We took a morning swim in the pool of the fancy, 18 rooms house we stayed in Bishkek. After packing our luggage and saying goodbye to our hosts, we took a cab to go to the shop where we left our bikes few days earlier. On the way, we had a crash with a marchoutka, and we had to leave the cab in the middle of the traffic, with all our stuff, as it didn’t ride anymore. Not a good start for our last day in central asia! We managed to jump in a bus and reach the bike shop, where we happily found our bikes back.
Our next mission was to go to Osh bazaar, to buy a hundred Kyrgyz caps.We had the brilliant (?) idea to buy them in order to sell them in Europe, and it was the place where we could find the best prices. It was indeed cheap : a hundred caps for a hundred euros…after a lot of negociation! When we left the bazaar, 3 cops stopped us to check our passport, and then started emptying our pockets, checking out the money. They obviously wanted to transfer some in their own pockets, and we had to take the money back by force from their hands. Kyrgyz cops are most corrupted we’ve seen and those are the only guys you should be afraid of travelling Kyrgysztan. With our money in our pockets and our caps in our bag, we could rest and eat. Our last meal was not shashliks, but chinese dishes 🙂
We struggled to put all our gear in the taxi, but somehow managed to do it. We spent the night in the airport, as we were taking off early in the morning. After a night with no sleep, we had to fight with the crew of the company, who wanted to make us pay for the bike by kilo, asking for 400 dollars each…while it was supposed to be 30 euros for the bike! My internet connection helped us big time, as I could show the manager the terms and conditions of his company, where it says that it is indeed 30 euros for a bike going to Budapest. It still needed half an hour of arguing to make him agree for the amount. It the end, it worked. After that, we went through other issues : woman at the customs saying our visa is expired -while we dont need visa for Kyrgysztan anymore-, and few items taken from luggages : scissors and camping gas, and we struggled to keep our knife and locker. All those guys in the airport were the biggest concentration of stupid people we’ve seen in 4 months, and getting into the plane was a huge relief. As we still did not sleep at all, we fell asleep before taking off, and woke up after landing. Europe, here we come, for more cycling adventures 🙂
Now, let’s hope we didn’t forget anything
Central Asia, see you next time!