Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country and the 9th largest country in the world after Argentina.

Despite being in Asia, Kazakhstan is home to Europe’s longest road. The E40 links Kazakstan to France and is more than 8,500 km long.

It’s commonly known that Kazakstan served a Soviet space launch facility. Baikonur Cosmodrome was built in the 1950s and to this day is still one of only four sites around the world that have launched humans into space.

What is less commonly known though is that Kazakhstan was also home to one of the Soviet Union’s other mega projects. Kazakstan was the primary testing site for the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons development programme. The Semipalatinsk test site, also known as  "The Polygon" was used to test nuclear weapons from 1949 to 1991. 

The Soviets conducted more than 110 above-ground nuclear tests and today the once flat terrain is pitted with craters, unnatural lakes and empty decaying buildings. 

The effects on the residents of the surrounding area are even more pronounced. Kazakh health authorities estimate that up to 1.5 million people were exposed to fallout in the process. More than 100,000 people in the area are still affected by radiation, which has been transmitted down through five generations and spread hundreds of kilometres away from the test site. If this isn’t a reason for nuclear disarmament, I don’t know what is.

The Semipalatinsk test site isn’t the only Soviet scar in Kazakhstan. The Aral Sea, once spanning 67,000 sq km across the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan has shrunk by 95%. Now you can see rusting shops in the desert where there once used to be sea. The Aral Sea was the victim of aggressive Soviet irrigation projects in the 1950s and will likely never recover.

On a more positive note, Kazakhstan still has a wild population of snow leopards living in the Almatinsky Nature Reserve. Kazakhstan is also the birthplace of the apple. Despite the fact that apples are one, if not the most universally available fruit, DNA analysis indicates that apples originated in the mountains of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is also home to the last remaining wild apple tree groves in the Tian Shan mountains. 

And on that note, for some reason, I suddenly feel like I’ve earned a cider.