Route: Tashkent – Shymkent – Tashkent (route with border crossing).
Total distance: 240 km Tashkent - Shymkent - Tashkent

Description:

• Tashkent: Pick up from your hotel/airport/train station and transfer to the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan border. Cross the border. Meeting with our driver. Start of the trip. Along the way you can see the camels and at some stop try mare's milk.

• The Sacred Mound of Kazygurt: Along the road, we make a pit stop for the visit of “Noah's Ark“. Once the Great Silk Road passed through these places. Many legends and beliefs are connected with Kazygurt. According to one of them, Noah's Ark landed at the top of the mountain.

• Shymkent: Scientists mentioned that the city is at least 800 years old. Firstly, the name of the city is given by a medieval historian writes that in 1365-1366, during Tamerlane's military campaign, his army stopped in the village of Chimkent near the city of Sairam. Caravans of the Great Silk Road passed through Shymkent until Genghis Khan's troops captured the city in the XIII century. Nowadays, Shymkent is administrative centre of the South Kazakhstan region.

• Citadel: old town has already existed since the 9th century. And the oldest mosque and minaret also have been preserved there. The citadel is considered to be the same age as Tashkent, more than 2200 years. The highest point of the city is also located in the citadel, which offers a panoramic view of the entire city.

• Ordabasy Complex - under the citadel there is a shopping area in which a new complex was built.

• Zher Ana Complex - was also erected in this territory, which symbolises the independence and freedom of Kazakhstan.

• Independence Square: It was opened in 2011 in the historical part of the city, and is the largest and newest park in the city.

• Metallurgists Park - one of the most beautiful parks in the city, the park of was built before the war and located in a city quarter which was built by German and Japanese prisoners of war.

• Arbat Shymkent: The local “Broadway” is the business card of the city. Furthermore, here we can visit the upside-down house which now one of the more preferred attractions of citizens.

• Museum of Victims of Political Repression: In this museum you can get more information and knowledge about Stalin's repressions against the Kazakh people.

• Russian Orthodox church: Cathedral of St. Nicholas was built in 1988 during the reforms (perestroika) of the Soviet Union.

• Abay Park: In the centre of the park is the Alley of Glory, a memorial complex to the events of the II WW, the central place in which is installed Memorial of Glory. The park is named in honour of Abai Kunanbayev, the great Kazakh poet and educator, the founder of modern Kazakh literature and philosophy, and to whom a monument has been erected on the territory of the park.

• Tashkent: Finishing the tour of Shymkent, return to Tashkent and on the way some stops to take photos of green camps (April-May), farms and livestock farms.