Let's start with the motorcar

The first week began with an earthquake and ended with a rout at Wembley, and a failed car theft. In between, we have met energy moguls, ambassadors, and martial arts champions. No time for boredom.

The land of Kazakhstan allegedly consists of vast open steppe, nomads, yurts. There's much, much more of course, including eagles, antelope, mountains, forests and lakes, gold – black, and yellow - but for now I'm billeted in the former capital, establishing a base, contacts, a permanent home internet connection and a rudimentary command of Russian before I can explore the great outdoors. That's where one must begin.

Almaty and the motorcar

Imagine an autumnal Germanic town but the municipal authorities haven't done much spring cleaning for a while. (Eg. wobbly drain covers and cracked pavements, but the roads are well kept.) Or San Francisco's sloping streets but tree-lined, with Steve McQueen stuck in a tailback. In Paul Brummell’s recently published Bradt Guide, the jovial UK ambassador to Kazakhstan describes Almaty's traffic as its least attractive feature. He's right. And it’s unfortunately a feature one must encounter every day.

Almaty's main avenues run vertical and horizontal. They are wide with two lanes of traffic on either side (or four lanes on one-way streets) and during the working week, the cars and SUVs are the undisputed champions of the city smog. The snow-capped mountains lie tantalisingly close, but they soon disappear behind the haze. In London we are tired of the car. We despise it, or take it for granted. Here one gets the impression people are happy to sit in their 4x4s and go nowhere, because they have made it somewhere. They're so keen they'll even buy a right-hand drive Japanese model because they can't wait for the left-hand drive to become available. It's a reflection of the new wealth that fuels this city's rapid development. People drive with speed and aggression, but there's little opportunity to cover much ground by day. One hears the guzzling roars of multi-litre engines, but they're short-lived, and end with hard braking, or accidents. At the top of the pyramid, luxury hotels and boutiques cater the urban elite. I wondered into a showroom where a French crystal chandelier could be yours for a cool 40,000 Euros.

People as described by someone who doesn’t yet know anyone

An exotic mix of Central and East Asian, Slavic and Saxon. Everyone seems to be getting along just fine, unless you're from Uzbekistan. No one has been overtly friendly. That’s fine, I’m from London. If there were some Africans, Arabs and South Americans thrown into the mix then this city could even be compared to London. But on the face of it it is disappointingly ordinary and occidental. And yet there's a sense that something unexpected, truly shocking and altogether oriental is lying just around the corner, ready to slap you out of any false sense of European security.