In Search of Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins*
My book - In Search of Kazakhstan - was written after my imagination was captured by a chance remark made by a stranger sitting beside me on a flight to Moscow. My travelling companion was a portly American in his fifties who had never previously left the state of Arkansas. He was on his way to meet a cyber-bride he had courted over many months in late night sessions on the internet. He was a brave man, I remarked, to take on the adventure of a marrying an unknown woman in a place such as Russia. "I'm not staying in Russia," he said. "I'm going to Kazakhstan," Open Central Asia Magazine reports.
Kazakhstan! Steppe, nomads, oil. What else? My mind was blank ... in all honesty at that time I would have found it difficult to place it on the map. The Arkansas romantic told a little of what he had learnt about the country: its vast size - the 9th largest country in the world, four times the size of Texas; men on ponies riding through deep snow to hunt with Golden Eagles; a brand new shining city built by presidential decree in the middle of the steppe - but it was his final, throwaway remark that stayed with me: "Apples are from Kazakhstan.'
Thousands of years ago, in a triumph of ancient world globalization, apples began their long journey from the slopes of Tien Shan - the Heavenly Mountains - to the stalls of ever, greengrocer on the planet, from Timbuktu to Tooting Bee. Later, I discovered that tulips came from Central Asia, as well .. and trousers (developed from the leggings worn by early steppe horsemen).
The big question I asked myself was why the world knew so little about so vast a country. The quick answer is that Kazakhstan was made to "disappear" by its Russian masters under the tsars, the country was virtually closed to Western travellers for fifty years as Russia ruthlessly expanded its empire; the Soviets sealed it tight for another seventy years, as they looted its natural resources, and tested nuclear biological weapons in its empty regions.
As a tourist destination, Kazakhstan remains mostly a place for the more adventurous, although I found it completely safe. While the major cities offer luxurious accommodation for visiting businessmen, those who roam further afield face the unpredictable. But the bold traveller reaps spectacular rewards: a terrain carpeted in wild tulips in the spring, salt lakes covered with tens of thousands of pink flamingos, empty mountain ranges that dwarf the Alps, and the exhilarating experience of almost always being the only tourist around. For enterprising hikers, bird-watchers, or anyone who wants to see the glories of an unpolluted night sky, Kazakhstan is a veritable paradise.
My own greatest experience of Kazakhstan was time spent with the berkutchi, the "eagle rulers". Traditionally-revered for their inner strength and great dignity, the berkutchi rides stocky, nomad ponies to hunt with Golden Eagles. On a day that brought the first snow of winter I visited one who handed me a thick leather gauntlet to allow his six-year-old eagle to perch on my arm. A moment of rapture. The high all my travels over this vast country.
* - The U.S. version of the book has been published in 2008 by Atlas & Co. under the title "Apples Are From Kazakhstan: the Land that Disappeared ." (ISBN: 978-0-9777433-8-4, $24)