Located in the center of town right next to the Rahat Chocolate Factory, the Green Bazaar is Kazakhstan’s most famous market. Built in the 1970’s, with a new concrete extension that replaced the outdoor vegetable market in 2016, it is one of the cleanest, neatest markets of Central Asia.
Foodies can spend a whole afternoon here sampling Kazakhstan’s impressive array of produce made from animal’s meat and milk, as well as food from across the Soviet Union.
Beyond the actual Green Bazaar building, a whole economy has grafted itself onto the constant foot traffic, from the innocent (hair dressers, shoe cobblers, itinerant cigarette salesmen) to the spiritual (fortune tellers, blessing dispensers) and the illicit (mobile phone fencers, rooms-by-the-hour).
People at the bazaar are well aware of tourists’ ignorance of local prices, so make sure you bargain. Even better, shop outside the bazaar. The prices are unbeatable, and you get a flavour of Almaty many tourists miss out on.
Meat and dairy sections
As a traditionally nomadic nation, meat and dairy take up a lot of space in the bazaar. And there are a lot of interesting foods here, most famously kazy (horse meat sausage), kurdyuk (salted or smoked sheep butt lard) kymys and shubat (fermented horse and camel milk), as well as cream, cream cheese, yoghurt, kefir and dozens of things that fall in between those categories.
Since Almaty is multi-ethnic, you can also find Ukrainian ladies selling salo (salty or smoked pig lard) and Koreans bargaining for cockscombs.
Nuts, spices and herbs
Tajiks are in charge of the nuts section. Tajikistan’s bit of the Ferghana Valley is a big producer of all kinds of nuts and dried fruits, especially apricots. Beware, they are very charming. Dungan ladies sell a wide array of spices, measured in vodka shot glasses.
The Korean salads are worth sampling. Dropped in Central Asia in the 1930’s without access to their traditional ingredients, the Soviet Union’s koryo-saram started using their pickling and fermentation techniques on ingredients they found locally, inventing a new kind of culinary tradition.
Then we come to the “eastern medicine” section, where you have vendors selling mountain herbs, snakes, frogs and crickets dipped in honey.
Don’t forget to check out the basement, where prices are lower than on the top floor. Restaurants around the bazaar floor offer traditional Central Asian fare like manty, lagman and plov.
Beyond the bazaar
Across the street on the back of the Green Bazaar, a miniature Uyghur district lives. Good for your halal shopping.
Go past the street food stands that offer kebab at prices that are really too low to be trusted, and you come to the busy intersection of Makataev and Pushkin street. One corner of the crossroads is occupied with a perennial huddle of men buying and selling stolen mobile phones.
On the opposite corner, a couple of women are standing around, swinging keys around their fingers. They rent rooms by the hour to conduct business your significant other is not supposed to know about.
If you walk down, you enter a little park between the 2 traffic lanes. We are almost at the mosque, and here the spiritual economy takes over. The park is a popular place for fortune tellers and protective amulet sellers.
At the mosque, the sidewalk is taken over by beggars and hawkers selling anything from religious pamphlets and car stickers invoking protection to prayer beads and Islamic toothbrushes.
Continue all the way down to the crossing with Rayimbek Batyr street to hit upon another bazaar, attached to the Sayakhat bus station. It’s already a lot more downmarket here. And the kebabs are cheaper still.
