I want to go there!
Kazakhstan is a country about the size of western Europe.
Apples are from Kazakhstan. So are tulips.
Famous people who spent time in Kazakhstan (as prisoners or exiles) include Trotsky, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. Kazakhstan had an extensive part of the Gulag in soviet times. It was also the USSR's space base and nuclear testing area. On independence, Kazakhstan was the world's fourth nuclear power in terms of missiles; these were dismantled and the nuclear warheads taken to Russia to be made safe although substantial amounts of unaccounted nuclear material was discovered. The soviets also left a rapidly retreating Aral Sea after attempting to grow rice in the Kazakh desert using massive irrigation schemes.
One of the early British explorers of Kazakhstan (1875) was the ex-Bedford schoolboy, soldier and adventurer Frederick Gustavus Burnaby for whom Burnaby Road in Bedford has been named.
Kazakhstan even claims King Arthur! According to this version of the legend, Marcus Aurelius sent a 5,500 strong regiment of Sarmatian cavalry commanded by Lucius Artorius Castus to Hadrian's Wall in 175. The Sarmatians (from Hungary) were descendants of the Scythians (from Kazakhstan) and traditionally fought on horseback. They carried silk dragons as their banners. The Scythian God of War is symbolized by a sword thrust into the Earth; when a Scythian warrior died his sword was thrown into the sea.
Jan 2009, 296 pages
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