Déjà vu in Astana

We were midway through our tour of Astana, the shiny new capital of Kazakhstan, and our guide was convinced we had taken leave of our senses.

Our group had just been to the top of the Bayterek Monument, a strikingly modern tower that offered views over the attractively designed new buildings aligned along the capital district’s Avenue of the Republic, and it was clear this was our cue to make admiring comments about this city created on the otherwise featureless and treeless plains of the Central Asian steppe.

But for anyone coming from the UAE, that scenario – of the lesser-known capital city of a young but tolerant Islamic nation using its oil wealth to create a modern metropolis in a bleak and unforgiving environment – was a little too familiar to be impressive.

“We’re from Abu Dhabi,” we told our guide. “We don’t want to see new buildings. We want to see nature. We want to see the essence of Central Asia!”

The guide looked at us with blank incomprehension. With the help of the translator, we were told: “There is no nature – only steppe.”

The Astana people we had met so far had all been inestimably proud of this modern new city, basking in the proof they were just like Europe or America and not the Central Asian backwater of popular imagination. It was no wonder the authorities hated the film Borat so much.

So it took a degree of duress to convince our guide to abandon her standard route through the city’s modern architectural marvels and drive us out into the steppe that makes up most of Kazakhstan, the world’s ninth biggest nation.

We eventually found a nondescript village, prompting her to look at us with disbelief, as if to say: “Why on earth would they want to come here?” Instead of mirrored glass, there were sod roofs that traditionally helped the residents cope with temperatures that range from up to 40°C in summer down to -40°C in the depths of winter. Some of the homes had no roofs at all, suggesting a slow depopulation over many years.

But there were also some brand new homes, hinting at an influx of wealth that dated from 12 years ago when the government announced it was moving the capital from the nation’s biggest city, Almaty, in the far south of Kazakhstan, to the outskirts of this hitherto little-known provincial town in the north.

Had we been coming from somewhere other than the UAE, we probably would have been more impressed by how much had been achieved since 1997.

Sited on what had been fields across the river from the historic downtown, nearly everything in the capital district was complete, ranging from the parliament, the presidential palace, government ministries and landmark buildings such as the 77m-high glass pyramid of the multidenominational Palace of Peace and Harmony.

Although there were many international architects brought in (Norman Foster designed three of the buildings) there had also been attempts to incorporate Kazakh themes into the mix, such as the design of the Bayterek Monument, which has a gold-hued transparent orb where the viewing platform is located that is inspired by the ancient Kazakh legend of the samruk bird laying a golden egg containing the secrets to human desires and happiness.

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