We spent a few days in Moscow visiting friends, all of whom told us that we were absolutely crazy to even consider going there. All anyone could tell us about the country was that we were going to be killed the moment we touched Kazakh soil. They insisted that Kazakhstan was extremely dangerous, there were nothing but cutthroats and thieves living there. They offered little or no help, insisting that they would not be direct contributors to our impending deaths. Of course, none of these Muscovites had actually been to Kazakhstan. In talking to them I think we actually became even more curious. What did they want to hide? With visions of giant glowing pink rhodochrosite crystals and sparkling green dioptase druses we decided to go ahead and spend one week in Karaganda, a city of about 700,000 people. Of course, we didn’t really investigate thoroughly the diplomatic niceties such as visas, etc., ignoring the fact that we were now actually visiting another country outside of Russia (our Russian visas no longer effective here), the newly formed Republic of Kazakhstan. As you will see this slight "oversight" on our part delayed our future progress somewhat … it at least kept things interesting.

STEPPING OUT .......

By Don Edwards

        We peered inently out of the window of the Tupolev 154 as it started its descent,
each of us looking for some reassurance, some sign, in the inky blackness of the early
morning, that Kazakhstan was not quite as alien as we had been lead to believe in Moscow.
We had been variously warned that there would be no food, that we would find a state of
total anarchy, that our every step would be fraught with terrible, undefined danger, and,
finally, and worst of all, that in the unlikely event of our surviving, intact albeit at the point
of starvation, we would not be able to get any minerals out of the country! Sergei's friend
Victor, who drove us out of Moscow to the airport at Domodedevo asked where we
planned on staying. A hotel? "Maybe there are no hotels. It is the East, not the West." And
even Sergei himself, that most optimistic of Russians, had faltered at the last. He met us
with three Personal Nuclear Radiation Dosimeters. His other friend, Volodya, had insisted
that most if not all the food in Kazakhstan was radioactive as a result of the nuclear test
program at Semipalatinsk. We must test everything: any reading over 30 meant an
unaceptable risk.

        There were lights on the ground, presumably the city of Karaganda. No signs of
artillery fire, no blackout, not even a radioactive glow ... The airport looked rather like a
disused cattle market, although I discovered later that it was actually in the process of
reconstruction. However, in the early hours of Sunday 11th July, 1993, it had two things
going for it: no Customs and no Immigration. We walked out, a little bewildered, into
Kazakhstan. Sergei commandeered a ramshackle bus and as the sky lightened over the
Kirghiz steppe we were deposited in front of the Hotel Kazakhstan in what the driver
described as "just about the centre" of Karaganda.

We roused the staff; took two rooms and sat surrounded by the comforting (if
Russian) trappings of civilisation, toasting ourselves and our bravado with vodka and
snacking on the sausage and bread Sergei had bought "for emergencies" in Moscow. It was
7 a.m. when we finally shut our eyes for a couple of hours. No doubt our bodies would
adjust individually in time. My biological clock was some six hours out, Sergei, from
Kaliningrad, was four hours away from normality. Dan's was the greatest burden: we had
already calculated that with St. Louis, Missouri registering 1993, Dan was trying to cope
with 47 years of jet lag.

Sergei woke us, impatient to get the first moves towards fortune underway. He had
the address of an old friend from his military service days in the Baltic fleet. The man was
from Karaganda and was, moreover, a miner. Fortunately Russians do not move house very
frequently, and when we arrived at the address on the outskirts of the city it was to find that
the man still lived there. However, setback no.1:  he was on holiday, and would be for the
rest of that week.

