I set out early with Luisa and Johnny in the driving-school Lada for the Barakholka, the sprawling flea-market bazaar, and the bus station beyond it in the west of Almaty where the taxis leave for Kyrgyzstan.  We were met by a jostling crowd of drivers before a phalanx of cars, all loudly competing to drive me across the border into Kyrgyzstan and Bishkek, its capital.  […]  Out of a selection of physically abused cars, Johnny picked out a big, square yellow Mercedes with a massively crazed windscreen with two big holes the size of boulders on the passenger side.  Its driver, Nurgazy, was a sharp and streetwise 25-year-old with a close-cropped head of black hair and a round face like an apple behind a natty pair of wrap-around sunglasses.  […]

Nurgazy was indeed a great driver, if utterly anarchic.  The Mercedes had once been luxurious, and I settled into the black Rexine of the deep back seat.  I had it to myself and was glad of it.  As soon as we were out of town the road deteriorated into a random pattern of craters on a wide, bumpy highway lined with elms and robinia.  Nurgazy sped along at a constant 60 miles per hour or more, overtaking everything in sight and nudging other drivers out of his way by dint of the sheer bulk and headlong speed of the Mercedes.  He wove between the potholes with the grace and skill of a dancer, simultaneously channel-hopping on the radio, losing patience with anything that wasn’t either house or accordion music, turning it up to full volume.  ‘I am the God of House’, obviously number one in the Kazakh house charts, rang out across the steppes as we sped along with the Heavenly Mountains to our left and a huge, flat, treeless horizon to our right.