Shalkar Lake
The brackish, egg-shaped Shalkar Lake – 65km south of Oral – measures 15km x 18km and receives water from two rivers on the east side:
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Oral is a lively city nestled on the banks of the Ural River. Like Atyrau city, it marks the geographical divide between Europe and Asia. It’s barely 30km from the Russian border, so the city’s cultural landscape is a vibrant blend of Kazakh and Russian influences.
Ural Cossacks founded Oral (aka Uralsk in Russian) in 1584, although other sources officially date the city’s start as 1613. Establishing it may have involved encounters with the Mongol-Turkic Nogai Horde, who controlled extensive areas of western Kazakhstan and parts of the Lower Volga River Basin.
The Cossacks’ first settlement in the area was a fortified camp on the confluence of the Chagan and Yaik (Ural) Rivers. Today, this ancient part of the city is called ‘Kureni’, after the word for a Cossack house (kuren).
Nikolai Gogol vividly depicts Cossack life in his romance novella, Taras Bulba (1834). Although it’s set in the Ukrainian steppe, the story takes place just two decades before Oral’s founding, and the protagonist, Taras, is a Zaporozhian Cossack. Together with his two sons, Andrii and Ostap, he travels to the semi-autonomous Cossack quasi-state of Zaporozhian Sich to prepare for war against Poland. Like Oral, the ‘Setch’, as it’s colloquially referred to in the novel, is a Cossack riparian settlement—on Khortytsia, the largest island on the Dnieper. Taras and his son’s landing on the island gives us some idea of how early Oral might’ve looked:
“On their arrival, they were deafened by the clang of fifty blacksmiths’ hammers beating upon twenty-five anvils sunk in the earth. Stout tanners seated beneath awnings were scraping ox-hides with their strong hands; shop-keepers sat in their booths, with piles of flints, steels, and powder before them; Armenians spread out their rich handkerchiefs; Tatars turned their kabobs upon spits; a Jew, with his head thrust forward, was filtering some corn-brandy from a cask.”
British scholar W. E. D. Allen’s book*, The Ukraine: A History, elaborates further on the layout and functioning of the Khortytsia fortified settlement. In it he describes moats made with stockades of tree trunks and trenches surrounding the two-gate fortified settlement, along with “stiff hedges built of dried branches and clay” forming an inner line. Within the hedge walls were long huts covered with reeds, which he referred to as “kurenyi”, with up to several hundred Cossacks living in each one, plus a “chancellery” and food and weapons storage. Outside the gates were shops, taverns, a marketplace for selling booty acquired on campaigns, and lodging for travellers, particularly “Russians, Armenians and Jews—and, in time of peace, Turks and Tartars”. A small river harbour existed too, visited by Greek, Italian, and Turkish ships.
Although history frequently stereotypes Cossacks as marauding and lawless, Allen suggests they were much more than that because of their structured governance and communal practices. Within each kurenyi, they elected an ataman (leader) yearly. And, collectively, through the rada (council), a hetman (military commander) and administrative officials were chosen as well. This assembly was crucial for making significant decisions. As winter waned, the Cossacks used a lottery system to determine the responsibilities for the year: some prepared for military campaigns, others defended the sich, and a select few embarked on hunting and fishing expeditions. Booty from their raids was divided equally in two as well, with one part going to the sich’s treasury and the other to their church and any monasteries supported by the Cossacks. Anything unwanted or left remaining was shared equally among the men, rewarding both those who ventured out on campaigns and those who stayed behind to tend to the community.
Moreover, the sich allowed members to come and go freely. Entry for new arrivals or returnees was easy too, with the hetman asking, “Dost thou believe in God?” If the answer was “Yes”, he simply had to cross himself, which was seen as adequate proof that he was a Christian. Once in, no one asked further questions about their reasons for coming to the sich, their origins, or their identity.
* Note: Not to be confused with Ukrainian-Canadian historian Orest Subtelny’s 1988 book of a similar name, Ukraine – A History, which was published to international acclaim and considered a definitive history of the country.
The Ural (aka Yaik or Yaitsk) Cossack’s autonomy was short-lived. In 1591, they accepted Russian citizenship. In 1613, the settlement’s name officially changed to Yaitskiy Gorodok. After Yemelyan Pugachev‘s uprising (aka the Pugachev Rebellion), from 1773–75, Russian Empress Catherine the Great was ticked off and quashed the city’s Cossack identity by renaming the town to Uralsk, the Yaik River to the Ural, and referring to Yaik Cossacks as Uralsk Cossacks.
