Burabay Lake

The Lake That Everybody in Astana Knows

Photographer Aigerim Bekova came to Burabay on a Tuesday in September, specifically because she'd heard the crowds were gone by September. She found a boat on the lake an hour after sunrise and the sounds were the oar in the water, the pine forest at the lake's edge, and the specific acoustic of granite formations that creates a reverberation she couldn't quite explain. "It's like the rocks are listening," she said. She came back the following weekend. Then the weekend after that.

Burabay Lake — also known as Borovoe — sits within the Burabay National Nature Park in Akmola Oblast, approximately 250 kilometers north of Astana. The park encompasses a chain of lakes surrounded by forested granite hills, in a landscape that breaks so abruptly from the surrounding flat northern steppe that it earned its popular nickname of the "Switzerland of Kazakhstan" — a description that undersells the specific Kazakhstani quality of the landscape but accurately conveys the surprise of encountering forest and rock and water in a zone where the steppe extends in every other direction to the horizon.

The lakes are fed by groundwater and seasonal precipitation, embedded in a granite landscape that was shaped by the same geological processes that created the Bayanaul formations further south. The combination of clear water, granite formations emerging from the lake surface (the most famous being the formation called Zhumbaktas, the "Sphinx"), pine and birch forest on the slopes, and the particular quality of northern light across the water at dawn and dusk makes Burabay of the most photographed landscapes in Kazakhstan.

Essential Facts

Burabay National Nature Park is approximately 250 kilometers north of Astana. The main visitor hub is the resort town of Borovoe (officially Burabay), accessible by regular train from Astana (around 3.5 hours) or by road (2.5–3 hours). Entry fees apply for the park. Accommodation ranges from basic sanatoriums and guesthouses to mid-range hotels; the resort has been a recreation destination since Soviet times and the infrastructure shows it in both its dated Soviet-era facilities and its more recently renovated options. Peak season is June through August; September and early October are the ideal months for quiet, cool visits with autumn color beginning on the hillsides.

The Forest the Kazakhs Called Sacred

The Burabay landscape was not always a resort. Long before the Soviet sanatoriums arrived in the 1930s, the forested granite hills and the chain of lakes were part of the Kazakh Middle Zhuz's seasonal territory — a sheltered zone of forest, water, and elevated terrain in the vast northern steppe that held both practical and spiritual significance. The Kazakh name for the area — Burabay, sometimes translated as "camel foal" in reference to of the granite formations — indicates a naming tradition that is specific to Kazakh cultural geography, where landscape features are individuated and incorporated into oral tradition.

The sacred formations around the lakes — Zhumbaktas (the Sphinx), Okyetpes (the rock that an arrow can reach), Zheke Batyr (the lone warrior) — each carry stories in the Kazakh oral tradition that connect the landscape features to ancestral figures, cosmological events, or moral narratives. This is the standard form of Kazakh landscape knowledge: not mythology in the European sense, but a mnemonic system that uses named features as anchors for historical memory and ethical instruction.

Russian settlement of the northern steppe, which accelerated following the formal annexation of Kazakhstani territory in the 18th and 19th centuries, brought a different set of relationships to the Burabay landscape. Russian and Ukrainian settler communities found the forested hills familiar enough to settle near — and the resort development that eventually transformed the area into a recreation destination for the regional aristocracy and then the Soviet nomenklatura built on this settlement history.

The Soviet period established Burabay as the primary resort destination for the Akmola region's industrial and administrative workers, building the sanatoriums and recreation facilities that still form the backbone of the tourist infrastructure. Independence brought new investment in the resort facilities and new attention to the Kazakh cultural heritage of the landscape — the legend of Kozy Korpesh and Bayan Sulu, whose tragic romance is set at Burabay, was rehabilitated from Soviet-era suppression and restored to the lake's cultural identity.

Today the Zhumbaktas and the other formations are photographed millions of times a year. The stories attached to them are less photographed. Both are part of what the landscape is.

What to Do at Burabay

Resort manager Asel Nurmagambetova runs the main activity desk at the Borovoe resort and has seen enough first-time visitors to know the pattern: they arrive, they look at the lake, they take photographs, and then they ask what else there is to do. "Everything," she says. Here's a more specific answer.

Rowboat on the Lake

The wooden rowboats available at the main pier are the central Burabay activity, and have been since the Soviet-era resort was established. Renting a boat for an hour or two and rowing out toward the Zhumbaktas formation — sitting with the granite Sphinx against the forest backdrop, the water clear to the bottom beneath you — is the experience that defines the lake. Go in the morning before 9 a.m. for the best light and the quietest water.

The Okjetpes Summit Trail

The trail to the top of Okjetpes peak — "the rock that an arrow can reach" — climbs through pine forest to an elevated viewpoint above the lake system. The view from the top encompasses Burabay Lake, the surrounding chain of connected lakes, and the northern steppe stretching to the horizon in every direction. Allow two to three hours round trip from the resort. The trail is well-marked. Bring water.

Kozy Korpesh and Bayan Sulu Memorial

The famous Kazakh epic — the story of two young people from opposing families, betrothed from birth, separated by jealousy and killed by treachery — is set at Burabay. The memorial marker near the lake commemorates the story's connection to this specific landscape. It's worth understanding the narrative before you visit; the epic is of the great works of Kazakh oral literature and the landscape at Burabay, seen through this story, becomes layered in a way it isn't without it.

Hiking the Pine Forest

The network of forest trails on the hillsides above the lake offers several hours of walking through the Scots pine and birch forest that gives Burabay its unexpected forest smell in the middle of the steppe. These trails are less crowded than the lakeshore and provide the particular sensory quality of northern forest — resin, leaf litter, the sound of wind through pine needles — that is genuinely different from anything else in Kazakhstan.

Swimming

The lake is clean and swimmable in summer. The water is cold early in the season — warming through July — and the designated swimming areas near the main beach are supervised. Swim in designated areas; the lake bottom has varying depths and the currents near the inlet are not obvious from the surface.

Tips for Burabay

Go in September, Not August

August at Burabay brings Kazakhstani families in numbers that fill the resort town, occupy every boat on the lake, and produce the particular atmosphere of a popular domestic resort at peak season — which is fine if you like that, but antithetical to the landscape's actual qualities. September has the same forest and the same lake and the beginning of the autumn color on the birch trees, at a fraction of the crowd density. September is the right month.

Go Early

The boats fill up by mid-morning on busy days. The lake is flattest and quietest in the first two hours after sunrise. If the point is to be on the water in the early morning light with Zhumbaktas visible across the still surface, arrive at the pier before 8 a.m.

Learn the Formation Names

The named rock formations around the lake — Zhumbaktas, Okjetpes, Zheke Batyr — each carry stories in the Kazakh oral tradition that make the landscape more than a pretty backdrop. A short conversation with a local guide, or reading the park information boards in the national language, provides this context. The Kozy Korpesh and Bayan Sulu epic is worth understanding before you visit the memorial marker; it transforms a stone into a narrative.

Photography

Morning light on the lake, with the forest behind Zhumbaktas still in partial shadow, is the signature Burabay shot. The evening light on the granite formations — when the low sun angles across the rock and the texture becomes visible — is the that the serious landscape photographers come for. A circular polarizing filter helps with the lake's water glare and intensifies the pine-blue sky contrast.

Weekday vs. Weekend

If your schedule allows any flexibility, visit on a weekday. The resort town on a Saturday in July is a different experience than the same resort on a Tuesday in September. Both are Burabay; of them is quiet enough to hear the water.