Astana – The New Capital
Welcome on board The 20 hour journey on a sleeper bus from Almaty to Astana was flat. From the window I saw the massive, flat land of Kazakhstan. My image of green giant steppe, in cold winter like this, was replaced by thick snow layer. Everything was flat and white. The sky was completely grey, adding the sorrow of traveling in Kazakhstan in freezing cold winter. But Kazakhstan was inviting. In this 2nd class sleeper, which cost 20 dollar a seat plus 250 Tenge for bed sheet rental (I tried to refuse but the train attendants said she wouldn’t allow me to sleep on the bedding without the sheets), I shared the compartment with two Mongolian Chinese and a Kazakh woman. The two Chinese men of Mongolian ethnic spoke good Chinese and Russian. They were all from Xinjiang province. One had Kazakh passport and the other, Mr. Ye Shunde, still possessed a Chinese passport. “It’s now easy to acquire Kazakh passport,” said Mr. Ye, “you just need to marry a Kazakh woman and you get citizenship.” Kazakhstan is a huge country with enormous wealth, but lack of population. The country with land area 50% larger than Indonesia was only inhabited [...]
