The largest landlocked country in the world is desperately trying to shed the image bestowed on it by Sasha Baron Cohen in 2007 with the movie Borat.  Trabant Trek will do what it can to help educate its followers about the real Kazakhstan, a land of mystery which extends from the plains of Western Siberia to the oases and deserts of Central Asia.

The trek will take our eight explorers through the old and new capitals of Almaty and Astana, then continue on to Semay and the surrounding area known as the Polygon. This is essentially a glorified landfill used as a dumping ground for nuclear waste during the Soviet era. Hopefully no team members will come out with a third eye - but it would be cool if they developed super powers somehow….    

 

The team will have to remember its manners when greeting the locals. In Kazakhstan it is protocol to first ask about the health of the other person’s livestock, and  only then may you proceed with inquiring about any other aspects of life. John Drury can already taste the smokey aroma of Kazy – a sausage made of horse meat and intestines, and looks forward to washing it down with a luke-warm glass of the fermented mare’s milk known as Kymys.

Astana, not quite Borat's Kazakhstan