Day 77. Almaty - Bishkek

Set off for Bishkek not really looking forward to the roadworks etc. I’m not sure if we were hallucinating or just having a bad day on the way to Almaty the other day but the road back to Biskek  today (reverse route) was just fine

We caught up with Diana and Dick on the road and shared the ride. On the way we stopped for a cold drink. There was a van load of people going to Issyk Kul lake for a weekend break. One of the girls spoke very good English and it was her birthday. Lots of selfies with the bike. Diana gave her a 'kiwi' pin to keep. She was very overwhelmed.

Casualty of the day was my jandals, lost overboard, only held on by a bunjee.

So that makes 3 caps, 1 tee shirt, 1 pair of togs and now the jandals. I suspect the jandals will be the hardest to replace. Not too many billabong shops in Bishkek. 

We got to the border and joined the queue of cars. It looked like there was going to be a bit if a wait so it was decided Robyn and Diana would join the foot traffic so as to get through more quickly and avoid the heat.
Shortly after Dick and I got the call to go through and it all went reasonably smoothly. Before we knew it we were in Khyrgistan riding down the exit road looking left and right for the girls.

Next minute the cops are ordering us to the side if the road and we were ushered into a dingy office with this little jumped up person. 

"Stop sign"

"What stop sign"

He then explained to us what a stop sign looked like and told us there was one just outside. 

He then produced his trump card, video footage of us clearly failing to stop. Bugger. 

"3000 Som fine"

"We have no Som"

Out comes the calculator tap tap tap

"$43USD"

"We don't have USD"

I produced 5000 Tenge (Kazakh money) and he agreed that would be ok

Dick only had 10000 and he greedily grabbed it but not before I grabbed my 5000 note back and gave it to Dick.

So honour restored we settled on that, which seemed like a good result for us at $20NZ.

So we were free to go and they were keen for us to disappear but where were the girls?

Robyn will explain.

We were herded together with about 60 other people and their bags etc to a sheltered area. They were only letting a few people at a time through to passport control.
When the army guy let some through everyone was pushing from the back which meant those near the front were getting squashed. This created a certain amount of tension.
The temperature was well in the late 30s. We had bike gear on and carrying our helmets, so pretty hot and sweaty.
 Eventually we managed to get to the front of the crowd which meant waiting for the dash to the passport office in the full heat of the sun. 

Finally we got the’go’ and everyone just ran. 

We queued again and after much pushing and being shoved we made it to the passport control - it took less than a minute to take a photo and stamp the passport. Goodbye Kazakhstan.

After that we walked to the Khyrgistan passport control - no queue- done.
Finally and hour and a half later dehydrated and very sweaty, we made the long walk to the bikes in the heat. Dick waiting anxiously at the gate and Mark watching over the bikes.