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Almaty, August 2024

Back in Almaty after eight years: the milky turquoise of Big Almaty Lake, storm light on the peaks, a calligraphed old Mercedes and the cathedral after dark.

Eight years after our first look at Almaty we finally came back, in the middle of August 2024. Same city, different season: the Trans-Ili Alatau green to the treeline, twenty minutes from the traffic, and evenings warm enough to keep walking.

Big Almaty Lake

The classic day out. You climb the road into the mountains until the valley opens onto a bowl of milky turquoise water with glacier-topped peaks behind. Photos don't oversell it.

Inga and Dileep standing on a grassy viewpoint above Big Almaty Lake, its pale turquoise water ringed by fir-covered mountains
Big Almaty Lake, August 2024. The water really is that colour.
Big Almaty Lake under heavy clouds, pale glacial water with forested slopes and bare peaks rising on both sides
Storm light over the lake. Ten minutes later we were rained on, worth it.

Around town

Down in the city it's plane-tree avenues, Soviet-era blocks, glass malls and the occasional time traveller parked at the kerb.

Inga with her arm around an older woman in a pink Full of Love t-shirt outside the MEGA Park shopping centre in Almaty
Family photo call outside MEGA Park, August 2024.
An old beige Mercedes saloon parked on an Almaty street with Arabic calligraphy painted along its side
An old Mercedes wearing Arabic calligraphy down its flank, parked like it owns the block.

We walked past the Ascension Cathedral again too, this time after dark, and it was still showing off. Our daylight photographs of it are in the 2016 story.

The cathedral lit up at night, painted domes and yellow walls glowing above wet paving and park lamps
Same cathedral, August 2024, night shift.

This visit stuck. We were back in the city a year later, and that one turned into a food story: Almaty, August 2025.