I’m at Lake Kaindy in the south of Kazakhstan, a country where striking landscapes give way to staggering ones. Straddling eastern Europe and central Asia, Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country but has one of the lowest population densities on the planet. In the 19th century, the expanding Russian empire took control of Kazakhstan, and from 1936 until 1991 it was part of the USSR. In the Medeu Valley, for example, we take two ear-popping cable cars on our way to the Bogdanovich Glacier. Bogdanovich GlacierStarting from about 3,200m, we snake our way along a boulder-strewn trail, past corrie lakes and through huge sweeps of moraine.

Source: The Irish Times November 10, 2025 10:30 UTC