Hi guys. I am currently trying to organise my train ( 2 of us) from Almaty to shymkent overnight. I have read about the Tulpar talgo trains and they seem fantastic. So, we thought we would book this and travel in luxury ( not how I usually travel) and wanted to book the private compartment with your own bathroom and shower. However, I am confused. When I go onto tickets.kz it gives a list of trains, and we decided to take the one that offers vip . But the price of this is 9528 tenge which seems very very cheap for vip. Does anyone know if this is in fact a private compartment with your own bathroom? As I say, am pretty confused. Here's a copy of the site. https://tickets.kz/en/gd/search/results?session_id=33384a847a49d1a62921d8ae660cfe0f Thanks a lot.
Yes - ~9500KZT is the correct price (per person) for a "Talgo Grand Class" berth on train 025T Almaty - Shymkent. As long as you're booking train 025T you're booked to have an en-suite toilet/shower. The other trains that offer "VIP" options on this route are a similar price, but provide only a wash-basin.
To confirm you're on the right service, when you click through to the seat-plan, you should see a shower icon by your berth.
Thanks for replying. I have found the 025t train , but I can only see one going during the day, and I thought there was an overnight service. Do you know if an overnight service exists?
The 011X is the fast overnight service most days - it departs Almaty-2 22:11, arrives Shymkent 08:59. However, this service does not have ensuite toilet/shower, the highest class on this train has 2-person berths with a wash-basin only (toilet at the end of the carriage).
There are some irregular services running on some days, so it'll be worth you checking the date you travel. Just click through on any train and check the seat-plan - the presence of the shower icon by the berth indicates an ensuite berth.
If you can't find an irregular service with ensuites, I think you'll need to choose between a night time service without an ensuite, or a daytime service with an ensuite.
Thank you very much for all the info. I think we will take the talgo train 011x overnight . Another point if I may- I looked on advantour website, and it stated that there was an overnight service with grand class leaving on even days at 22.44; however, this train doesn't show up anywhere apart from advantour website. Do you know anything about this? Thanks again.
The Talgos have been introduced gradually over the last few years and there have been a few changes to the timetables and the configuration of the trains. I think it's most likely that Advantour's website is slightly out of date - possibly 011X used to run at 22:44 and with different classes available.
I'm confident that tickets.kz and the other sites that use the Kazakh Railways booking engine have the correct / up-to-date schedules.
Ok, thanks, clears up that mystery. One final question ( I promise) , is it easy enough to pay with a foreign credit card on tickets. Kz? Also, is an e ticket sufficient or do I need to change it for a real ticket? Many thanks.
I haven't used tickets.kz, but I expect they'll accept foreign-issued Visa/Mastercards. I use rail-travel.kz and my UK-issued Mastercard works fine on there.
The e-tickets (also known as e-registrations) don't need to be exchanged for a separate ticket. You just need to print out the ticket and show it to the conductor as you enter the train (along with the ID/passport matching the information you gave when buying the ticket online).
This page covers a few more FAQs:
http://rail-travel.kz/index.php/en/q-and-a
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