In the famous film Borat, Kazakhstan is shown, to put it mildly, as a strange state. However, the government of Kazakhstan, extremely irritated by the film at the beginning, now, as they are reporting, has replaced wrath with kindness – it has already in practice felt the growing interest in its country: people have wanted to see this mysterious Kazakhstan with their own eyes and are now storming tourist agencies.

Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда.

From Russia to Almaty I flew on a half-empty airplane: Russians, apparently, know even without Borat what and how it’s really like there. In Almaty itself I was amazed by two things: the almost complete absence of automobiles produced by VAZ and GAZ [i.e. Russian cars–Trans.], and also the fact that drivers give the right of way to pedestrians (in Moscow this is encountered extremely rarely).