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Having a bit of a mare!
Hello from Kyrgyzstan!
Last time we wrote we were relaxing at a campsite. It was so good there, we decided to spend another couple of nights – we had got so settled, it was quite weird when we finally came to leave, almost like leaving home all over again! There were hugs and kisses from Ruslan’s family and a gift of a huge jar of pure (as in it’s got bits of bees in it) honey from the beekeeper down the hill - it’s lush. We don’t know if they were sad to see us go or happy to get their view back once Mario had gone!
While there we met some more great guests. There was Max and his fiancée from Shymkent. He is an air traffic controller who spoke excellent English and was most interested in our trip. He said we were his heroes, but we think that may have got lost in translation! We then met Robert, a teacher from Ireland who had travelled extensively making the most of his summer holidays. On this trip he’d been travelling alone around most of The ‘Stans, including Afghanistan and he’d also been to Iran. He had some great stories and was easy company while we shared some beers and gin. We both have huge respect for anyone who takes on such a journey on their own, we don’t know how they can do it.
We then had about 300KM to drive to get to Kyrgyzstan, and about a week to do it – so we were planning on plodding along and wasting time. However, we then got a text from our agents who are sorting the China journey – due to the unfortunate recent accidents in Tibet, China have tightened procedures on the visas and they now need to be in force at least 20 days before entry. This meant we had to get to Bishkek ASAP to get our application in at the Chinese Embassy to buy us enough time. So, change of plan, Bishkek here we come!
The border crossing was harmless enough, usual scenario of no concept of queuing, people pushing in even when we were dealing with an official, but we’re getting used to that now. We were even brave enough to refuse to pay bribes to the guards on the gate - just turning the engine off and repeatedly asking “What For?” while the traffic builds up behind, works quite well. The Kyrgyz side was really quite relaxed and friendly, an officer put his hat on Bry (but wouldn’t let us take photos), one tried to kidnap Douglas (our mascot from the Isle of Man) and the blokes in charge all seemed to be in T-shirts and jeans. When we tried to buy insurance, we were just laughed at. They basically said “You’re not in Kazakhstan now, you don’t need it”! We then drove onto Bishkek and found a lovely guesthouse who agreed we could sleep in Mario in their secure car park for 3 nights.
Next morning it was off bright and early to the Chinese Embassy with all our various paperwork to sort the visa. When we got there and saw the crowd at the gates we thought they must have been late opening – how wrong we were! Basically another scrum to get in, with what appeared to be a 2 out / 1 in policy. We worked out there was a small woman at the front with a handwritten list of names that you had to add yourself to, to get in. This would have been fine, if she crossed peoples’ names off when they went in, or bothered to check who was going in was actually who was on the list.
For 2 hours we were entertained by people pushing, shoving, screaming and crying. We saw one bloke try to get in three times under different peoples’ names! About 5 minutes before they were due to close, we managed to work our way to the front and get inside. We were there for less than a minute and were told our papers were wrong and our standard passport photos weren’t to their standard. They wouldn’t give us any explanation, they just said “Bye Bye”. We had read horror stories about Chinese Embassies and how it’s easier to employ a local agent to do the process, but apparently Bishkek is meant to be one of the easier ones. Not in our experience, or the other Western travellers we met there, who were also turned away.
So it was back to the city centre and the office of a certain Miss Liu, the Chinese Visa fixer in Bishkek. She sent us to a local photographers who took new shots of us and then spent 15 minutes manipulating them on Photoshop to meet the criteria. We both look like we’ve been airbrushed! You can’t wear white clothes or have too much skin showing in the photos. Bry was wearing a white T-shirt and Caroline a strappy dress. Luckily Caroline had her emergency/ cover-up/ going into a mosque shirt in the rucksack (thanks to Emma’s FatFace vouchers) so this was used - by both of us! Bry may have lost a bit of weight on this trip, but getting into a ladies size 10 shirt, in a hurry, in 37 degree heat was quite an effort. We were all laughing so much, including the photographer, it took a while before Bry could do a straight face for the camera. Then it was back to Miss Liu for new forms, a US$300 payment and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully a Chinese Visa to pick up on Wednesday 27th – our Tenth Wedding Anniversary!
We have since spent 2 days enjoying Bishkek. There’s not much to see or do, which suits us fine! We’ve been enjoying the sun, parks, air conditioned malls, huge Osh Bazaar and yet another musical fountain. It’s been nice but also a bit strange being in a big city again, everything you could want, but also you could be in any big city in the world. After a month of literally having to search for the local shop as they have no signs outside, to now find huge supermarkets that sell Stella, was a welcome change but the novelty soon wears off. It’s much more fun “in the sticks”, we drove into one village and saw 2 boys outside a house waving us over – sure enough it was the local shop. Why pay for expensive electric signage when you can get the kids to do it?!
Also, the village shops are proper Open All Hours style, not self-service. We just have to point at stuff we think we recognise and hope for the best. So far, rather than normal milk, we’ve managed to buy about 3 different types of yoghurt, condensed milk and cream – it makes breakfast very exciting! We’ve been eating various types of kebabs and local “meats” and drinking kymys (fermented mare’s milk – hence the very witty title!) which smells of formaldehyde. It reminds Bry of dissecting rats in biology and Caroline of when she observed a post-mortem! Goes down well though.
So now we have to kill time until Wednesday. We’re planning on driving out of the city for a few days and then coming back in. We’re going to come back to the same guesthouse, but as it’ll be our anniversary, we’ve booked a room - how very decadent! Well it has been a month since we last didn’t sleep in Mario.
So we’ve got everything crossed that the visa goes through OK and we’ll update when we can!