To someone travelling by jeep, on tyres filled with the smoky air of the city, everything here blurs into a uniform grey . . . This Kalmyk steppe, which stretches, gradually changing to desert, right to the mouth of the Volga and the shores of the Caspian, has one strange characteristic: the earth and the sky above have reflected one another for so long that they have finally become undistinguishable, like a husband and wife who have spent their whole lives together.
