Kolsai, Kaindy and Charyn: one day or two?

I have made this drive twice, in winter and in spring, and slept out there both times. What follows is that trip: the road, the stop halfway, where I stayed, and the two things — cash and a mileage limit — that are easy to get wrong before you have even left the city.

Day one is the drive. Leave in the morning, eat halfway, add Charyn if you want it, and arrive at Saty in the afternoon with enough light left to walk down to the lower lake. Dinner where you sleep.

Day two is Kaindy and home. Kaindy takes two to three hours all in, which sounds thin until you remember there is a four-hour drive waiting at the end of it. That is the whole plan, and its spaciousness is the point.

It is an easy road, most of it trunk highway. 2GIS gives 292 km and four hours fourteen minutes with traffic; in practice, with stops, it is four to five hours. Fill up at Compass on the way out of town and have breakfast there while you are at it — it is the last unremarkable, reliable stop before the drive turns into countryside.

At 136 km, almost exactly halfway, is the village of Baiseit, and this is where you eat. Lagman and samsa, made by people who feed drivers all day. Do not push through it planning to eat later; later is another two hours.

Charyn Canyon sits close enough to the route to add on the way out. It is a different national park with its own gate and its own fees, so treat it as a separate stop rather than something bundled into the lakes.

Both of those are February. The canyon does not shut for winter, and the snow line behind it is most of the reason to go then.

Distances checked on 2GIS on 27 August 2026.

You will read that the last fifty kilometres are rough track and that a saloon car will not make it. I would not plan around that. There were saloon cars parked at the lake, up where the cabins are, both times I went — and the arithmetic does not support the warning either: 2GIS routes the whole journey at 292 km, while the same app's assistant describes 285 km of asphalt plus another fifty of dirt. Those two numbers cannot both be right.

Kaindy is the different question. It lies a little beyond Kolsai and it genuinely does want a 4x4, which is the trap in the one-day version of this trip: the car that reached the first lake in comfort can stop dead before the second. That is the single best argument for the two-day shape — you leave your own car at the guesthouse and let somebody who drives that track daily take you up.

So take a car you are comfortable in, and do not pay for a 4x4 you will use for one morning. The thing that will actually cost you money is not the surface of the road but its length.

Rental cars here are advertised by the day, but they are limited by the kilometre — and the limit applies to the whole rental, not to each day. The return drive to Kolsai is 584 km before you go anywhere else. Add Charyn and Kaindy and you are comfortably past 700.

In Yandex Go, the cheaper crossovers include 540 km and then charge 150 ₸ for every kilometre after that. So the car at 29,000 ₸ a day quietly becomes about 27,000 ₸ more expensive on this exact trip, and it also holds a 50,000 ₸ deposit for up to fourteen working days. Filter for unlimited mileage instead: the unlimited cars were 37,800–42,750 ₸ a day, some of them with no deposit at all. Over three days that is the same money, without the arithmetic.

Those are prices I saw in the app on 27 August 2026, not ones I have paid. Two conditions worth knowing before you book anything: the minimum is 24 years old with four years of licence, and as a visitor you need your passport and your own country's licence — no international permit. The whole business is on the renting a car page.

Sort it at reception when you check in, for that afternoon or the next morning. They run it constantly, they know what the track is doing that week, and it removes the one part of this trip where doing it yourself buys you nothing.

Budget two to three hours for Kaindy and then start back. It is a submerged spruce forest standing in cold green water, it is unlike anything else here, and it does not take a whole day to see properly.

Kolsay Lakes Town, on Ultarakova in Saty. I have slept there on both trips. It is a guesthouse compound with a restaurant looking at the valley, they answer on WhatsApp, and the reception desk is where the Kaindy trip gets booked.

Eat dinner and breakfast where you sleep — there is no competing restaurant scene out here and you do not want to be driving to find one in the dark. Ask the host what they are cooking when you book rather than when you arrive. Bring your own drinks and snacks for the car; the road has less than you expect.

Note the geography, because it is easy to get wrong when booking: Saty is the village on the asphalt, and the cabins directly at the lower lake are at Kurmety, further up. Both work. They are not the same place, and the difference is a drive at the end of your day.

Other places out there — Kolsay Home, Pana Nomads, Tau Kolsai — turn up in the listings with good photographs and I have not stayed in any of them, so I have nothing to tell you about them that you cannot read yourself.

This is what the evening actually looks like out there in winter, and it is the argument for the second day in one photograph: you are not driving home in the dark.

The park fee is collected at the checkpoint as you drive in, and card payment there is not something to rely on. This is the second time cash matters on this trip, the first being everything else out here.

The park sets its charges in MRP rather than tenge, which is why the figures in every travel article go stale each January. The official tariff list is published by the park and reads, for the parts you will pay: 0.2 MRP per person per day, and 0.06 MRP for parking a car. With the 2026 MRP at 4,325 ₸, that is about 865 ₸ a head per day and roughly 260 ₸ for the car.

You will see other numbers around — 926 ₸ a head, or a car entry charge of 2,750–3,600 ₸. Neither reconciles with the list above: the first is calculated on an MRP that is not this year's, and the second is not a line item the park publishes at all. I have not stood at the barrier with a receipt in my hand, so take the official tariff as the guide and carry more cash than it suggests.

• Cash, for the park and for everything after it.
• Your map, downloaded. 2GIS works out here better than the alternatives, but download the area before you leave the city.
• A power bank. It is a long day on navigation.
• Drinks and snacks for the car.

Do not count on mobile data at the lakes. A text will get out; anything heavier will not. The guesthouses and cafes have Wi-Fi and that is what everyone uses. Tell whoever is expecting to hear from you that you will be quiet for a day — it is easier than explaining afterwards.

I have been in winter and in spring and would go again in either. Kaindy in particular is not fussy about the season — the drowned forest looks like itself all year. For the city itself, the two windows I would pick are on when to come.

Winter is not the lesser version. The lake freezes hard enough to walk out onto, which is what the people in the photograph above are doing, and it turns the whole valley into something you cannot see in summer at any price. It also does not empty the place out as much as you would hope — that was a January afternoon. Bring proper boots, expect the light to go early, and treat the ice with the respect anyone local would.

If this is too far for the time you have, Big Almaty Lake is the one you can reach from town by bus and on foot.