We skirted the large puddles which the heavy and apparently uncharacteristic
recent showers had left behind and regained the main road back into the city. Always ready
to capitalise on circumstance, Sergei persuaded the taxi driver to take us to a colleague
who had a "very fine car - petrol and gas" (presumably propane) who would drive us
anywhere and everywhere and specifically the 370 km down to East Konrad. We found the
fine car, another Zhiguli but maybe newer than most, with its bonnet up and three men
removing bits from the engine. The owner and driver, after assenting to our proposal, took
Dan's hand, pumped it warmly and said "Grisha!". Dan assumed this was a colloquial
variant of his one Russian greeting, "Privyet". "Grisha!" he responded. The driver,
presumably impressed by the coincidence of a client and an American at that with the same name,
said "Ah! - Grisha!!" and shook hands again. Dan, quite overcome by the sudden warmth of
communication replied "Yes, GRISHA!!" The whole episode looked like
ending in vodka until Sergei clarified the situation.

On the final stretch of the return journey to the Kazakhstan we passed a shop called
Krisopraz. "Minerals there," said the diiver. But it was Sunday, and evening. We found the
hotel bar instead. There were cold bottles of beer - Shaktyorskoe, Miners' Brew. We
agreed that it was one of the world's great beers. The two soldiers at the bar thought that
maybe the very best beer in the world was brewed in the Donbas. It would have been
churlish to mention Burton- on-Trent.

Monday was not a good day. Sergei slept late. Dan and I went to have a look at
Krisopraz. It was closed until 10. We walked up and down Main Street, Karaganda (the
name had been changed from Sovietsky Prospect to something more Kazakh, although it
still boasted a couple of impressive statues of Lenin. The top half of his body rose from a
huge block of red granite in the square on our route to Krisopraz; the best style for troubled
times. How the ghost of Felix Dzherzhinsky must have longed for such a statue outside the
Lubyanka! Such a statue can be chipped during a night of discontent, but it cannot be
toppled. When we returned to Krisopraz just before 10 a.m. it was surrounded by gypsies.
"Do you want to buy gold?" one of them asked, "they won't have any in there." She held out
a hand smothered in rings at the end of a multi-braceleted wrist. We declined. At 10:30 she
added "- and they don't open today, anyway.

So, we regained the Kazakhstan to find Sergei insistent that we obtain visas. He had
summoned Grisha, whose fine car was now running again, and had a list of addresses
where visas might be issued. The prospect was not good. The first official denied all
knowledge of "visas on arrival", our hope received from the (former) Soviet travel agency,
Intourist, in London. "And you couldn't go to East Kourad anyway - it's a forbidden area."
At the end of our weary tour of Karaganda officialdom we still had no visas, but thanks to
Sergei's pleading "You must leave Kazakhstan tomorrow" had been changed to "You can
stay in Karaganda until your return flight - BUT YOU MUST NOT LEAVE THE CITY!"

Spirits at the very lowest ebb, we regrouped around a fortifying stock of Miners'
Brew and assembled our remaining options. The first was to try and contact the mineral
marketing branch of the Ministry of Geology, Kvartzsamotsvety, an institution set up in
Soviet times to market the Union's decorative mineral resources. Sergei found a telephone
number with the aid of the dezhurnaya, the caretaker-cum-KGB agent found on every floor
of every hotel in the fornier Soviet Union. "Maybe Alma-Ata, I don't know". He phoned. It
was not Alma-Ata, it was in Karaganda. It was only a short distance from the hotel! They
would be pleased to see us next day!!

And this would only be a start: there must be, well, dozens of people in Karaganda
who collected minerals. We had only to find them. Maybe, just maybe, things were on the
upturn!

Anyone who has stayed in an Eastern Block hotel will know exactly what the
Kazakhstan was like. Those who have not would be unable to picture it were it described
by a much better pen than mine. Russia is forever reminding you that what you thought was
a trial yesterday suddenly seems like a plethora of riches today. Thus yesterday's pathetic
trickle of warm water in the bathroom had disappeared completely today, never to be re-
established. The meagre droplets we had complained about had, by the end of the week
assumed the proportion of a volcanic torrent. And the toilet cistern which we had flushed
with such gay abandon only hours before now presented an ultimately insoluble problem:
how to get the rusty hook over the handle in such a position that it would both flush and re-
seal the cistern in readiness for the next bowel easement. Dan continued showering, cold
water not withstanding. He admitted, openly, that he had difficulty keeping all the water in
the bath. This difficulty was questioned by the dezhurnaya when she tracked complaints of
inundation from the floor below to our room. I explained that it was difficult to shower,
freely, and not get a little water on the floor of the bathroom when there is no shower curtain.
"No it isn't, " she retorted, glaring, "it isn't difficult at all."

