Transport in Kyzylorda

The airport is some 21 km outside the centre of town. Air Astana flies daily to Almaty and Astana on Fokker-50 aircraft; SCAT heads once or twice weekly to Aktau, Atyrau and Shymkent on an An-24.

The railway station, at the end of Auelbekov Street on the northern edge of the town centre, is one of the most impressive buildings in town. It is an elegant Tsarist design, with a central exterior staircase leading to a tall central hall, its exterior as well as the square out in front decorated with large concrete vases. The Tsarist-era building makes the boxy Soviet extension by its side look even clumsier, though the latter is at least enlivened with a frieze of Soviet man and woman busy developing the agriculture, industry and technology of the region. Its location on the Orenburg-Tashkent railway still finds an echo in the trains which stop here on their route from Moscow to Tashkent, Almaty or Bishkek. A daily train originating in Kyzylorda runs to Petropavl, and the station is also a stop for the daily trains between Almaty and Aktobe, as well as trains running every two days between Almaty and each of Uralsk, Mangyshlak and Atyrau. Other services stopping here include those between Tashkent and Ufa, Chelyabinsk and Kharkov, and between Almaty and Simferopol.

The bus station is a run-down Soviet building in a suburban location some 3.5km outside the centre of town. This serves destinations to the east of Kyzylorda, including аive daily buses to Turkistan (five hours) and Shymkent (eight hours), three a day to Almaty, and one each to Zhezkazgan and Tashkent. Buses to Aralsk (seven hours) go at 11am, 3.30pm and 9pm from the south side of the square in front of the station, where you may also find shared taxis.

There are also minibuses and taxis here serving a similar range of destinations. Buses for destinations west of Kyzylorda, such as Aralsk, depart from outside the railway station.