16 Nov 06
Astana is the new capital. Its name means, literally, capital city; it was made so in 1997, because President Nazarbaev decided the capital should be in the centre of the country, and took on its fourth name then. Former names? Originally Akmola, it became Akmolinsk in 1830, Tselinograd (New Land Town) in 1961 before reverting to Akmola in 1992.
With its shiny new buildings and grandiose scale, Astana resembles Dubai without the sea and the rampant tastelessness, and for the first time in Kazakhstan I see new houses being built with a sense of design, possession and pride. The old way of life is being eroded here, but that's no bad thing.
The Mayor of Astana is hosting us tonight, and Borat, unsurprisingly, isn't mentioned once. I try to find him post-speech to ask his views on his country's unofficial ambassador, but he's vanished with his aides, which is probably just as well. Suffice it to say that so far I have met not a single Kazakh who even looks like Borat, never mind sounds like him. Not that this was ever the point, but I just thought the reality deserves a mention.
Balkhash is our next stopover, 372 miles away on the northern shore of vast Lake Balkhash, whose constriction halfway along its 400-odd mile length divides a saline half from a freshwater half. Already the Islamic influence is stronger, with most of the roadside cemeteries topped with crescents instead of crosses, but there seems to be no religious conflict in Kazakhstan. Here Islam, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Judaism and a dozen other faiths all co-exist peacefully. They're just glad to be free of communism.
After passing a pristine 1966 Moskvich 408 and spotting, in the distance, our first mountains since Yekaterinburg, we crest a gentle rise to see why the last few miles have smelt like the inside of Paddington station circa 1890. We can almost touch the acrid air, and there before us is atmospheric filth on a hitherto unimaginable scale. It's like the aftermath of the Buncefield oil terminal explosion, but it's happening all the time.