We arrived at the Ministry of Geology shortly after our bathroom confrontation. In
Karaganda this grandiose institution was of a decidedly rustic nature. Vitali Alekseevich
and Gennady Stepanovich, the bulk of the organisation, regarded us as if we had dropped in
from a minor planet of the Andromeda system. I had a premonition that we would have to
demonstrate something, somewhere to these men. The first test: two trays of very average
material from KaRA-oba appeared, and we were asked to select some pieces. Gennady then
produced a pocket calculator, tapped in some numbers, multiplied by a figure based on the
eccentricity in the orbit of Jupiter modified by the weight of material in the asteroid belt
and announced that the specimens selected would cost $208. "Let's do it," I said to Dan,
and we proffered two "C" notes. Dan gave the impression that he was undermining the
credibility of the U.S. dollar. It was easier for me: I didn't have to look the Queen in the
eye.

"And where do you want to go?" asked Vitali. We explained that we only had visas
for Karaganda. "Forget it," said Vitali, "you'll be all right with us, and anyway, where
we're going there won't be any police." He strung out a list of potential localities, all "far
better" than the ones renowned in mineralogical literature. "Today, I think, - Nura Taldi."
We arranged to meet at the hotel "after lunch" and off we went.

"Very good for our future business. Very impotent men," said Sergei in the taxi.
His English has progressed beyond immediate communication. He now feels confident
enough to interject ideas not necessarily relevant to the matter in hand although on this
occasion he had obviously detected the significance which I had sensed when we first
entered the portals of Kvartzsamotsvety.

We could not get any lunch at the Kazakhstan. The restaurant was full of elderly
Japanese, was "closed", and no amount of argument could prevail on the woman in charge.
We had a snack of sausage and bread in our room. It was here we registered our first count
over 30 on our dosimeters, the offending item being a large tomato which Sergei was about
to eat. After a moment's silence Sergei decided he was going to eat it anyway, as it had
been rather expensive. "Maybe after tomato no make love?" he said, presumably alluding
to the effects of radiation on male potency.

We English are sometimes guilty of ascribing only two dimensions to Americans
(and only one to most other races). Dan is an exception, and has at least one dimension
beyond the normal four. "I think this is where we get to ride in one of those jeeps," he
prophesied ... and he was right. Some 45 minutes beyond the assigned hour an Army jeep
with Vitali and Gennady (or V.& G. from now on) drew up in front of the hotel. We got in
the back. The back of the jeep was not comfortable going down Main Street, Karaganda.
Outside Karaganda it was uncomfortable. By the time we left the road and drove across the
open steppe we were hanging on for dear life. It was another test! Vitali, spinning the
wheel from side to side, seemed unaffected by the terrain. Gennady, not the slimmest of
individuals, sat motionless in the passenger seat. We bounced. "Ugh," we smiled as our
sausage-heavy colons contacted the bases of our brains. "Roughish," we allowed
ourselves, smiling, as sharp bits of jeep pierced our civilisation-softened bodies. This test
was smiling, and we smiled at each other as if the human face could express no other
emotion. Eventually we reached the site, a few trenches along veins of greisen. We broke
out the tools and dug.

