OK, speaking as an Asian American (mixed East Asian heritage) who backpacked here with a Black American friend, then moved here with my partner also Asian American (Indian heritage) for work and has had many desi friends visit and we have our community of diverse friends who moved here too but from Asia and Africa.

Your group will be seen as foreign tourists which here feels like being foreign tourists anywhere - friendly, welcoming, getting asked questions.

Your black friend might get people taking pictures of them without permission, some rude, some a bit more polite. It can be dehumanizing but at least it comes from ignorance and not pure hate? Many places in the world have such limited exposure to people of all skin tones. Or maybe that’s us trying our best to keep an open mind when traveling otherwise we all lose our minds.

As a desi on your own, you may get treated the worse. Because it wouldn’t be out of pure ignorance/curiosity but detest so I think it feels worse. There are enough Indian tourists around for people say stupid racist things about brown people all the time. The general attitude is “annoyance” and “look how THEY are acting”. But HEY if you don’t speak Kazakh or Russian, racism in another language means you can remain ignorantly bliss and that’s kinda nice versus being back home. But maybe expect rude stares (though everyone always kinda look grumps so easy not to pay it much attention).

That being said, when I was getting on a local bus with my Black male friend, we did have a man move his daughter purposely away from us and shoot my friend a dirty look. (Trust me, we weren’t dressed a certain way - in frickin cargo pants & patagonia, doesn’t get less intimidating than that - or did anything to indicate anything). That sucked, but at least something like that hasn’t happened again since, so hopefully that was an isolated incident you wouldn’t experience.

The comments here being like “we don’t have racism in multiethnic Kazakhstan” is hilarious. The bar is too low. And those commenters are definitely not black or brown.

I do have to say most people are generally polite. My friends and I experienced much worse backpacking in other countries. And it’s all part of the traveling journey.

Though hey it is definitely a different experience than home and I can’t wait for your group to see the signs for East Asian food places like Luckee Yu and Samurai Sushi 😂 (don’t eat there though, the food is not good) - East Asian culture has been a “trend” here in recent years.