A river has cut eighty kilometres of gorge into a plateau of red sandstone, and the stretch everyone comes for is called the Valley of Castles: towers, spires and banded walls that from the rim look like a ruined city. A path drops to the floor, where the canyon narrows to ten metres and the walls turn orange, and ends at the green river among the poplars. Three hours from Almaty, and the landscape Kazakhstan puts on its own postcards.