January in Astana, Kazakhstan — A freezing and futuristic capital city

Astana was chosen as the site for the new capital of Kazakhstan in the late 1990s and was intricately planned. The buildings have an incredible Soviet-Futurism style to them and the wide open spaces across the city make for some incredible views. The city is quite frigid and temperatures dropped below -30c during my visit in January. Most people visit this part of the world in the summertime, but I love snow and thought that the winter weather would make the city more fun to explore.

I stayed in the Northern Lights Towers with a luxurious AirBnB unit that cost under $40/night. The lower floors of the tower were in disrepair and had some sketchy groups of men hanging around at night drinking vodka. I got a beautiful view of the presidential palace and capitol grounds from my window. The city is quite cheap by western standards and shopping malls sell luxurious items for remarkably low costs.

The cuisine is very meat focused and horse meat is commonly served at nice restaurants. They also drink horse milk, which is an absolutely foul tasting drink and also mildly alcoholic. As a vegetarian, it could be difficult to find meals. There are a lot of stunning buildings like the spherical Nur-Alem Museum and Astana Opera House, but many of them were closed to visitors, possibly because I visited in winter. Most of these buildings are within walking distance of the presidential palace, with suburban areas looking a lot more run down.

English is not widely spoken. Within the city, it seemed like Russian was more commonly spoken than Kazakh and many people changed the translation app from Kazakh to Russian when we tried to communicate. The river is frozen solid in the wintertime and you will see people casually walking across the ice to the other side. They also drive snowmobiles across the ice for recreation.

I really enjoyed visiting Astana. It may feel a bit cold or sterile to some and may have less to do than other cities like Almaty. However I visited for the remarkable architecture and winter weather, and those certainly did not disappoint. This was my favorite destination from anywhere in central Asia.