Turkistan Very cheap
Southern Kazakh food, closer to Uzbek: plov, samsa from a tandoor, and the bread. The cafés around the mausoleum are simple and cheap; the Karavan Saray restaurants are the new, dearer end.
Budget travel in Kazakhstan
What a visitor's money does in Kazakhstan: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Good value average across 5 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Kazakhstani Tenge (KZT) · 1 EUR = 513 KZT · 1 USD = 447 KZT
Tenge. Exchange booths (obmen valyuty) are everywhere in the cities, honest, and post the rate in the window; dollars and euros both change well, and clean notes matter. Cards are taken almost everywhere in Almaty and Astana and less so on the road.
ATMs
Avoid: the standalone machines in the bazaars, which charge and push conversion
Use: Kaspi, Halyk Bank, ForteBank
Bank machines are free with most foreign cards. Kaspi’s QR payments run the country and a foreign card cannot join them, so some cash is always needed.
Getting around
A short ride in Almaty: 1,000–2,500 tenge across town — cheap
From the airport: From the airport to the centre 3,000–6,000 tenge on the app, or the city bus for a few hundred
Cheaper than the cars waiting at the airport kerb, which quote three times the app.
City by city, cheapest first
Almaty Good value
The best eating in Central Asia: beshbarmak (noodles and horse meat) at a family table, plov, shashlik, and a restaurant scene that has arrived. The Green Bazaar for kurt (dried cheese balls), horse sausage and apples; the coffee is serious. A meal out is 5,000 tenge.
Charyn Canyon Good value
A café at the gate and an eco-camp at the river do shashlik and tea; bring water and lunch from Almaty. The villages on the road sell kumis (fermented mare’s milk) and the honey from the foothills.
Kolsay Lakes Good value
Homestays in Saty feed you: laghman, plov, fresh bread, kumis and endless tea. There is no restaurant. Buy anything you want for the trail in Almaty; the village shop has biscuits and vodka.
Astana Good value
Beshbarmak and kazy (horse sausage) in the restaurants on the left bank; Georgian and Uzbek places for a change. The malls have everything international. Eating out costs a little more than Almaty and the coffee is as good.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in Kazakhstan
AlmatyKazakhstanA city of apples and mountains, with a ski lift from the suburbs, a cathedral built without a nail, and the best restaurants in Central Asia
AstanaKazakhstanA capital built from nothing on the steppe in twenty-five years: a glass pyramid, a tent the size of a district, a tower to climb, and a winter of minus thirty
Charyn CanyonKazakhstanA red-rock canyon three hours from Almaty that looks like Arizona and empties like Kazakhstan, walked in an afternoon
Kolsay LakesKazakhstanThree lakes stacked up a valley of the Tien Shan, a drowned forest in a fourth, and horses to ride between them
TurkistanKazakhstanThe mausoleum Timur built for a Sufi poet, the holiest place in Kazakhstan, and a new tourist city built around it