As it extends across both sides of the Ural River, considered the dividing line with the European continent, Kazakhstan is one of only two landlocked countries in the world that has territory in two continents (the other is Azerbaijan).<\/p>\n
With an area of 2,700,000 square kilometres (1,000,000 sq mi) \u2013 equivalent in size to Western Europe \u2013 Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country and largest landlocked country in the world. While it was part of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan lost some of i2ts territory to China’s Xinjiang autonomous region and some to Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan autonomous republic.<\/p>\n
The Kazakh Steppe of part of the Eurasian Steppe Belt.<\/p>\n
It shares borders of 6,846 kilometres (4,254 mi) with Russia, 2,203 kilometres (1,369 mi) with Uzbekistan, 1,533 kilometres (953 mi) with China, 1,051 kilometres (653 mi) with Kyrgyzstan, and 379 kilometres (235 mi) with Turkmenistan. Major cities include Astana, Almaty, Karagandy, Shymkent, Atyrau, and Oskemen. It lies between latitudes 40\u00b0 and 56\u00b0 N, and longitudes 46\u00b0 and 88\u00b0 E. While located primarily in Asia, a small portion of Kazakhstan is also located west of the Urals in Eastern Europe.
\nKazakhstan’s terrain extends west to east from the Caspian Sea to the Altay Mountains and north to south from the plains of Western Siberia to the oases and deserts of Central Asia. The Kazakh Steppe (plain), with an area of around 804,500 square kilometres (310,600 sq mi), occupies one-third of the country and is the world’s largest dry steppe region. The steppe is characterised by large areas of grasslands and sandy regions. Major seas, lakes and rivers include the Aral Sea, Lake Balkhash and Lake Zaysan, the Charyn River and gorge and the Ili, Irtysh, Ishim, Ural and Syr Darya rivers.<\/p>\n
The Charyn Canyon is 80 kilometres (50 mi) long, cutting through a red sandstone plateau and stretching along the Charyn River gorge in northern Tian Shan (\u00abHeavenly Mountains\u00bb, 200 km (124 mi) east of Almaty) at 43\u00b021\u20321.16\u2033N 79\u00b04\u203249.28\u2033E. The steep canyon slopes, columns and arches rise to heights of between 150 and 300 metres (490 and 980 feet). The inaccessibility of the canyon provided a safe haven for a rare ash tree, Fraxinus sogdiana, that survived the Ice Age and is now also grown in some other areas. Bigach crater, at 48\u00b030\u2032N 82\u00b000\u2032E, is a Pliocene or Miocene asteroid impact crater, 8 km (5 mi) in diameter and estimated to be 5\u00b13 million years old.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As it extends across both sides of the Ural River, considered the dividing line with the European continent, Kazakhstan is one of only two landlocked countries in the world that has territory in two continents (the other is Azerbaijan). With an area of 2,700,000 square kilometres (1,000,000 sq mi) \u2013 equivalent in size to Western […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1083,"parent":2211,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2346"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10830,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2346\/revisions\/10830"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ak-sai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}