Almost every apple in every supermarket on Earth descends from wild trees that still grow on the slopes above Almaty, in Kazakhstan. The forest they came from is shrinking: since the 1960s, between 70 and 80 percent of it has gone under houses, roads and grazing.

On this journey we cross the whole country: the wild apple forest and the mountains above Almaty, the Valley of Castles in Charyn Canyon, the spruce forest standing dead in Lake Kaindy since the earthquake of 1911, the singing dune of Altyn-Emel, the steppe with its yurts, horses and the Golden Man of Issyk, the Silk Road city of Turkestan, the old sea floor of Mangystau with shark teeth in the chalk, the Aral Sea and the dam that brought part of it back, the launch pad at Baikonur, and Astana, a capital built on empty grassland in 1997.

0:00 Intro
1:38 The father of apples
3:55 The mountains above the city
5:29 The Valley of Castles
6:31 The drowned forest
8:33 The dune that sings
9:55 The steppe
13:11 The city on the Silk Road
14:26 The sea that left
15:51 The Aral
18:04 The launch pad in the steppe
19:39 The city built on grass


#Kazakhstan #Almaty #Baikonur