Despite multiple Cossack revolts from 1804 to 1874, all of which were suppressed, Uralsk prospered. Merchants and agriculturalists were central to its growth, with cattle breeding, fishing, and melon growing being its staple industries. According to the Russian Empire’s first and only census, conducted in 1897, the Ural Region, of which Uralsk was the administrative centre, had 293,000 inhabitants. Over 90% were Russian/Cossack and Kazakh, 5% were Tatars, and the rest were Kalmyk, Bashkir, Mordovian, and Ukrainian (referred to as Malorussian, meaning ‘Little Russian’). Although small in numbers, most of Uralsk’s traders were Tatars, and their work helped to bridge the sometimes tenuous divide between Russians/Cossacks and Kazakhs. They also served in the army and, with their publishing connections in Kazan, Tatarstan, they kick-started the city’s first newspaper around the turn of the 20th century. Poet Ğabdulla Tuqay was one such famous Tatar involved in the city’s publishing industry.
In 1870, the Gazette of Turkistan Province, based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, printed the first-ever Kazakh-language news as a supplement.
In the mid-1860s, the Russian Empire’s railway network totalled 3,265km. Roughly ten lines were in operation or under construction, linking major cities and towns, such as St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Vienna, Nizhny Novgorod, Riga, as well as the Volga-Don region. With a desire to increase military power and boost grain exports out of their Latvian seaports of Liepāja (fka Libava) and Riga, Emperor Alexander II (r. 1855–81) expanded the network to connect central-west Russia with the Urals and Lower Volga region.
In 1894, Uralsk’s first railway arrived in town, providing a direct line to Engels (fka Pokrovskaya Sloboda), on the banks of the Volga, 360km to the west. The new network was called the Ryazan-Ural Railway, and included a fleet of passenger and cargo ships on the Volga, as well as ones for carrying the trains across the river between Engels and Saratov.
One of the worst tragedies to strike Uralsk, apart from the Civil War and WWII, was a fire in April 1879 that started at an oil storage facility. A reporter for the Orenburg Diocesan Gazette said three-quarters of the city was ruined, the harbour wrecked, and some 2,000 houses destroyed. Strong winds reportedly tore trees out by the roots, overturned houses, and lifted them into the air. To make matters worse, the river rose several feet above its normal levels and flooded the town. Virtually everything up to the banks of the Chagan River was obliterated, making thousands of families homeless.
Orenburg, Uralsk’s closest Russian city, was affected too, with some 1,500 homes and shops destroyed. The Orenburg fires lasted for three weeks and caused 14.5 million rubles of damage in old money, which sure sounds like a king’s ransom back in the day. The international news picked up on it too, such as The New York Times and The Cardiff Times.
The Russian Civil War (1917–1922) was a trying time for Russia and its surrounding territory. The military arm of Lenin’s Bolshevik regime, the Red Army, moved into Uralsk in 1919. This led to siege attempts by the Ural Separate Army, who were part of the White Army commanded by Alexander Kolchak. Ural Cossacks formed the lion’s share of the army, numbering up to 25,000, and defended the Southern Urals and Volga region. After months of fighting, the Reds, who were better-equipped, pushed out the Ural faction, under the command of Vasily Chapaev.
Like Europe and Russia, Kazakhstan was hugely impacted by WWII. Roberto J. Carmack estimates in his book, Kazakhstan in World War II, that over 1 million people were mobilised in the country, and 450,000 were ethnic Kazakhs. There were over 100,000 Kazakh casualties, with many fighting in various battlefields on the European continent.
Oral was near the rear of the Stalingrad Front and served as an air defence point. It also had over a dozen industrial enterprises producing equipment and supplies for the front, some of which were relocated from the USSR’s western regions for safety. The Zenit plant is one of the best known. It produced ET-80 torpedoes, artillery shells, M-08 contact mines, and repaired equipment. Today it specialises in shipbuilding and repairs, as well as metal fabrication, welding, and galvanising. Other wartime factories were involved in felt production, car repair, tanning, and more.
Oral, as it’s officially known today by its Kazakh name, is the West Kazakhstan Region’s capital city. It’s the fourth-largest contributor to the country’s manufacturing industry, after the Atyrau, Mangystau and Karaganda Regions. Its principal activities are building construction and agricultural equipment, extracting oil and gas from the Chinaryovski and Karachaganak deposits, food production, breeding stock, and growing a wide range of crop, from grain and oilseeds to potatoes and melons.
