Wasting my time in Bishkek, Aug 12-20 + getting a new itinerary

The lovely Miraida - Photoshopped nonetheless! The first time I've done that with any of my pics on this site - a price to anyone who can see what I did!

Looking back on the last few days, I can hardly remember what I have done. What I do remember seems to be mostly walking back and forth through Bishkek, and writing e-mails, but I guess there must have been more than that?

Some of all that time-wasting has at least meant meeting a few nice people, chief among them is Miraida, a 20-year old business student who has been helping me with some mysterious Kyrgyz traditional rituals, such as beat-the-bureacratic-guardian-of-the-holy-visa-extensions, and retrieve-the-lost-Mastercard-treasure-from-the-banking-monster.

We have also been improving her English somewhat; although we’ve done nothing about my lack of knowledge in Kyrgyz.

A lot of my walking has been back and forth between trekking organizers and tourist agencies to try to find a nice company to go trekking with. I have decided to go with Asia Mountains, despite that they managed to mess up my reservation a their lovely guest house, forcing me to move back to terrible Kyrgyz Altyn instead. :-(

So, now I have my travel itinerary done for the next month; barring any changes it should look something like this:

• Aug 22: Travel to Barskoon
• Aug 23-25: Build houses, hike, and meet old friends in Barskoon.
• Aug 26-31: CBT hiking and excursions around Karakol on eastern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul
• Sept 1: Travel back to Bishkek
• Sept 2-13: Trekking excursion from Talas to Lake Tary Chelek
• Sept 13-19: CBT hiking and excursions around Osh and Arslanbob in western K-stan
• Sept 20: Travelling to Bishkek
• Sept 21: Final shopping in Bishkek - still hoping to find that dream Shyrdak...
• Sept 22 - Oct 3: Istanbul
• Oct 4: Flying home to Sweden

So tomorrow morning at 8 am the bus leaves to Barskoon, and just as before Barskoon has no Internet. Which means that the next post will be from Karakol in a few days – see ya then!