Kok Tobe Hill

Kok Tobe (Green Hill) is a 1,100-metre ridge on the eastern edge of the city, reached by a vintage cable car that departs from near the Hotel Kazakhstan on Dostyk Avenue. The journey takes about seven minutes and offers progressively better views as the city falls away below and the Tien Shan mountains fill the horizon to the south.

At the summit there is an amusement park of Soviet vintage (rides, a small zoo, souvenir stalls), a handful of cafés, and a 372-metre television tower that broadcasts to much of the region. The views from the summit are the main draw: on clear days you can see the full sweep of the Almaty basin with the mountains behind. The cable car runs daily; tickets are sold at the lower station on Dostyk Avenue, within walking distance of the city centre. The hill can also be reached by road if you prefer not to take the cable car.

things to do sight viewpoint
A story
The cable car to Kok Tobe was built in 1967 and became a landmark of Soviet Almaty — not for any ideological reason but because it gave ordinary citizens the most spectacular view of their city, framed against the snowfields of the Tien Shan. A statue of the Beatles stands at the summit, an improbable monument for this part of the world: it was placed here in 2007 by a Kazakh fan of the band, and has since become one of the city's most-photographed objects.