Almaty has one metro line, eleven stations and a four-thousand-metre mountain range starting at the end of the avenue. It is the only city on this list where you can have breakfast in a café and be skiing two hours later.
The Almaty metro opened in 2011 and it is small: one line, eleven stations, on an axis crossing the city from north-east to south-west. The stations are spectacular — marble, mosaics, worked lighting — because they were designed in the Soviet tradition even though they were finished twenty years later.
With a single line, the metro solves part of the trip and not all of it. For the rest there is a dense, cheap bus network using the same card.
The city is laid out on a grid and on a slope: the mountains are always to the south, so orienting yourself is surprisingly easy. “Up” is south, towards the Tian Shan; “down” is north, towards the steppe.
And what really defines Almaty is right on that southern edge: Medeu and Shymbulak, the high-altitude skating rink and the ski resort, half an hour by bus from the centre.
Almaty is enjoyed at street level and in the mountains. These seven split between the two.
Everything above you can do on your own with this page open. This other thing we build for you: the same idea as always — you do not know what you got until the day before — applied to Almaty.
You choose where you fly from and where you are going, and we tell you what the adventure costs and roughly what getting there would cost. Flights and accommodation you book yourself: we are not a travel agency and we do not want to be.
Flat fare and a single card — the Onay — for metro, bus and tram. It does not depend on distance.
The Onay is bought at any station and also works on bus 12, which is the one up to Medeu. With that sorted, the rest of the trip is trivial.
If you want it line by line — which stations each one has, what is around every stop and how to work out a specific journey — we have all of it at our guide to the Almaty metro. It is one of the sites we publish ourselves, and it is free.
Almaty airport is about fifteen kilometres north of the centre and has no metro.
Three. One for the city — Panfilov Park, the bazaar, Kok-Tobe — one for Medeu and Shymbulak and a third for Big Almaty Lake or the Charyn canyon, three hours away.
120 tenge a ride with an Onay card or paying by QR or NFC in the app, whatever the distance. The reduced fare is 60 ₸.
No. The metro does not climb the mountain: you get to Medeu on bus 12 from the centre, about 30–40 minutes, and continue by cable car to Shymbulak.
Citizens of the European Union can enter without a visa for short tourist stays. Confirm the current conditions for your nationality before travelling.
Almaty, without hesitation, for a trip. Astana is the capital and has striking architecture, but Almaty has the mountains next door, more street life and a good deal more to do.
This is what we do when we travel. The other thing we do is build adventures where you do not know which activity you got until the day before.
