If you jump into that radioactive water you'll feel better!

Day 60 - Almaty

Today we'd booked a half day tour to leave the city and see some of the mountain area around Almaty.

We started off in a mini van with 20 other people and drove through the leafy outer areas of the city, with trees showing their autumn colours, to see Big Almaty Lake, changing to SUVs for the last 12 kilometres. The lake has a similar aqua blue colour to some of the rivers and lakes we'd seen in New Zealand. The lake is the source of Almaty's water and is surrounded by snow capped peaks. It was also smaller than we expected and while it was pretty, spending an hour there was a bit long. It's a very popular attraction, when we arrived it wasn't too busy but by the time we left the place was full of people taking and posing for photos. 

We then drove to Alma-Arasan Gorge to see the hot springs, which are also known as the Radon Springs since the heat source is radioactivity. We were told that the spring water is said to have some health benefits, but also that people with cancer should not visit, and that if we did go in we shouldn't stay in the water more than 20 minutes.

The walk from the car park to the hot tubs was uphill and took about 20 minutes, following the stream that flowed down from the mountain. We didn't take a dip but there were plenty of people who did, including some quite old people who struggled with the climb but were possibly hoping for some kind of healing from the water.

From there M went exploring a little further, finding a very small waterfall, and also an old Soviet era sanitorium that the old Soviet leaders used to visit. 

After the tour finished and we were back in Almaty, M went exploring, jumping on a train going in the opposite direction to where he wanted to go, but it all turned out OK as it was a very pleasant walk back thorough town to where we were staying.