The Wild Deserts, Deep Canyons, and Teal Waters of Mangystau, Kazakhstan
Matjaz Corel/Alamy
Nothing is more instructive than being wrong, and there’s no quicker way to be wrong than to have expectations. My arrival to Aktau, in Kazakhstan's Mangystau region, was by cargo ship, and over that 24-hour voyage, spent with long-haul truckers drinking duty-free whisky, I had plenty of time to imagine what awaited me on shore: a port city that was rough, brutalist, suspicious. At first sight, Aktau was brutalist, if only architecturally, but it was far from rough or suspicious. And while not beautiful, or even very pretty, there was something alluring about the place from the get-go.
“We won’t stay long,” said a Dutch couple I met in town. They were traveling overland to China, and had many places to be; they’d spent a day in Aktau. “It’s a small town. I think we’ve done it all.”
Done it all—what did that even mean? I was from a town of 1,000 people, and even there, I knew it was possible to find something new. Aktau has nearly 200,000 inhabitants, and was growing every day; the outskirts of the city were a construction zone edging the desert, with camels grazing in the unfinished alleys. Finding something interesting is only ever a matter of being invested, and spending the time. And the longer I stayed, the more interesting things I found.
Aktau is as near Istanbul or Moscow as it is Kazakhstan’s capital Astana. London is only a direct 6-hour flight away, and although I was there as part of a longer visit to Kazakhstan, one could feasibly come for a weekend adventure. But despite its remoteness, between the Caspian and the Ustyurt desert, where nothing comes easily, there's a sense of enterprising self-rule.
Rock trail in Aktau. Coast of the Caspian Sea. Rock trail. Kazakhstan. Aktau city.
On my visit, I found bakeries selling sourdough bread and croissants, excellent coffee (not long into my two-week stay, the staff at Mr. Ponchik had my americano down pat each morning) and a shopping mall with a year-round ice-skating rink. There was a taste for Japanese and Korean food, and Burger King (there are four of them), but I also found excellent local food—I ate roasted camel at Bozjyra restaurant, and grilled sturgeon at Aidyn, on the Caspian seafront, and can vouch for both.
In the evening, families and lovers descend to the Caspian Sea promenade to eat icecream and hotdogs, and enjoy the rides of the mid-city fun fair. There are karaoke bars, and a local rock music scene fed by a love of the Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
The owner of Mang’o Hostel, where I was staying, was one of those musicians. One night he showed me into the basement, where he had built a stage, and filled it with all manner of instruments: a Kazakh dombra, electric guitars, a piano, an upright bass. He also presented a spread of shashlik (roasted meats) and Kazakh whisky (I’d refused the vodka). The generosity was commonplace: in Kazakhstan, the tradition of konakkade demands that guests are well-fed and watered. But you might have to sing for it, as I did, as the custom also stipulates that a host may demand music from a guest. We spent a long night trading blues and country songs, and finished the whisky, one stultifying shot after another.
There never was a village of Aktau, until the Russian Empire established a mining outpost here in the late 1950s. The nomadic Kazakh tribes used the land as a winter pasture—the name Mangystau comes from a Turkic phrase meaning “1,000 tribes in the wintering place.” I saw the land with the last of the winter green; the camels, sheep, and cattle still held the fat of the cooler months.
I have written that one descends toward the Caspian, but that’s not quite true. Really, one goes up to it. It is when going eastward, into greater Mangystau and the expanse of the Ustyurt desert, that one descends, dropping some 440 feet below sea level. Most of Mangystau is a loner’s playground: empty, teal-water beaches, honeycomb rock formations, sacred underground shrines, and salt pans baking under a hard sun.
There are various local social-media based tour companies that take visitors on one or multi-day trips into greater Mangystau. The travelers I met on these tours were Russians, many of whom lived in self-exile in Kazakhstan. The others were Kazakhs, who were themselves discovering this distant part of the country: visitors from Almaty and Astana who were eager to visit the underground mosques and canyonlands of the Ustyurt desert. Talking with them, stumbling through with feeble Russian (the online translator reigns supreme), I felt I was at once on the edge of something and right in the middle of it. This was travel stripped of its guardrails, guided only by human patience and kindness.
One day, I took a Mangystau Safari tour to visit the Valley of the Castles, a sweeping glen that is the Travelling Wilburys of natural rocky sites—one member from all the iconic sites: a segment like Cappadocia, a Dolomite-like structure, a part from the Valley of the Kings, a bit of Picos de Europa, a bit of Chile’s Torres del Paine.
Mother and son walking at bizarre chalky mountains, colorful rock formations of Boszhira in Western Kazakhstancliff
We sat together and ate tea and plov in a meadow dotted with white flowers, tulip in shape, with sharpened, spear-like petals. Their name—snezhnik—means “under the snow,” as that is where they sprout, opening with the snow melt and returning the land to white.
“Ah! Lepota,” one of the Russians on my tour said. It was from Ivan Vasilivich’s film Minyet Professio. “It’s an old-fashioned word for beautiful,” he said. “Like gorgeous?” I said. “Exactly!”
Another day, I joined Mangystau Safari again, traveling some 150 miles in the other direction, to Bozzyhra, a deep canyon dominated by the hard rock inselbergs that have withstood five million years of erosion. It is a landscape more of vision than observation; the canvas is too grand. It is too large for words, too large even for music. No sound can fill a landscape of that size; everything that is said gets swallowed by the chasm, with not even the faintest bounce of an echo. The monuments that mark the basin—variously named for ships, teeth, and yurts—are as grand and tremendous as America’s famous Monument Valley; they are giant stalagmites on the earth, formed by the mineral-drip of some unseen cave-roof too high to see.
This was once the floor of the Tethys Sea, and these monuments were the roots of tiny islands. Though the water bucket has since run dry, we still are only the size of drops. Aktau grows, but the wilds of Mangystau remain inimitably deep.
There was yet more to see—wild horses and noodle-nosed saiga antelope, coves of turquoise water filled with shipwrecks and sea snakes, and camel caravans on the Turkman border. One day, a friend handed me a small, chunky booklet. Across the cover was written “Mangystau Passport;” each page backdropped with a local wonder. He’d designed the tract as a future gift for the tourists he hopes will one day find his part of the world.
How to get there
Kazakhstan’s national carrier, Air Astana, has four direct flights between Aktau and London weekly, from $500 USD.
Aktau grows so quickly that even Google Maps can’t keep up. Locals use an online map called “2giz” to find their way around; addresses come in a two-digit rubric of micro-district and building number.
Where to stay
Budget travelers will find a great place at Mang’o Hostel, where a private room costs $18 USD. For those wanting more frill, just across the street is the upscale Caspian Riviera Hotel, with two on-site restaurants, sea-front access, and a giant aquarium filled with beluga sturgeon (doubles go for $155 USD per night).
Where to eat
In a city filled with great coffee shops, Mr. Ponchik (aka Mr. Doughnut), in the 4th micro district is the best. Both Aidyn and Bozjyra restaurants offer excellent Mangystan cuisine.
What to do
Private jeep tours run around $500 USD per person per day, while single-day shared trips cost about $30 USD per person. The difference is accommodation, not destination; guests on jeep tours stay in the desert overnight, while the bus-bound return to Aktau in the evening. Instagram-based company Mangystau Safari offers both options.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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