___ Political Map of Kazakhstan (also spelled Kazakstan, Kazakiya, Qazaqiya)

Kazakhstan's landscape offers also some superlatives, the Kazakh Steppe, a vast semi-desert region of open grassland in the north of the country is a section of the Eurasian Steppe belt, the world’s largest dry steppe region.

Situated between the Caspian Sea and Aral Lake is the Ustyurt Plateau, a stony high plain desert with an average elevation of 150 m. To the south lies the Turan Lowland, a low-lying desert southeast of the Aral Sea, which extends into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. To the west of lake Balkhash is Betpak-Dala, a flat, gently rolling desert region with some shallow, mostly saline lakes. In the center of the country are the hilly Kazakh Uplands, an undulating almost featureless plain that covers approximately one-fifth of the country. Situated within the Uplands is Saryarka, a region known as the 'Steppe and Lakes of Northern Kazakhstan' the Saryarka is since 2008 a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Major Lakes are the Aral Sea, it is fed by the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, the Aral was once one of the four largest lakes in the world, shared between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Since the 1960s the lake is continuously shrinking, today it had declined to just 10% of its original size, due to former Soviet irrigation projects.
Lake Balkhash in the south east is a large continental lake, five rivers drain into the lake, the greatest volume of the inflow is from the Ili River.

Khan Tengri 7,010 m (23,000 ft), is the second-highest mountain in the Tian Shan range and the highest peak in Kazakhstan.