Second picture of Ekaterinaberg below:

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Arrived Almaty around 7.30 am - weather was lousy - with temperature just above freezing. Seemed to have hit the low point at this changeable time of year - the previous Sunday had seen 65F and it would rise to 60F before I left on Good Friday - but for nw it was snow, sleet and rain!

A couple of pics on the way in, taken from inside the taxi - I think the white painted on the lower halves of the tree trunks is there for som kind of frost protection...:

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Get off the main thoroughfares, and the town looks pretty poor, with ramshackle housing and pot-holed roads with no sidewalks/pavements, but the centre of town is showing the trappings of oil wealth already. The hotel where I was staying and where the course was being held probably the most prolific of the new buildings:

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And this was also borne out by the qua;lity of cars in the car park there - the abundance of 20-year-old Passats I'd seen coming in (my old 200,000 mile Passat might just have a second-hand value here!) giving way to Porshe Cayennes, Lexus 4x4s, Mercedes of all types, and the occasional car of my dreams (as some of you will already know) below:

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The course was aimed at the oil market, with my two days covering freight, storage and pipelines. Kazakhstan has one of the largest oilfields in the Soviet ex-block at Tengiz, and this is now piped to the Black Sea port of Novorossijsk through an entrenched 800 mile pipeline. The crude oil that comes from the field is very high in sulphur and undergoes an innovative de-sulphurisation process developped by Chevron. For those that like facts and figures, the pipeline currently handles 800,000 bbls/day and export is generally via 100,000 ton vessels of which 315 were loaded last year.

Anyway, this is the sort of stuff the class had to endure - day 1, I had about 42 in the class, but day 2 reduced to 22 because of the subject matter - in the second picture you can see my translator standing to the left of the screen - usually we have simultaneous translation, but this time it was subsequent - so I spoke a sentence and the translator then repeated my words in Russian - OK, but it tends to slow down the teaching, and time management can become an issue as a result:

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I didn't get a chance to get out and about until the last day but then managed to get a few more photos of the place - the bank is an inspiring piece of architecture, and the view from the hotel entrance took in the radio mast and the distant snow-capped mountains

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We were to be taken to the shuttle bus station that would provide the transport to our mountain-side restaurant - a few intesting buildings en route:

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AS you can see, the weather had improved daramtically since my arrival - so a short ride by shuttle bus to the mountain-side:

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Although the view to the mountains was superb, not so the view back down to Almaty - pollution was rife - the petrol and diesel used is of low quanity and so the smog builds up daily.

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Seems to be a problem throughout the Soviet countries and throughout Asia. When you see pollution on this scale with such alarming regularity you begin to appreciate the scale of the problem to achieve reductions in emissions globally.

On a lighter note, it is possble to take the cable car up to the mountainside - although it looks to be a bit of a cramped journey...:

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And who would have expected to see the Beatles (albeit in bronze) on the Almaty mountainside...?

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The restaurant and food was nothing to write home about (current state of health confirms this!) but it did have an entertaining parakeet that insisted on being the centre of attraction ('awww' time for animal lovers), achieving this mainly by being in the upside-down position and flapping his wings!:

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A dawn taxi ride the following morning to take me back to Almaty airport. Overall impressions were of a place going through dramatic financial change with a noticeable difference between rich and poor amongst its inhabitaints. The style and attractions show a very relaxed approach to life, but that seems to be about to change as oil wealth brings construction and development of the place.

It will be interesting to see what the place is like in, say, 5 years time...:

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Excellent job, as usual, cf. Thank you.

Great pics. Thanks for sharing.