The province is almost entirely in the Kazakh Uplands(3)--just the very northeast falls to the West Siberian Lowland(4), below 400 meters. The area's hydrography is three-fold. The northeast drains into Pavlodar Province (but never reaches the Irtys(5)); the south empties into Lake Tengiz; and the center and northwest is part of the Isim(6) system. The area is arid.
Probably most speakers learn Kazakh as their first language. Given the governmental bias against ethnic Kazakhs raising their children to speak Russian, this is likely to be more pronounced this close to the national capital. A minority--both ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Russians--speak Russian as their first language.
Astana is Kazakhstan's capital, but it is a city of less than 400,000 residents. It is not an old town--it was founded by the Russians in the 19th century--but it acquired great notoriety as the location of an island in the former Russian communist gulag--prisoner slave labor camps.
(1) Formerly Akmola or Akmolinsk or Tselinograd
(2) Also or formerly transliterated as Kazakstan or Khazakhstan or Kazachstan.
(3) Kazachskij (Kazakhskiy) Melkosopochnik (Melkosopocnik, with a diacritical on the c) in transliterated Russian.
(4) Zapadno Sibirskaja (Sibirskaya) Nizmennost in transliterated Russian.
(5) Or Irtysh.
(6) Or Ishim, a tributary of the Irtys (Irtysh), in turn a tributary of the Ob. The Ob-Irtys is Asia's second longest river, the world's fifth.