Given Oral’s long-standing connection to its northern neighbour, the city has a diverse mix of both Russian and Kazakh architecture, culture, and history on offer. Here’s our rundown of what to see and do in the city and nearby.
Oral’s central bazaar is on 38 Zhahansha Dosmukhamedov Street, and its main entrance is on the east side of Mukhit Street. Like most major markets in Central Asia, it has everything you need: fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, fish, and clothes. On the north side, on Dina Nurpeisova Street, there are the Atrium, Forum, and Moscow Market shopping centres, and the Hotel Ural.
The Yemelyan Pugachev Museum on 35 Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue is in an 18th-century wooden house, originally owned by Ural Cossack Pyotr Kuznetsov. Rebel leader Pugachev, who sought to end serfdom in the Russian Empire, lived in the house for a couple of months and married Pyotr’s 17-year-old daughter, Ustinya Kuznetsova, in February 1774. It was his second marriage too, as his previous wife, Sofya Nedyuzheva, along with their three children, were detained in Kazan, Russia, under Catherine the Great’s orders142.
Pugachev’s capture in August 1774 cut short his time in Oral and his marriage to Kuznetsova. His legacy in the city lives on through the museum, which has a well-preserved interior with portraits of Pugachev and his associates, some of his personal possessions, swords, cannon balls, and gifts from Catherine the Great given to military leaders for capturing Pugachev. The museum also acts as a historical site, giving visitors a glimpse into everyday Cossack life with a kitchen, fishing equipment, and bedroom on display.
Open: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm
Tel.: +7 711 226 4986
Tickets: ₸150 per person or ₸600 for a guided tour
Lauded female soldiers play a prominent role in the Soviet Union’s WWII history, such as Aktobe’s Aliya Moldagulova (sniper), Atyrau’s Khiuaz Dospanova (pilot and navigator), and tank drivers Mariya Oktyabrskaya and Aleksandra Samusenko from Crimea and Belarus, respectively. Oral had one of their own, too: machine-gunner Manshuk Mametova.
Mametova was the country’s first woman to receive a Hero of the Soviet Union award for her bravery on the Kalinin Front in Tver, Russia. Born to a shoemaker in Bokey Orda District, south-west of Oral, she spent most of her time in Almaty, with her aunt, Amina Mametova, and uncle, Ahmet Mametov caring for her. Before taking up arms against the Germans, she studied nursing and later enrolled in Almaty’s Kazakh National Medical University. It took her a few attempts to convince the Red Army to enlist her. She was accepted in September 1942 to work as a field hospital nurse, and in her spare time she trained herself to use a Maxim, which was the world’s first fully automatic machine gun. The 20-year-old’s marksmanship impressed her commanders, so they invited her to join the 100th Kazakh Rifle Brigade.
She spent a year on the Kalinin Front and gained a reputation for her gutsy fighting style, apparently luring enemy soldiers to approach before opening fire and crawling between machine-gun posts while under attack from mortars and shells. In her final and fatal battle, she killed over 70 combatants. Her comrades buried her in Nevel, Russia, and erected a monument in her memory.
In 1982, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of her birth, Oral opened the Manshuk Mametova Museum. It’s on 51 Saraishyk Street and the single-floor house-museum showcases Manshuk’s diaries and letters, as well as books and photographs donated by her mother. There are also items on display found near Mametova’s resting place on the frontline, such as her helmet, flask and machine-gun belt, and information boards and dioramas outlining the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Kalinin Front.
For a feel of the museum’s interior and exhibits, and other highlights in the city, watch Kazakh travel filmmaker Alimbek ULAN’s Uralsk city vlog.
Open: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm
Tel.: +7 711 250 4693 and +7 711 250 6210
Tickets: ₸100 per person
Near to ART Hostel is a square on 60 Manshuk Mametova Street, featuring statues dedicated to Khiuaz Dospanova, who undertook 300 sorties, along with Aliya Moldagulova, and Manshuk Mametova herself.
