Читать книгу Alma-Ata – discouraging charm in the Centre of Asia. The subjective guidebook - Andrey Mikhailov - Страница 8

In mountains winter reigns longer than it does at their foot. And at the highest peaks, where bare rocks argue with eternal ice, its vacation is shorter than that of any civil servant in Nursultan. The sun will just warm up the tops and melt all the winter snow, but here we go again – black clouds are coming from behind the ridge, and icy rain begins to powder the slopes with the snow grains.

Middle altitude mountains with their lush forests and fir woods are another matter. We have the full-scale summer here. With hovering butterflies, fragrant raspberries and warm sun showers. Both spring and autumn are never reminiscent of bustling and hustling holidays here. That is why winter, as if understanding its soonest resignation, tries to do its best to show off. So, it presses fur boughs with piles of snow nearly down to earth, transforms rapid mountain streams into sparkling crystal, and buries strewn sharp boulders under layers of snow 1 m thick.

Our mountains are calm and quiet in winter. If you skirt few mountain cabins, shashlyk-smelling Medeo and arrogant Chimbulak, you can go deep into such forest serenity and such benchmark primevalness, which is haunted by amateurs from distant places, covering thousands kilometers, crossing many borders, and spending lots of money. Any Almaty citizen is a man of destiny in this regard. To see and feel all this bliss he just has to take a 30-minutes ride by bus and to pay 80 tenge only.