Aktau

Aktau means “white mountain,” and is located on the banks of the Caspian Sea. Here, you’ll find many Sufi pilgrimage sites such as Beket-Ata, Shakpak-Ata, Shopan-Ata and Masat-Ata. The land is beautiful and natural attractions such as “Fire Mountain,” various oases, hot springs and mud baths. Most of the region is populated by the Aday tribe, an ethnic subdivision of the Kazakh people. Aktau is a new city, founded as a mining town in 1961 by the USSR. Aktau is also a booming oil city and therefore, can be expensive even by Western standards.
An interesting quirk about Aktau is the street system—streets don’t have names but numbers instead. This can make getting around Aktau a bit confusing. The beach is beautiful and swimming is unrestricted. However, travellers might want to keep to the beaches below Renaissance because there’s a large amount of broken glass in many of the others. Make sure not to drink alcohol in public spaces; cops can fine tourists, since drinking is technically prohibited.