There is a magic in the steppe, at least for an Englishman. The empty horizon-to-
horizon expanse with no signs of humanity or its devices is refreshment for the soul. It was

like a giant pasture, green punctuated with clumps of wild flowers. Apparently this
appearance was rare, the result of unusually heavy rains. Normally it looks more like a
desert, V.& G. assured us. "Many snakes and scorpions," added Sergei, with the special
smile he reserves for bad news, or at least bad news not involving bureaucrats or the
processes of bureaucracy. We clambered into the largest of the trenches and dug for topaz,
being rewarded with several small, blue crystals, the largest (mine!) a single, terminated
crystal about an inch long.

On our way back to Karaganda we passed a series of small, ornamentally walled
enclosures: a Kazakh cemetery, or, as Sergei explained with slight vowel confusion, "Deed
people - under sail." These cemeteries - we were to see several others - were perhaps the
only testament to an alien culture that we saw in Kazakhstan. Apart from these and the odd
bilingual sign ("nan" for bread, along with the Russian "chleb" for example) we could have
been in Russia. But then of the 17 million people inhabiting this huge country the majority,
some 10 million, are Russians, and of the remainder only a small proportion speak Kazakh,
perhaps a hopeful sign for the future peace of the new nation. We passed two new, partially
completed structures on the outskirts of the city: one was a Russian Orthodox church, the
other a mosque. Maybe peace will not be so easy to maintain once the churches are in
place.

The Japanese at the Kazakhstan, about 150 of them, were former P.O.W.s who had
built part of the city during the war. They had returned for the first time to revisit the site of
their former incarceration. We waited outside the hotel: Sergei had contacted a man with
minerals to sell who was to turn up with a friend - "One white beard, one black." They
arrived looking like transplanted matelots. The minerals were reasonable and the prices
bearable. We went back to Whitebeard's apartment and selected more. It was our first taste
of success.

The next morning, Wednesday, we waited for V.& G. They appeared an hour late
and we set off again lodged in the back of the infernal jeep, this time heading for Altyn
Tjube, the dioptase locality rapidly superseding Tsumeb as the world's top locality for this
mineral. The road (towards Karkaralinsk) was better than yesterday's, but when we finally
left it at the settlement of Proletariat the dirt track across the steppe tried the occupants of
the back seat to the limit. We drew up beside a small river "to wash our hands and faces -
ecologically pure water". The river was the Altyn Su! ("Dioptase is found on the Kirghiz
Steppe in the limestone hill of Altyn Tjube by the stream of Altyn Su..."). How long had
that name lain on the borders of my consciousness, and here it was in front of me, a real
river with fish, electric blue dragonflies and ecologically pure water. Another three
kilometres and we crossed the brow of a hill and found a tiny quarry. The face was about
8 ft. high and three or four times as long. Six men were drilling a shot hole in the top of the
face whilst a rather large woman was cooking a huge pot of grey soup over an open fire.
"Welcome" said Vitali, "Welcome to Altyn Tjube!" From this one tiny hole had appeared
the thousands of dioptase specimens which had flooded onto the world market during
recent years...

We wandered around the site finding very, very little. "You need to come next
month," said Gennady, "when they will be ready to blast." He made it sound as though
Bradwell, England was just beyond Proletariat rather than half-way across the world. For me,
however, it was sufficient just to have stood on this hallowed ground. Its image will rise
before me whenever, in the future, I hold a piece of Kazakh dioptase.

We returned to the Altyn Su for lunch. Vitali knew of a deep pool where we
stripped off and swam whilst the vodka cooled at the water's edge. We ate sausage and
bread and drank vodka and the alternative beer, Peasants' Brew (actually, we found a third
alternative subsequentIy, "Magnetic Fires", although which particular section of the
populace this was designed to satisfy I never discovered).

