5-Day Kazakh Nomad Experience from Almaty: Assy Plateau Yurt Stay & Horse Riding

Kazakh nomadism is not a museum exhibit. Every summer families still move their horses and sheep from the valleys up to the jailau, the high summer pasture, and live in yurts until the weather turns. The Assy plateau, two hours above Almaty, is one of those pastures, and this five-day private tour takes you up to stay on it. You sleep in a yurt, ride with the herders, watch a kymyz mare being milked, eat what the camp eats, and spend an afternoon with a berkutchi and his golden eagle. It is the most direct experience of Kazakh life available anywhere near the city.

Why you will remember this trip

Sleep two nights in a traditional yurt on the Assy plateau at around 2,500 metres

Ride steppe horses with the herders who summer on the jailau

Watch a golden eagle flown by a berkutchi, in the hunting tradition UNESCO lists as heritage

Drink fresh kymyz and shubat, the fermented mare’s and camel’s milk that define the Kazakh table

See the Assy-Turgen observatory, a working Soviet-era telescope on the plateau

Learn to put up a yurt, which takes a family under an hour and will take you longer

Your 5 days

Day 1 — Arrive in Almaty, the Green Bazaar and the instruments museum

Day 2 — Up the Turgen gorge to the Assy plateau and the first night in a yurt

Day 3 — A full day on the jailau — riding, milking, yurt-building and the eagle hunter

Day 4 — A second ride, then down to Almaty and a Kazakh farewell dinner

Day 5 — Departure from Almaty

Private from start to finish

The jailau is a working pasture, not a resort, and access depends on a relationship with the families who use it. We arrange your stay with a specific herding family, and your guide interprets throughout so the visit is a conversation rather than a photo stop. The yurt is yours alone for the two nights.