"The weather was new to me, I'd never even seen snow before." For Ramnik Kohli from New Dehli, India, Russia turned out to be a completely new world.
He first came to Russia in 1997 to study at the State University of Management in Moscow after he got a scholarship from the Russian government. Having completed his PhD in economics and marketing in 2007, Ramnik returned to India only to come back to Moscow in 2013 — this time as head of the Russia and CIS branch of Micromax Infomatics Ltd, an Indian producer of mobile phones.
Since then Russia has become his second home. He has a wide circle of friends in Moscow and has traveled to almost every corner of the country. For Ramnik, the Russian soul is no longer a sealed book: "Russians take some time to open up. And smile a bit less. But when people get to know you, they start smiling."