This was taken from the plane from Dushanbe (Tajikistan) to Almaty (Kazakhstan). Kind of a scary flight with very old planes. For the flight there you had to go up stairs through the back, like a cargo plane, which was different.

These mountains are right to the south of Almaty, and north of Almaty is Steppe forever. But it means that Almaty's pretty nice compared with other places. The new capital of KZ, Astana, is 1000km north in brutal Steppe weather, but Almaty's the business center for KZ and central Asia, and very expensive too......