Three hundred metres north-east from the statues, along Zhukov Street, is a small monument to Georgy Zhukov who, soon after WWII, commanded the Ural Military District, which encompassed several Russian regions near the Kazakh border. In the 1950s, he became the Soviet Union’s Minister of Defence. He also held several other prestigious positions during his career and won four Hero of the Soviet Union awards for his battles against the Nazis and Japanese. In the West, Zhukov was admired by some for his pivotal role in military victories, notably by American historian Albert Axell who titled him ‘The Man Who Beat Hitler’ in his biography, and by former US President Dwight Eisenhower, who praised him as a “well-trained, splendid military leader.”
One of Oral’s oldest buildings is the Cathedral of Archangel Mikhail, on 68 Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue. Construction began in 1741, when the city was still a wood-walled Yaik Cossack fortress. It took 10 years to complete, replacing a smaller wooden church built at the start of the century. The Cossacks funded its construction and erected a brick factory nearby to make construction more efficient.
A master from Novgorod oversaw the project and built it under the Pskov School of Architecture‘s signature style. Between the 12th and early 17th centuries, the institution was one of Russia’s most influential architectural schools. The only feature of Oral’s cathedral that isn’t traditional is a four-storey-tall Gothic-style bell tower on the north side.
Halfway through the Pugachev Rebellion, in 1774, the cathedral was the site of a showdown between Catherine the Great’s soldiers and armed peasants led by Yemelyan Pugachev. For months, the soldiers had control of the fortified town and were using the cathedral to store food and gunpowder. Pugachev sympathisers tried several times to overpower them. On their last attempt, they dug a tunnel under the bell tower – where the gunpowder was stored – and detonated a charge.
Despite losing dozens of men in the explosion, the soldiers won the ensuing battle. A few months later, the rebels surrendered and agreed to capture Pugachev, in return for a pardon. Rumours say his captors put him in a cage in the cathedral’s basement before transporting him to Moscow for public execution the following year.
In the first half of the 20th century, the cathedral closed for several reasons—the Russian Civil War, the famine under Joseph Stalin, and forced closures because of Soviet anti-religious legislation. Although it was reportedly used for worship between 1943 and 1961144. In 1988, after serving as a museum for 20 years, community members reverted it to a place of worship, with its classically frescoed interior and iconostasis fully intact.
Open: Monday–Sunday, 7am–6pm
Tickets: Free
In 1833, legendary poet and novelist Alexander Pushkin visited Oral to conduct archive research and interviews for his book, A History of Pugachev. He stayed in Cossack leader Vasily Pokatilov’s house, on 168 Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue, which is just a few minutes’ walk north of the Children’s Cinema (in the House of Anichkhin), and the Museum of Nature and Ecology.
The Pushkin Museum opened in 2006, in two of the rooms of Pokatilov’s old house. Both Vladimir Putin and the former Kazakhstan president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, attended the opening. Beautiful early-19th-century furniture decorates the main museum room. On display are letters from Pushkin to his wife, Natalia Pushkina-Lanskaya, sculptures, portraits, and historical photos. There are also information signs about Pushkin and some of the other high-fliers that stayed in the house over the years, such as Leo Tolstoy, and from Kazakhstan, writer Abai Kunanbaiuly and poet-intellectual Shakarim Kudaiberdiev.
Open: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm
Tickets: ₸200 with a ₸1,000 surcharge for taking photos.
Built in 1900 on 47 Karev Street is Karev House, one of Uralsk’s largest historical buildings. Wealthy merchant Alexander Karev commissioned its construction as a mixed-use building. It was used in several ways over the years, such as apartments, a hotel, shops, two cinemas, and an Officer’s Club. Today, it’s home to the Scientific Library named after journalist and writer Zhuban Moldagaliev, along with the Regional Philharmonic named after Garifulla Kurmangaliev, who was a popular opera singer and performer from the region. A century later, it’s still one of the city’s largest buildings, spanning more than half a block to the junction with Frunze Street and Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue.
According to local rumours, Karev competed with another successful merchant, Mr Ovchinnikov, who lived on the other side of the road. He sought to ruin Ovchinnikov’s view and block the sun from reaching his balcony by making his building one floor taller. However, he sadly died shortly before its completion after he fell from the scaffolding while inspecting the progress of construction.
Founded in 1836, the West Kazakhstan Regional Museum of History and Local Lore is one of the country’s oldest museums. It was first set up within the Ural Military School’s building, which is now the Pushkin Hotel. The Russian explorers and naturalists Grigory Karelin (d. 1872) and Nikolai Severtsez (d. 1885) were involved with organising some of the museum’s earliest exhibits. In 1980, it moved into the former Russian-Kyrgyz craft school’s building on 184 Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue, where it stands today. The USSR’s Ministry of Culture recognised it as the country’s best museum and awarded it with an Order of the Red Banner of Labour, which was the Soviet Union’s third-highest civil award.
