Monday 2 October 2023

We arrived in Almaty last night and were given a VIP escort through customs before being driven to our hotel by Glebe, the Royal Canin country manager.

Sylvia had a breakfast meeting with Janibek,  the Ukrainian GM, who lives in Almaty, before heading off to visit the company office and do a tour of some of the local businesses.

After a visit to the hotel gym I took a stroll south along the street by the Novotel, passing a number of small shops  and a number of stalls under what looked like a number of soviet style apartments.  We had visited this city in 2019 so I had seen most of the main sights. Several kilometres down the road I came across  a nice park with some interesting statues and a small lake with fountains and a restaurant on an island at one end. Passing through the park and a kids amusement park, I came across the zoo. Heading around the back of the zoo I came across a busy main road which I followed for a while before heading into the back streets with lots of houses and businesses behind high concrete and steel fences. It was all quite peaceful with few people about. Eventually I hit another main road with a large statue of a past hero from last century. Cutting across another street I found my way back to the hotel.

I had the privilege of being invited to join a dinner with Sylvia and her team in the evening. A van picked me up from the hotel, loaded with the small, tight-knit Royal Canin team. Kazakhstan is a relatively new business with a small, enthusiastic team, growing this business in this large country which cover some 2.7 million square kilometres.

About 30 minutes southeast of the hotel we arrived at the Kazaah Ayul Restaurant, situated on a hill with a view of the lights of the city. We enjoyed a really enjoyable meal of local cuisine, including horse meat and beef bones that we scraped the marrow out of with a small fork. Roman, one of the managers, was telling me how he had driven his car here from Ukraine, some 8 thousand kilometres in total, 4 thousand of it across Kazakhstan after he had ferried across the Caspian sea from Azerbaijan, having driven through Romania Bulgaria and Turkey.