Burabay

The lakes and hills were known to Kazakh nomads of the Middle Horde long before any settlement stood here, and the rocks carry names and legends — Okzhetpes, "the arrow will not reach it", and Zhumbaktas, the riddle stone — attached to stories of Abylai Khan, the 18th-century ruler whose forces are said to have camped in these hills. The name Burabay is traced to bor, "pine forest", though local legend ties it instead to a bura, a male camel that warned people of danger.

The Russian village of Borovoye grew here in the second half of the 19th century, among settlers moving into the forested pocket of the northern steppe, and doctors soon took an interest in the air and the kumys cure. The forests around the lake were made a state forestry in 1898; in 1920 Burabay was nationalised and declared a spa resort of national importance, and under Soviet rule the area developed into an all-union resort of rest houses, pioneer camps and clinics for tuberculosis and respiratory illness. From 1941 to 1943 scientists of the Soviet Academy of Sciences were evacuated here, and the surrounding district, like the rest of northern Kazakhstan, received deportees.

Burabay National Park was created in 2000 out of the earlier protected forest, and from the 2000s the resort was rebuilt for a new market, with modern hotels, a promenade and a planned resort zone between Shchuchinsk and the lakes. The new capital 250 kilometres away supplied the visitors, and the road from Astana was upgraded to carry them. Growth has brought the familiar tension between building and protection in a small area of forest that tens of thousands of people visit each summer.

Burabay's identity is that of a holiday place, and much of the local culture is about receiving guests: sanatorium seasons, summer lets, boatmen, horse owners, market stalls and the memory of Soviet-era holidays that older Kazakhstanis still recall with affection. Russian is the language of the street, Kazakh is increasingly heard, and the village's population mixes Slavic settler families with Kazakh residents of the surrounding district.

The landscape carries legends, and guides tell them constantly. Okzhetpes is tied to a story of a captive girl who set an impossible test for her suitors; Zhumbaktas is said to show a young woman, an old woman or a sphinx depending on where the viewer stands; the hill of Kokshetau, the "blue mountain", appears in songs about Abylai Khan. Ribbons tied at springs and viewpoints show the older practice of treating such places as sacred, a habit shared with other holy sites across the steppe.

Kazakh custom shapes hospitality here as elsewhere in the north: tea poured half a cup at a time and refilled, dastarkhan tables loaded before guests sit down, and elders served first. Horses are part of daily life as well as the tourist trade, and kymyz, fermented mare's milk, is sold along the roads in summer — once prescribed by the sanatoriums as treatment, now drunk as a national restorative.

Fewer than five thousand people live in the village of Burabay itself, with the nearby town of Shchuchinsk several times larger and the wider Burabay district spread across farming villages. Almost everything turns on the resort: hotels, sanatoriums, cafés, boat and horse hire, souvenir selling, national park work, building and maintenance. Many families also keep gardens, livestock and summer rooms let to visitors.

The year divides sharply. From late June to the end of August the village is crowded, prices rise and everyone works; in the shoulder seasons trade slows to sanatorium guests and weekend visitors from the capital; in winter the population that remains lives quietly between heated houses, the school, the shops and the frozen lakes, with a short burst of activity over the new year holidays. Seasonal work and low winter wages push younger residents towards Astana and Kokshetau.

Local concerns are those of a protected area under pressure: construction close to the shore, traffic and parking in summer, water quality and the level of the lakes, rubbish left by day visitors, and forest fire risk in dry years. The national park regulates building and access, and arguments about where that line should fall are a permanent feature of village life.

Eating at Burabay is straightforward holiday food. Shashlyk — skewered mutton, beef or chicken grilled over coals — is the smell of the shore road in summer, served with flatbread, raw onion and tomato salad. Kazakh and Uyghur staples fill the cafés: lagman, hand-pulled noodles in a spiced meat and vegetable sauce; manty, large steamed dumplings; samsa baked in a tandoor; and plov. For gatherings there is beshbarmak, boiled meat with squares of pasta in onion broth, the dish that marks any occasion worth marking in northern Kazakhstan.

The lakes and the forest supply the local specialities. Smoked and dried fish from the surrounding waters is sold from stalls and roadside tables, along with pine nuts, forest berries and honey from the district's hives. Slavic settler cooking is equally ordinary here: pelmeni, borscht, salted cucumbers, potatoes with dill and dark bread, and pancakes with sour cream.

Dairy from the steppe is the thing visitors are urged to try. Kymyz, fermented mare's milk, is sold in summer at roadside yurts along the Astana road and near the lakes, where sanatoriums once prescribed a kumys course; shubat, made from camel's milk, appears less often. Kurt, hard salted balls of dried sour milk, and irimshik, sweet dried curd, are sold at every stall, and tea with milk and baursak follows almost every meal.