Looking at it today, it’s not surprising the USSR thought of the museum so highly. There are over 100,000 items and it has eight exhibition halls covering topics such as ancient history, Kazakh ethnography, and the Golden, Nogai and Bukey Hordes. Intriguing artefacts are in abundance, too, ranging from arrows and tools made by Eurasia’s largest Bronze Age culture, the Andronovo; two-millennia-old silver and gold jewellery and horse fittings from the Saka people; and weapons and portraits of pre-19th-century Kazakh warriors and leaders.
Open: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm
Tickets: ₸200
Less than a minute’s walk south of the museum is Abai Square. On the east side of the square is the Ural Regional Drama Theatre (aka the Russian Drama Theatre), and opposite the museum on 185 Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue is the Kazakh Drama Theatre. Both theatres put on regular performances, ranging from original productions for adults and children to classic plays, such as Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Gogol’s Marriage.
Overlooking the square is an eggshell-yellow building serving as the administrative office for the West Kazakhstan Region, referred to in Kazakhstan as an akimat. Built in the late 19th century, in Renaissance style and featuring a balcony decorated with Cossack sculptures, the Russian Commercial and Industrial Bank used it, as well as soldiers, Cossack deputies, and the local Communist Party.
Less than a kilometre north of the square, along Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue, is the seven-domed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. In Soviet times, the cathedral housed a museum of atheism and a local history museum. On the other side of the avenue is a nearly five-metre-tall bronze statue of the 18th-century warrior Syrym Datuly, who engaged in various battles against the colonial policies of Tsarist Russia and led the Kazakh detachment of Pugachev’s army. From here, it’s a 20-minute walk north along the avenue and east along Evrazia Avenue to reach Uralsk’s Central Mosque, which has a dome made of German glass, French carpets, and Italian stained glass.
Across the road from the Pushkin Museum is the Museum of Nature and Ecology, on 151/2 Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue. There are three rooms, with the first displaying fossils, mammoth tusks, and the bones of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. The other two rooms have displays of the region’s contemporary flora and fauna, which include stuffed Asian elk, wild boars, wolves, cases of butterflies and moths, and various bird, plant, and fish specimens.
Tel.: +8 711 250 6709
Across the road from the Museum of Nature and Ecology, on 166 Dostyk-Druzhby Avenue, is the Gagarin Children’s Cinema named after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. It’s in a two-storey brick building built in 1893 that belonged to Lieutenant-General Longin Anichkhin and his family. In 1904, A.L. Savva, the son-in-law to the Karev merchant family, rented out the ground floor and opened Modern, the city’s first purpose-made cinema. Before then, cinemas in the area were mobile, pop-up ones.
By the time the Bolsheviks took over the building, after the October Revolution of 1917, the Anichkhin family was long gone. However, the cinema continued, but was renamed Kyzyl Tan, meaning ‘Red Dawn’—which is also the name of a Tatar-language newspaper (est. 1918) published in Bashkortostan. According to local historians, Ticket to Life was the first film with sound shown in the city, in 1934.
Today, the cinema, despite its name, shows films for people of all ages, including Soviet-era ones. One of the most famous historical films relating to Oral is Kazakh director Mazhit Begalin’s Russian Civil War drama, Steppe Peals (aka Uralsk on Fire), released in the 1970s. Upstairs is the region’s Department of Culture, Archives and Documentation, as well as the Ardager Club, where older people and Soviet war veterans meet, play chess, and hold literary and music events.
To the right of the cinema is the Khamza Yesenzhanov Regional Library for Children and Youth, in a wide, two-floor yellow building originally built for the Russian Empire’s military. Yesenzhanov was an accomplished local writer and widely recognised in the Kazakh SSR for his Ak Zhaiyk trilogy of novels set locally during the Russian Civil War and early Soviet period. There are nearly 200,000 books in their collection, making it the largest library in the West Kazakhstan Region.
Saken Gumarov was a prominent producer-director for Uralsk TV, a journalist, and a painter. The museum on 120 Kasim Amanzholov Street has three rooms displaying Gumarov’s distinct and colourful artwork.