Lunch over, we resumed our crazed career across the steppe to the hill of Serekal
Baldi which had been worked in the recent past for chrysoprase and moss agate. We
pottered about in one quarry whilst V.& G. set off in the jeep to look for a better place.
They were gone a long time. "Maybe don't come back," smiled Sergei, then maybe
difficult to find Sheffield again! I thought it would be more than difficult. Two Kazakhs on
horseback rode up and started to strip a few pieces of metal from a derelict crane. Finally
there was a growling in the distance and the jeep reappeared. We spent half an hour at
another small quarry on the other side of the hill and then drove across the steppe until we
reached..... a small puddle. It was a few feet long, a couple of feet wide and about two
inches deep, but it was a spring, one of Vitali's numerous little steppe discoveries. We
drank the ice-cold water, declared it to be the finest we had ever tasted and then buried the
beer and vodka in it whilst Vitali hacked the remains of the sausage into bite-size portions.

It was very late and very dark when we reached the Kazakhstan. The caretaker was
just clearing up the remains of a double-glazed (8mm thick glass) window alongside the
door of the hotel. Somebody who had drunk to excess in the restaurant that night had
walked through it in mistake for the door.

Vitali was to collect us at 10 the next morning. He rang at 11. "Sorry for the later,"
explained Sergei, "because many works in the morning." Scouting for breakfast he and Dan
had seen a huge fish lying on a flat roof below the restaurant. Sergei opined that someone
had thrown it out of the window...perhaps the same man who had demolished the hotel
entrance last night. Whilst waiting for Vitali we were questioned closely by the hotel
receptionist (who had been questioned in turn by the police) as to what we were doing in
Kazakhstan. Sergei hastily said that it was nothing to do with precious stones, not the
answer best calculated to allay suspicion. He assured her that we would sort out the little
matter of the visa with the police the next day.

Vitali eventually arrived. He took us to Krisopraz, the shop apparently being the
retail arm of Kvartzsamotsvety. The gypsies were still there, most of them on hands and
knees in a huddle around a piece of newspaper - some auriferous transaction, no doubt.
There was little in Krisopraz to interest us (indeed "little" is too kind a word). However,
we were destined that day for what was obviously Vitali's favourite locality: Kent, near
Karkaralinsk, an area of rich pegmatites where, inter alia, riebeckite could be found.

We first had to visit Altyn Tjube and deliver two enormous jacks. No - not that
track again...Fortunately we met a truck from the mine half-way between Proletariat and
Altyn Tjube, so we only suffered half as much as on the previous day. And, conveniently,
we met the truck near another deep pool on the Altyn Su. So - lunch, swim, vodka....
Vitali, as driver, would not drink anything at these stops. "Pity Vitali not able to drink,
because he likes drink very much," said Sergei, "we must tomorrow." I had seen how
Vitali drove; I dreaded to think how he drank.

Halfway to Karkaralinsk we were stopped at a police checkpoint. "Not talking,"
advised Sergei. I felt a little uncomfortable - no papers, visa...nothing. It appeared that
we were entering a nature reserve, the home of some curly-horned sheep or goat, and the
check was to see if we were carrying guns. What a chance for promotion that policeman
missed!

Kent was a long, long way. We crossed two sizeable rivers ( or maybe one
sizeable river twice). If the water rose, Vitali said, we would not get back. The heavy,
black clouds overhead made this a distinct possibility. We clung on to the jeep and each
other. "I don't believe it," Dan hissed through clenched teeth, "this for riebeckite?

But Kent was beautiful: pink granite bosses, trees, flowers and the absolute silence
of the steppe. It started to rain as soon as we stopped, but in such circumstances it just has
to be ignored. We collected in a large trench which cut a pegmatite. There was smoky
quartz and huge octahedra of fluorite. We dug and dug, our clothes became saturated and
then dried out again as the sky cleared and the sun shone once more. "Now - riebeckite,"
said Vitali, and we bounced a little further to another small quarry and, sure enough, there
were riebeckite crystals and small, brown zircons.

