Almaty

Almaty means 'father of apples' and the title is literal: the wild ancestor of every apple on Earth still grows in the hills above town, and the city below runs on the same sweet abundance — leafy avenues with snowmelt singing in the aryks, a wooden cathedral built without a single nail that has out-danced every earthquake since 1907, and the Trans-Ili Alatau standing at the end of every southbound street like a permanently drawn curtain of ice.

The sensible traveller works the Green Bazaar's honey, horse and apple aisles with a tasting stomach; visits Zenkov cathedral and Panfilov park's sober war memorial; rides the cable car to Kok-Tobe at dusk for the city in lights; and ascends the gorge: Medeu, the world's highest skating rink, then Shymbulak's lifts and, in summer, the trails toward Big Almaty Lake, whose color no photograph is believed. The mountains are not a day trip here; they are the city's upper floors.

The Guide's honesty: the altitude climbs fast — the lake sits at 2,500 meters: hydrate and pace —; winter inversions can gray the basin: the cure is elevation, which is conveniently the attraction; taxis are by app and honest; earthquakes are why the old buildings squat — the city knows its geology and builds accordingly; and buy the apples. Anywhere else they are fruit; here they are ancestry.