On one of those beautiful mountains that we were constantly seen with a balcony, you can get directly from the city center by cable car that starts at the park at the corner of Prospect Abay. Gora Kok-Tube - a place of cultural leisure Alma-Ata.
Lifting starts at one of the tallest buildings in the city - the hotel "Kazakhstan", topped with a crown on the roof. One trip up the funicular is 800 tenge - about 160 rubles. The station is always crowded ocheridi plays a Kazakh popular music and fun rush children. In a small booth packed mass of people, like sprats in the bank. The whole mass together groans and sticks to the glass, when the cabin moves off and shaking, begins his painful ascent to an altitude of 1130 meters above sea level. Outside the window - covered with smog and smoke baggy city parks, suburban-type houses and overgrown with greenery and trees of the mountain.
Kok-Tube (or, in Kazakh, Kok-Tobe) - an excellent example of how the city administration of, to some extent, nothing makes a profitable, nice looking place. We put on the mountain cableway, laid out neatly plitochku, equipped with viewing platforms, set rides, a cafe on the cliff, shopping souvenir shops. Here is, incidentally, one of the three sites of the Beatles on the post-Soviet space (the I, unfortunately, did not photograph). View from Kok-Tobe offers breathtaking. Photograph is, however, very difficult.
Once we've done plenty of photos, we went to explore local attractions. I am with Maxim has attracted laid on a cable car up the hill and over the cliffs sharply winding narrow railway, on which now and then slid the people on some red pieces. It turned out that this is the most fashionable city in the fun - you pay 1,000 tenge per room, sit in a plastic sled with handles on each side, fastened, and when the command is given, go to the most ferocious flight that you can imagine. You are facing down the mountain and at a speed of 40 km / h you are on a constantly changing angle and winding path above the city, over the houses, parks and people. There are no words to describe how this exciting business. When we went to Maxim to ride a second time (so anyone who can show the ticket on the funicular, is given a second trip), it began to rain. So ride became even more interesting - the way soaked and began to slide sled at speeds of 50 km / h. And those two knobs, which I mentioned, are the brake and gas at the same time - if you're too scared, just pull the handle on the tub itself and stops to squeeze them out - with a whistle breaks down, sideways, left, right, up. In general, if I ever come back to Alma-Ata, then spend on these hills all day.
In Kok-Tobe high prices, but here all the same every evening coming local to rest. Similarly, once terribly unloved Parisian Eiffel Tower was to make money - rise up costs money. It seems a trifle - to see the city with a bird's eye - but pleased.
Due to the fact that we spent almost all their money on the sled down the hill we went on foot along the path. It takes about 25 minutes and the road can be directly under the 372-meter Almaty TV tower, the tallest building in the city. At night she constantly changes its color with the acid-yellow to bright pink, then green, blue, red and again. Indeed, the Axis of Evil.