It was getting late. Vitali drove the jeep up the side of a granite boss and we had
our supper, the usual combination of sausage and vodka. With dusk a variety of flying,
biting things appeared. I have no idea what the creatures were, but they were unpleasant.
Sergei caught one and announced that it was a "famous termite", whatever that implied. Even
so, there was a reluctance to leave Kent, and it was only that Vitali wanted a vestige of
light to find his way back to the road that finally got us moving.

It was a long, hard drive back to Karaganda. We stopped on a hill overlooking the
city. Vitali having slept off and on for the previous thirty miles. We ate more sausage. "Late
supper!" announced Sergei. "Or early breakfast," added Dan. This concept appealed to
Sergei. "Early breakfast in Kazakhstan," he repeated slowly, "very romantic!"

We reached the hotel at 3 a.m. We had to go to the police station the next day about
our visas. Sergei insisted we "stand up" at 7 a.m. Yet another short night.

We visited Whitebeard again: he had been to Akchatau the day before and
expected to have some new material, but it appeared that there had been no recent mining
activity because of a deficit of explosives. We agreed we would have been better off
staying in bed. Now we had all morning to look forward to our visit to the police. We sat
in the hotel and salivated at the prospect of a lunch which would not be cylindrical. Dan
was bemoaning the lack of specimens. "My main problem will not be getting the stuff out of
Russia: it'll be getting it into the house without Jill seeing." Sergei looked puzzled. " My
wife," explained Dan, "...like customs officer." A sudden flash of comprehension
crossed Sergei's face; "Ah!!...your wife has fallen in love with customs official!" What a
creative art form a little linguistic knowledge can be, when coupled with a lively
imagination! When Vitali, the previous day, had turned his jeep up the final bare granite
slope only to stop a few feet above the ground I had said to Dan that I had thought for a
moment he was going all the way "to the top". Sergei said today that he would "never
forget" the way I had said I wanted to go "to the toilet" as we drove upwards.

The police station of the Soviet District of Karaganda was not as intimidating as I
had imagined, although Sergei did not like the look of the head of Passports and Visas who
kept flitting in and out of his room whilst we waited (long beyond the time of our
appointment). "Bad man," he said, "old Kazakh..."  There was a board on the wall of the
waiting room extorting police officers to learn Kazakh. It had a list of a dozen words with
their Russian equivalents. Even if changed weekly it would presumably take the average
police officer until the new millennium before he was able to carry out an arrest in the
language.

We prepared mentally for the impending interview. "No joke, laugh, smile here.
Better look a little grieving," warned Sergei. And everything turned out all right. We were
passed on to a far more agreeable woman who typed out two protocols. In these we put the
blame for our unexpected arrival on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, sans visa,
fully on the shoulders of Intourist, London.

It was now quite late, but we decided to try for lunch at the hotel. The restaurant
was of course, closed, but Sergei persuaded a passing waitress to let us in the back way.
They chatted on as we traversed endless corridors, kitchens, storerooms..."Very
impotent for our future supper," he said with a wink. (And an important supper: we had
invited V. & G. with a view to consolidating our future business interests).

We took a taxi over to Kvartzsamotsvety. Gennady had found a couple of men with
mineral specimens to sell, but the material was not particularly interesting. However, we
did arrange to meet one of them the following day to see more material. We went back to
the Kazakhstan in the hated jeep and drew up long protocols with Gennady for purchasing
the entire mineral production of Kazakhstan into the distant future. I was to become the
"Manchester wing of KaRA-oba," Dan the "St. Louis wing of Akchatau"... Dan said he had
always imagined that if he ever got into the position of drawing up contracts with foreign
governments it would be done in a circle of lawyers in front of a backdrop of fax
machines, telexes, computers, etc. etc., "And here we are, in a scruffy hotel bedroom
writing the things out in pencil on what would pass in the west for toilet paper!" And
drinking copious amounts of vodka. We were eventually joined by Vitali and we retired to
the restaurant.