Critics compared his work to Sergei Kalmykov and Wassily Kandinsky. However, he was little-recognised for much of his artistic career, as some considered his style too rebellious for Soviet taste and child-like. Recognition for his work came in the last decade of his life, in 1990, with his first-ever exhibition in Kyiv, Ukraine. During this period, he held some 40 exhibitions throughout the Soviet Union. Ever since his rise to fame, critics have debated whether his work was avant-garde, abstract, or post avant-garde. The Ukrainian art community, whom were very fond of him, considered his style pioneering and classed it as a new movement: Attractivism. From Gumarov’s point of view, he thought of his work as ‘thought forms’, which comprised symbols, hidden themes, and images. He even liked to say that the spirits of dead ancestors led his hand while painting, and some of his friends believed he had extrasensory capabilities and could see into the future.
Gumarov had an abundance of creative talent beyond the visual arts, too. He was a stage actor, created a TV puppet show, wrote poetry, read the Koran in Farsi and Arabic, played the dombra, and set up the region’s first live broadcasts of theatrical performances. He also studied Sufism and other spiritual-philosophical disciplines.
Alzhan Kussainova’s and Nikita Bassov’s biographical article, in Air Astana’s Tengri magazine (January 2021), encapsulates Gumarov’s nuanced character beautifully:
“[He] was modest and laconic, but he radiated the delicate charm of a person with a noble soul and a loving heart. There was never a shadow of the prosaic or philistine about him. He lived with his spirit, dreamed of great ideas and illuminated all those around him with his quiet inner light. He was a very special person, and his incredible paintings are testimony to this.”
After his death in 1995, his studio turned into the museum and the Children’s Art School on 71 Ikhsanov Street was named after him.
Open: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm
Tel.: +7 711 251 2043
Tickets: ₸100 per person.
Less than 10km north-east of the city is Sutyagin, an oxbow lake next to the Derkul River. Overlooking the southern side of the lake is Kumyska village, named after a Soviet-era tuberculosis therapy centre that treated patients using Kazakhstan’s national drink, kumys (mare’s milk).
The effectiveness of kumys for treating tuberculosis is debatable. According to a 2020 paper by Orenburg State University, it’s still used in some areas of Russia’s Orenburg Region. The USSR had over a dozen centres offering kumys treatment that were dotted around the Orenburg and Lower to Middle Volga regions. Treating Covid with kumys was used in Kazakhstan during the Covid-19 pandemic, too.
The 3-kilometre-long lake loops around a peninsula, which is only accessible from a natural land bridge in the north-east corner. It’s here that you’ll find an unusual looking two-floor 19th-century church made of green and red bricks. This building, as well as a smaller one next to it, was also used as a military hospital in WWII.
Four kilometres south-east of Sutyagin Lake is Sadovskoe Lake, which is an oxbow formed out of the Chagan River. In the 19th century, a nunnery was built on the peninsula in honour of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. Before this, Old Believers settled the area, and later on it was a collection of gardens owned by Uralsk’s elite families, such as the Mizinovs, and the Borodins, who were an ancient Russian noble family.
Donations from local parishioners and affluent merchant families funded the construction of Sadovskoe nunnery. Many of the monastic community were Cossack widows, who previously came to the gardens to pray for their loved ones fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. In the 1920s, after the Russian Civil War, Soviet authorities abolished the monastery and converted its gardens into a state farm. The Pokrovsky Convent, as it’s known as today, re-opened in 1994 on 28 Bagban Street in Uralsk, beside the Chagan River.
Nothing remains of the nunnery, gardens, or Old Believer settlements today. However, the peninsula is worth visiting for its peaceful acorn and oak-filled woodlands. If you visit, you might spot the odd tombstone, as well as apple trees seeded from the long-gone gardens. The apples grown in north-west Kazakhstan, and undoubtedly from Sadovskoe, were a favourite of Russian Tsars and even won an award at the 1900 Paris Exposition.
In 2016, Kairat Karimov and Roza Umurzakova opened a garden nursery on the peninsula to grow and study variety-rootstock combinations. By 2020, they had 5,000 apple trees, encompassing 200 varieties, and 80 types of rootstock. They grow grapes and other fruits, too, and have plans to open a medicinal garden and scale-up their production to an industrial level.
There’s accommodation near the south-west corner of the lake, in SAYAT Ethno-Tourist Centre, which specialises in equestrian training. To book, contact them via WhatsApp on +7 705 802 1717.
