From December 30th until January 19th
I was out of site. The first order of
business was finally getting my Indian Visa.
The Indian embassy here is a pain in the butt to work with. I think we had to go to the embassy 3 or 4
times over a 2-month period just to get our visas. You have to get there by 10:30 then wait for
2-3 hours just to give them some paperwork, then come back and drop of your
passports and pay, then go back and get your passports. Efficiency is not their forte. Once we had visa’s in hand we got to sit back
relax and enjoy New Year's, Kyrgyz style.
New year’s for some reason or another is huge here! Imagine if we combined our Christmas and New
Year’s into one holiday, it would kind of be like that. They have Christmas trees, Santa Claus,
lights, and FIREWORKS, lots of fireworks.
On every street corner someone was selling fireworks, and not the lame
ones we get in America, these are the mortars and kind of things you see at
sporting events or organized fireworks displays. It was scary.
People everywhere shooting off fireworks. Car alarms going off from the fireworks going
off; looking out the window at 12 am everywhere fireworks! It was crazy. Below is a video of my attempt to set one off out the window… it did not
go so well. One
downside to New Year’s was on the 1st the city was shut down! All we wanted was begemont (the Kyrgyz version of
McDonalds and it means hippo) no luck. We eventually found
one of the 24 hr. stores and found some food.
We also tried to go out on New Years, we were told there would be a 500
or 1000 som cover (10-20 dollars) and we were reluctant even to spend that much
but then upon arrival at the club we learned we had to pay double that, so the
majority of us being the cheap, broke Peace Corps volunteers that we are,
decided to head home and stay in for the night.
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| The most ridiculous photo set ups for New Year's The sign says Happy New Year in Russian |
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| Our view at midnight |
Our flight to India left on the 2nd in the
evening. We headed to our office in
Bishkek to make our final preparations and do some last minute hostel
booking. On the way there the car
behind us got rear ended, fortunately no one was hurt by the crash, but then the two
guys starting fighting after, because how else would you re-act after a car
accident, so who knows what happened!
I am just happy it wasn’t our taxi involved. Later we got our same taxi driver to take us
to the airport. Along the way we got
pulled over and we had to give our driver 200 som for a bribe or a ticket who
knows. Once we arrived at the airport we
took celebratory jooz grams (100 grams of the most disgusting vodka costing
about 20 cents a piece) and let the fun begin.
We left our broke Peace Corps selves outside and splurged at the duty
free store buying 2, $20 bottles of whiskey.
The main reason for that was we were spending the night at the airport
in Almaty, Kazakhstan and would need some form of entertainment. After a very entertaining night in the
airport and making friends with some Uzbeks, which we could talk too because
Kyrgyz and Uzbek are very similar both being Turkish languages, and I thought learning Kyrgyz would be pointless in the long run. The next morning we were off to Delhi! We arrived in Delhi hassle free and even had
a guy waiting for us with a sign at the airport. After our harrowing adventure across Delhi we
arrived at our hostel.
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| Keeping it classy in the airport |
In part two we will rip a guy off in Delhi and visit the Fog Mahal (credit to David for the name.)
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| We did not make this fellow happy |
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| There it is the Fog Mahal! |
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