#1. Shymkent
Southern Kazakhstan’s most vibrant city, with bustling bazaars and a lively downtown, Shymkent (Chimkent) has more of a Central Asian buzz on its leafy streets than anywhere else in the country.
The Mongols razed a minor Silk Road stop here; the Kokand khanate built a frontier fort in the 19th century; Russia took it in 1864; and the whole place was rebuilt in Soviet times. Little more than 100km from Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent, today Shymkent is a thriving trade centre that refines oil and brews two of Kazakhstan’s best beers, Shymkentskoe Pivo and the Bavarian-style microbrew Sigma.
Its population is about 65% Kazakh and about 14% Uzbek. It's mostly modern and brash, with a couple of good museums, but southeast of the main part of the city, across the small Koshkar-Ata canal, you’ll find the few remaining streets of pre-Russian Shymkent – a quiet, village-like area of wooden houses.