Photos from Around Almaty back to Heinz Homepage
Last Updated: 1/20/2008
Kazakhstan is oil rich and prosperous, but much work still needs to be done to replace the crumbling Soviet infrastructure. Kazakhstan has roughly 16 million people, roughly 7 million Kazakhs and 7 million Russians and 2 million other nationalities.
Almaty (where we live) is in southeastern Kazakhstan. It is the largest city (by far) with over 2 million people in the metropolitan area.
Kazakhs are Asian Muslims. Only 1 out of 700 Kazakhs profess Christ.
Russians are European. They tend to be Russian Orthodox or Atheist. Around 1 out of 350 Russians profess Christ.
Kazakh Mosque (above), Russian Orthodox Church (Right), Evangelical Church (Below)
(Next 3 photos below) Fully loaded soviet car in city traffic, and trucks selling building materials along the road .
Mountains that look much like the Rockies lie just to the
south of Almaty.
There
are high-elevation pasture lands in those mountains.
Shopping takes much more time here. For hard to get items like cereal, cake
mix, and chicken breast you have to "buy it when you see it".
The
western edge of the city (left) is called Kalkaman.
95% of the roads her are gravel or dirt (right) but the whole area is being upgraded to look more like the center of the city.
(below) The road we live on is paved. Hurray! Since Almaty is a highly active earthquake zone, the gas pipes are run above ground .
