Things to do · Culture
Sunkar falconry show
An hour of eagles, vultures and a falcon at 320 km/h, performed in English by a breeding centre that also releases gyrfalcons back into the wild.
Not checked in person
I have not been. Everything here comes from the centre's own site and its price list, read on 27 August 2026 — including the claim that the birds are not mistreated.
What you can do there
Adult ticket
4,400 ₸ on their 2025 list. Wednesday to Sunday, one show a day at 16:00.
Child ticket, 5 to 12
2,300 ₸ on the same list.
Private show outside the usual hour
From 110,000 ₸ for a group of up to 25 adults, Wednesday to Sunday, and double that on their closed days.
The practical part
- Area
- Alma-Arasan gorge
- Season
- Spring · Summer · Autumn
- Booking
- Ring +7 (727) 229 31 14 to check the price and that the show is running. Their site carries a 2013–2024 copyright and a 2025 price list, so treat what is published as indicative.
- Getting there
- Eighth kilometre of the Almarasan road, from the Al-Farabi and Navoi roundabout, twenty metres short of the eco-post. Twenty-odd minutes by Yandex Go from the south of the city.
Falconry here is not a costume act. The Sunkar centre breeds birds — its gyrfalcon stock came from the Russian Far East under a Soviet-era permit — and incubates, rears and releases them back into the wild in Kazakhstan. The show exists because the craft behind it is dying: they opened a falconry school, Kusbegi, and made it free, and by their own account nobody comes. The old eagle-hunters are gone and the young are not interested. What you are buying a ticket to is a working nursery putting on a demonstration of something that may not outlive the people running it.
The hour itself is a golden eagle, a white-tailed eagle taking fish off the water, a black vulture that dances, a bearded vulture eating bone, and a saker falcon flying at 320 km/h. One of the numbers shows an eagle taking a wolf, and their site adds, in brackets, that the animals are not subjected to violence. That is their statement and I am passing it on as theirs — I have not been, and nobody here has watched it to tell you more. If that number would trouble you, it is better to know before you drive up there than at ten past four.
The show is performed mainly in English, with Russian or German on request — which is unusual enough here to be the main reason to put it on your list. It runs Wednesday to Sunday at 16:00 from March; their page says the season closes in November and their price list says October, so ring before you go. That call is worth making anyway: the prices above are from a 2025 sheet and the site was last dated 2024.
The show sits inside a resort — hotel, restaurant, three heated outdoor pools, a banya, horses, and a run of Kazakh tazy hounds — so the birds are one part of somewhere people also come to spend a Sunday.
Last updated .