought it was a Bar

Exploring downtown Amaty 

I Whooshes downtown just seeing how the city was like then stopped for a walk where it looked nice and then picked up another Whoosh to go through the boring streets to the park, seeing the Ascension Cathedral before zipping away again to find insurance for Bragge.

Suddenly I had so much time in Almaty with the Whoosh. Initially thinking I would need a few days to explore Almaty, the Whoosh helped me speed up the sightseeing so I decided to take the cable car up to Koktobe hill. 

Inside the Accession Cathedral in Almaty

Accension Cathedral in Almaty 

Koktobe was a little amusement park on top of a hill just at the edge of Almaty city which gave a bird eye view of the city itself.

City of Almaty - Kazakhstan

City of Almaty - Kazakhstan 

Traveled on: June 2024