Almaty or Khiva?

Neither city has a coast, but Almaty at least has somewhere to swim outdoors. The Kapchagay reservoir, about an hour and a half away across the steppe, has sandy shores and warm summer water, and locals fill it at weekends. In Khiva, swimming means a hotel pool and nothing more.

Almaty is the better place to eat. Its tables gather the whole region: Kazakh beshbarmak and kazy, Uyghur lagman and manty, Uzbek plov, shashlik over coals and Soviet-era Korean salads. The Green Bazaar and a leafy grid of cafés and modern restaurants give it the range of a real city.

Khiva's cooking is more distinctive than plentiful. Shivit oshi, the dill-green noodles, and tuhum barak dumplings are worth trying, but nearly every meal comes from the same guesthouse or terrace menu. There is little street food and almost no café life.

Here Khiva is in another league. Ichan Kala is an intact walled Silk Road town, where the Kalta Minor minaret, the wooden-columned Juma Mosque and the harem courtyards of Tash Hauli all lie within a few minutes' walk of each other.

Almaty has a different kind of interest. Earthquakes left little older than the late nineteenth century, so the highlights are the painted wooden Zenkov Cathedral, the Scythian gold in the Central State Museum and the mosaic façades of the Soviet era. Its museum collections are larger than the small madrasa displays in Khiva, but as a historic place it does not come close.

Almaty is where Central Asia goes out. Cocktail bars, craft beer pubs and a few clubs around Panfilov and Abylai Khan keep weekends going until morning, though weeknights are quiet. Khiva has no bars or clubs at all. An evening there is dinner on a terrace and a stroll through the lit lanes before they empty.

Almaty is one of the great mountain cities. Its 4,000m peaks close off the end of every street, and within half an hour you can be at Medeu, with the gondola running on to Shymbulak for skiing or high hiking. Gorges, Big Almaty Lake and, on overnight trips, Charyn Canyon and the Kolsai lakes lie beyond.

Khiva sits in a flat cotton oasis on the edge of the Karakum desert, with no hills or trails. Its outdoor moment is across the Amu Darya, riding camels among the dunes of the Kyzylkum and sleeping under a very dark sky.

Khiva has one excursion and Almaty has two, but Khiva's makes the better day. Most outings from Almaty go up into the mountains rather than to historic sites. For history, Esik lies an hour to the east, where burial mounds gave up the gold-clad Golden Man. The Bronze Age carvings at Tamgaly, a UNESCO site, mean a long drive out across the steppe and back. These two sites lie in different directions and can't easily be seen in one day. Bishkek is within driving range, but the border makes it a trip of two days rather than one.

Khiva's day among the Elliq Qala fortresses has more to it. Ayaz Kala, Toprak Kala and their neighbours are vast ruined strongholds of ancient Khorezm standing alone in the sand, about one and a half to two hours away by car, and a hired driver can link several of them in a single loop. You leave the walls of Ichan Kala and see the same desert past on a far larger, emptier scale. It is also the only real day out, because Kunya-Urgench lies across the Turkmen border and Bukhara is too far to go and come back the same day.

Almaty gives children much more to do. Families can take the cable car up Kok-Tobe to its rides and petting zoo, spend a day at Central Park and the zoo, skate on the open-air Medeu rink or try Shymbulak's beginner slopes. Its wide, busy avenues are the main drawback with small children.

Khiva is safe, small and calm, and older children enjoy climbing a minaret or riding a camel. Still, a stay there is a series of madrasas and palaces with nothing built for children, and the summer heat makes the middle of the day hard going.

Khiva is the easier place to get around because it is tiny. Ichan Kala is flat and mostly closed to traffic, and its railway station is a short walk from the walls, so many visitors never need a vehicle. The exception is the desert fortresses, which you can only reach with a hired driver.

Almaty's tree-lined central grid is pleasant to walk, but distances beyond the centre are long and traffic is heavy. The single metro line does little for visitors, so most people use ride-hailing apps. The upside is that buses and gondolas reach Medeu and Shymbulak without a car.

The two are close, but they offer different things. Almaty is bazaars and malls: dried fruit, honey and spices at the Green Bazaar, the sprawling Barakholka market, and malls stocked with international brands. In Khiva you buy crafts at the source, with woodcarvers at work in madrasa cells, silk carpets on the looms, suzani embroidery and Khorezmian sheepskin hats.

Both are cheap, and Khiva is cheaper still. Its family guesthouses inside the walls come with large breakfasts, meals cost little, and a shared driver to the fortresses is affordable. In Almaty, food, transport and opera tickets are inexpensive, but good central hotels and imported wine are priced much closer to Western levels.

Almaty has a real season of performances. Classic ballet and opera are staged at the Abai State Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Philharmonic holds orchestral and dombra concerts, and there are drama theatres and a few jazz bars, all easy to get into, though most theatre is not in English.

Khiva's offering is folk performance: the quick, shimmering lazgi dance at evening shows in madrasa courtyards and the occasional dorboz tightrope walker on a square. Beyond that there is no theatre or concert hall.

Almaty has a genuine bathing culture. Arasan, the Soviet-era complex beside Panfilov Park, has banya steam rooms with birch whisking, saunas and a hammam, and the Alma-Arasan gorge adds hot springs. Khiva has nothing comparable beyond a few hotel saunas. What it does have is stillness: once the day groups leave, the old town goes quiet and you can sit over tea on a rooftop at dusk.