We have arrived in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan!

Last you heard from us, we were in Madrid, Spain and getting ready to head back to the airport for our flight to Istanbul. 

And seeing as we were going back to the airport anyhow, they had said that we should be able to pick up Ruth's carry on bag that had been on an adventure of it's own when it went missing.

We took the metro (underground) again, and we were surprised when the tap and pay card that we had re-loaded the day before, had expired! We've learned in other worldwide cities that it's not always easy to figure out public transit system as a tourist. And in this situation, we bought four single trip tickets, to use two the day we arrived, and two the day we departed. But we missed the fine print where it says the tickets are only valid on the day of purchase. While this is upsetting (because why would they expire??), we chalk these little episodes up to being part of the cost of travel. So it ended up costing almost €10 ($15 CAD. $12 USD) more than it should have for the privilege of using the public bus system instead of an even more expensive private taxi.

Writing the blog post with Romeu the cat continually interrupting.

Anyhow, we got to the airport and had to go to all the way to terminal 4 because Ruth's bag was waiting for her there, despite the fact that our next remaining flight was departing from Terminal 1. All of this took time, and we were only able to enjoy about 45 minutes in the airport lounge. Fortunately, Madrid's lounge has a fantastic buffet and we spent the entire time eating!

The flight from Madrid to Istanbul went well. And then we had an hour and a half in Istanbul. That went by quickly and we soon found ourselves in Almaty, Kazakhstan... at 4:30am in the morning. 

We had to wait until almost 6:00am for the public bus to take us into the city. We had to make our way to the main bus terminal which is on the other side of the city. The passes we had to buy included only one trip each and we couldn't figure out how to reload them because we were supposed to transfer. . We also couldn't get our e-SIM to work, and the free airport WiFi in Almaty airport had been difficult to access and not working well when you could access it! Bit of a frustrating couple of hours as we ended up walking the entire 8 kms (5 miles) with our bags. 

The boarder mountains of Kyrgyzstan in the distance as seen from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

We had done the bus between Almaty and Bishkek two years ago, but in the reverse direction. So we were somewhat familiar with the procedure. But we missed the 8am bus so had to take the 10am bus. 

At the border of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The border crossing was just a formality. They hardly looked at us, and stamped us in.

The bus dropped us off at the "new" bus station, which wasn't even close to being finished. But that's what it is now, and so we had to take a taxi the rest of the way into the city. We got together with Philip, a Brazilian traveler who lives and works in India in order to share a taxi the rest of the way. Our portion was 650 som ($10 CAD, $7.50 USD) which was pretty cheap even though it was more than we expected.

He got off at his guest house, and we were dropped at ours about 3 kms away. Our room is tiny, but really well appointed and spotlessly clean. Our hostess doesn't speak much English, but she is so warm and welcoming.  She pointed us in the right direction for an ATM and a few groceries and off we went.

We ended up in the big Osh Bazaar here in Bishkek.

The vodka aisle is always really impressive in Russian speaking countries!

More to tell you, but I'm exhausted. Not going to make it past 9:00pm!