Autumn in Kazakhstan with Cosmonauts and Geologists
plus a recipe for meatball soup
September is, in my opinion, the very best month to visit Kazakhstan. Early autumn is often sunny and mountain views are yet to be hidden by the veil of smog that comes every winter, the result of fumes from low-quality coal belching from people’s homes and power plants, mixing with low-grade gasoline from older cars. It is a shame given Kazakhstan’s vast reserves of natural gas that still many homes are not yet connected to a gas main, forcing families to use solid fuels (generally coal) to keep warm in the harsh winter months.
So before wintertime, and worries about dire pollution, I want to take us to Karaganda, 160 miles south of the Kazakh capital Astana. Why? Because it is where I think of if I think of Kazakhstan and coal - Karaganda is an industrial city famous for copper, steel and coal and before all that for its utter remoteness, “Where? Where? In Karaganda!” the old Soviet joke went - but of course that is not all. It also has strong links to cosmonauts and space history and that is the focus of this week’s newsletter, something a bit different and if you’ve read Red Sands, my recent book, you know that space exploration is an interest of mine.
