Shyngyrlau

Shyngyrlau lies in the steppe east of the Ural, among valleys cut by the Shyngyrlau and Ilek rivers. The sandy country around the Akbulak preserves cemeteries with stone markers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, evidence of the communities that lived and moved through this region. River valleys break the open uplands into pasture and wooded hollows. Here the western Kazakh steppe meets the waterways leading north toward the Ilek and Ural.