The Green Bazaar
Almaty’s central market is the Green Bazaar, technically Kök Bazaar. I walked there from my hotel. A nice walk. Sights and sounds of Almaty.
It opened in 1875 but was rebuilt after an earthquake later that century and then rebuilt multiple times over the decades. The market does not look interesting from the outside. It’s just a big green building. Nondescript. Inside though, it is bustling with everything you could want from a Central Asian market. Piles of colorful fruits and vegetables. Bins of spices. Jars of pickled … everything. Nuts and dried fruits. Locally made honey. Horse meat. And unidentifiable food items.
I took a lot of photos of everything; the familiar and the new. Smiling at vendors and sampling items as they were offered.
The butchery section of any market is always one of my favourites. I just find it fascinating and gruesome. We never see this stuff at home (unless you’re actively involved with the killing and processing of animals for food). And I do love gross stuff, so seeing piles of hearts and stomachs, intestines strung up like morbid party streamers, severed heads staring back…I love it.
As far as markets go, the Green Bazaar was not gruesome. Pretty tidy actually, but still vastly unlike the markets we have in Canada. There was the section for horse meat (of course, of course). Horse meat is a staple of Central Asia. It doesn’t bother me at all. Meat is meat and I don’t eat any of it.
My favourite thing about the Green Bazaar though was the dairy section. They had very local and specific products that I would eat: fresh and fermented camel, cow, and horse milk. I didn’t care for the fermented milks, but the fresh camel milk was excellent. (I think this is more due to the freshness and quality more than the animal of origin.)
Also, they had qurt, which is a fermented and dried milk ball. It was created many years ago as a portable source for calcium and protein that nomads could carry without risk of spoiling. It comes in many different varieties. I can’t summarize all of the differences, except that some are from different animals, and some have different amounts of salt. The consistency is like really hard chalk, and it tastes…strong. Salty and pungent. I really liked it, a fact that seemed to delight the woman at the stall who let me sample everything.
The Metro
I went to some different areas of Almaty that day. Partly just to check out some different neighbourhoods; partly to look for a specific cigar lounge that I never did find. I walked a lot but also used it as an opportunity to take the metro.
The Almaty metro is not super comprehensive, nor is it very old, but it is nice. Each stop is a little different in its design and decoration. One had a stained-glass window of an apple tree (Almaty means ‘city of apples’); another has this 1960s modern style décor. (Lousy photos, but you get the idea). They feel quite Soviet but opened in 2011.
My favourite thing about the metro though was that when you buy your fare (super cheap: 80 Tenge, which is about 25 cents Canadian) you get a bright yellow, thick plastic token. It is oddly satisfying – and ended up being my only souvenir.
I spent my evening with cigars and shisha at what became my favourite evening patio. The next day I would cross the border to Kyrgyzstan by a car and foot combo.