I turned in about midnight whilst Sergei went off to find more vodka. He eventually
returned, very drunk and very talkative with a bottle of moonshine which he had purchased
in the belief that it was a rare German liqueur. I slept. The party was augmented by the
dezhurnaya demanding payment for my telephone call home that evening. I slept through the
ensuing exchanges, and we were finally left in peace.

We all woke late, Sergei with a substantial hangover. We managed breakfast
around midday, and after yet more protocol discussions with Gennady we met up with the
new contact from yesterday, who by a not, for Russia, very great coincidence was also
called Sergei. He was the only person that we met who took a pessimistic view of the
future of Kakakhstan. We sat around him outside the hotel, jaws sagging ever lower as he
outlined, over a period of some twenty minutes, the horrors that were in store...rivers of
blood, parents abandoning children, children denouncing their parents...When the
diatribe came to an end we looked, bewildered, at each other, until Sergei (our original,
not the new harbinger of doom) suddenly grinned and said "Maybe our last trip!"

The new Sergei, Sergei II, had a fine collection of minerals in his apartinent, and
had assembled some interesting people to have supper with us, including a curator from the
mineral museum in Miass, Chelyabinsk. He, Sergei II that is, also turned out to be a
prodigious mushroom collector and we suppered on an enormous bowl of these fungi,
lightly sauteed. Dan chose the sausage. Yet more collectors, two men from Dzhezkazgan,
were to appear the next day with specimens for the Man from Miass, so we were invited
for lunch.

The last day! We packed the material, all too little of it, which we had acquired and
caught a taxi out to Sergei II's. Nikolai, from Miass, graciously allowed us first pick of the
material which had arrived from Dzhezkazgan and which included some quite respectable
specimens. Again, a very agreeable group sat at Sergei's table resplendent with another
giant tureen of mushrooms. This time there was no sausage. "I really don't think there is
anything on this table my stomach can digest," whispered Dan, and kept to the vodka. We
had innumerable toasts...the usual ones to Friendship Between Nations, to Those We
Love Who Are Absent From This Table, and a special miners' toast about Great Rewards
From Inserting Picks Into Small Holes. Judging by the guffaws there were sexual
connotations here for which my Russian was quite inadequate. We were shown various
ways of drinking vodka, the most elaborate being (if I recall it correctly) taking a bite of
pickled gherkin, sniffing one's armpit, gulping down the vodka, sniffing one's armpit again
and then taking a sip of fruit juice. Dan felt sure this rigmarole was purely to see how far an
American could be deluded and humiliated. I demonstrated how our English 10 pound note could
be folded so that Her Majesty could be made to grin or scowl at will. This so impressed
our two new friends from Dzhezkazgan that they insisted on changing two notes "suitably
folded" for dollars and are probably at this very moment demonstrating the effect in some
miners' canteen out on the steppe.

All too soon we had to leave, collect our luggage from the Kazakhstan and make
our way to the airport. Sergei was very concerned about the possibility of problems with
customs, and was delighted to find that our taxi driver also worked at the airport and "knew
the ropes". We parked across the square from the airport. "At 7 o'clock the customs go for
supper," Sergei reported. We sat and smoked. At 7:01 Sergei and the driver jumped in the
car and we screamed across the square. By 7:015 we had been thrust out of the car, through
the departure hall (really, shed would be a better term) and were out on the runway without
so much as a glimpse of a customs official.

We enjoyed some little culinary delights on the plane. The inflight meal was three
slices of sausage and a hunk of stale bread, washed down with Sergei's moonshine.
Deciding we could not take any more of this vile liquid we gave it to the three men sitting
in front of us. Such a display of selflessness demanded reciprocation, and we were force-
fed generous rashers of meatless bacon and presented with a bottle of even viler liquid
which took our breath away and, I suspect, the linings of our throats (yet another example
of the Russian proverb about the grass always being browner on the other side of the hill).

We peered intently at the lights of Moscow as the 154 made its final approach into
Domodedevo. This time, however, there was no uncertainty...we knew there was a
jungle out there.