As the weather got steadily colder in September and October, my friends and I would often go to the Khan Shatyr shopping mall to hang out at the weekends, drinking coffee and egging each other to buy things.
When I was a teenager growing up in suburban Surrey, I’d also spent my Saturday afternoons at the local shopping centre riffling through the racks at Topshop and H&M (there had been no Sunday opening until I was 16).
34-year-old mall rat
Now in Astana, there wasn’t a lot else to do when it was too cold to stay outside for long periods of time so I rediscovered the joys of mooching aimlessly around the shops at the weekend.
A huge number of malls had opened in Astana, as developers followed the construction of new apartment buildings on the left bank and assumed that since temperatures were below zero for five months of the year people would prefer to shop in malls than at the Kazakh equivalent of the high street.
This meant that while there were now a large number of new Astana malls, most of them weren’t very good; they had few customers and a lot of empty shops. The big Astana Mall near my apartment had a big Ramstore supermarket but not much else.
But a couple of the Astana malls – Khan Shatyr and Mega Mall – had proper shops like Zara and Mango. Khan Shatyr even had a Debenhams, a Topshop and a Monsoon, and there was a rumour that Marks & Spencers was going to open there — the excitement this caused among expats is maybe a good measure of how boring life in Astana could be during the winter.
The Khan Shatyr
Astaninkis flocked to Khan Shatyr, which was one of several Astana landmarks designed by the British architect Norman Foster, and was supposed to resemble a giant tent, a modern riff on the traditional Kazakh yurt. It wasn’t actually a tent, but the roof of the circular building looks as if it’s draped over a tent pole, swooping upwards to a slightly off-centre spire. (A bit like a tent put up like a Glastonbury goer after a few too many hallucinogenic drugs.)
Inside, there were several floors of shops and cafes, and right at the top, under the transparent plastic roof, a leisure park with indoor beaches and a miniature golf course.
Even two years after it opened, there would always be crowds of people in front of the entrance photographing themselves in front of the Khan Shatyr or facing the other way for selfies against the background of the giant arch of the KazMunaiGas building with the Baiterek Tower just peeping behind it. Inside, there were more people snapping photos in the giant atrium.
Christmas at the mall
On Christmas day I decided to buy myself a present and took a bus to the Khan Shatyr. Like most places in Astana, the shopping centre was well prepared for winter. Snow slid down its pointy roof and was shovelled away. There were four sets of automatic doors at the main entrance, with the open doors at opposite ends of the entryway so you would walk from side to side as you moved further in. Huge heaters blasted hot air inside and in between the doors to prevent the cold air outside from forcing its way in.
I wandered around the shops, and bought a pair of $300 Carlo Pazzoli boots, a pair of black trousers that were slightly roomier than my current pair and two tops from Mango, a draped jersey one and a black chiffon one with sequins on the front.
More posts about style, beauty and travel packing
How to guides:
How I went from terrible packer to travel capsule wardrobe expert
I cut my closet in half after an international move: here’s how I did it
How I rescued my boring travel capsule wardrobe for Tirana
I learned to sew my own clothes in Kazakhstan
Some examples of tiny travel capsule wardrobes:
My 12 item capsule wardrobe for Corfu and Saranda
My 14-item travel capsule wardrobe for Slovenia
Spring travel capsule for 10 days on the Adriatic riviera
Shopping:
My massive Bucharest thrift haul
Beauty tips:
4 painful and humiliating things that happened to me in Central Asian beauty salons
Steppe in Style 
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