Eighty kilometres west of Oral and less than 10km from the Russian border is Eshki Tau, also known as ‘Big Ichka’ in Russian and ‘Goat Mountain’ in English. At circa 259m above sea level, it’s the highest peak in the West Kazakhstan Region. Although its size isn’t impressive, the views of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe from the top are worth it, as shown in this illustrated article about Eshki Tau.
On the slopes there’s an ancient 1,200m2 aspen forest, which are the only large trees for miles. Somewhere on the mountain are eight Early Iron Age burial mounds made of earth and stone. The nearest town is Tasqala, 12km south of the mountain. From here, a road leads north to Krasnenkoye. However, before leaving Tasqala, we suggest popping into a local shop and double-checking whether any permits are required, as it’s a protected ecological zone and regarded as a natural monument.
The only travel company in Oral that specialises in domestic tourism is the West Kazakhstan Tourist Information Center (WKTIC). It’s a division of the Foundation for the Promotion of Scientific Research (FSNI), which runs scientific projects, expeditions, volunteer projects, and educational programs throughout the West Kazakhstan Region. To enquire about trips, contact WKTIC via their Instagram page or call them on +8 7715 95 00 88.
For general advice about visiting Oral and the West Kazakhstan Region, Visit Uralsk is a useful resource. It’s run by the regional government’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Industrial-Innovative Development. They do not arrange trips.
Getting to Oral is convenient, with easy access to Russia, distant Kazakh cities via railway, bus, and flights, as well as nearby towns and villages in north-west Kazakhstan through local buses or taxis. This is a quick overview of the transport options.
Oral railway station is in front of Chapaev Square on Zhukov Street. There are direct trains to Aktobe (10–12 hours), Aktau (38 hours), and Astana and Almaty (40–50 hours), as well as most major towns and cities along the way.
For Russia, trains head to the neighbouring Volga region, such as Saratov (10 hours). Although nearby, no trains directly connect Atyrau and Russia’s Orenburg and Samara cities. Trains to Aktobe and many other destinations in northern Kazakhstan cross through Russia, so make sure you have a visa, unless you’re exempt.
There are plenty of taxi companies in Oral, and for the right price, they’ll go just about anywhere. Local firm Taxi Online, provides modern cars and drivers for the 7-hour drives to Atyrau and Aktobe, as well as to neighbouring Russian cities, such as Samara, Orenburg, and Ufa (4–8 hours).
For more numbers of vetted taxi firms, visit GoTaxi.kz and TaksoPark.kz. Taxi apps like Taxi Maxim, Yandex Taxi, inDrive and Poehali! have drivers available, too. As a general guideline, the meters start at ₸500 and it’s an additional ₸180 per kilometre.
Hazar, the city’s bus station, is on 4A Syrym Datova Street and the official website, zkap.kz, offers online ticket booking. However, not all their stops are listed or easy to book online, so we recommend sorting tickets directly at the terminal. Alternatively, try Tutu.ru and Busfor.ru.
The station opened in 2019, next to the old bus station, which is now a supermarket. It’s at the eastern end of the city and easily reached by taxi or bus. Tourister.ru has a list of Oral bus numbers that go to Hazar. The station services dozens of destinations in the West Kazakhstan and Atyrau Regions and works with multiple Russian carriers for journeys to the Orenburg and Samara Oblasts.
Air Astana, FlyArystan, and QazaqAir run direct domestic flights to Atyrau and Aktau (1.5 hours), as well as Almaty and Astana (3 hours).
Oral Ak Zhol Airport, as it’s officially known, is a 17km, 25-minute drive south-east of the city centre. From 6am to 10pm, the No. 12 bus runs between the airport and the central train station. There’s also the No. 61 to Terekti town (fka Fedorovka), 30km to the east, and the No. 283 to Orenburg, Russia, which takes over four hours. There’s a taxi rank, too, but it’s significantly cheaper to book one in advance. If you hire one on the spot, expect to pay upwards of ₸10,000 for a trip to the city centre.
The brackish, egg-shaped Shalkar Lake – 65km south of Oral – measures 15km x 18km and receives water from two rivers on the east side:
Perched on the western tip of the Tub-Karagan Peninsula is the city of Fort Shevchenko and its satellite port town of Bautino. It’s the Mangystau
Boszhira is Central Asia’s rival to the USA’s Monument Valley National Park, with the bonus of no crowds. Packed into a 7km x 7km area
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