Ali Akbat Ashari

Kazakhstan reaches out

As a journalist, you can never expect the red carpet to be rolled out when you arrive in a country.

So, I was more than happy to walk on the blue one rolled out when I disembarked from the plane at Almaty in Kazakhstan. It wasn’t just the blue carpet either. Standing on it was a small delegation of military officials all wearing the extra-large Soviet-style caps that are worn here.

The caps are always at least twice as large as the faces underneath them, are tipped way back and for some reason, always make me smile when I see them.

But the carpet from plane to terminal is an improvement on the grey metal hallway usually reserved for disembarking passengers.