15th of December, 2022.
Hitchhiking in Kyrgyzstan.
When I am leaving the hotel, the front door is still closed, so I have to wake up the receptionist and she opens it for me.
On my walk towards outside town, something extraordinary happens. After waiting for a while in one spot, still in town, I get bothered by all the taxis and people staring at me, so I decide to get completely out of town. I keep my coat on because it is freezing cold. As you know, I carry my small backpack in front of me, on my chest, and The Hulk is on my back. When I arrive to a god spot, and I take a look at the collar of my coat, it is frozen! There is ice also in my scarf, and the most incredible thing: there is ice on the top of my small backpack! All of that only coming from my breath! I don’t know how cold it is but last night it was – 14°C.
It takes quite a long time until somebody finally stops. I am playing with the ice by the road and, luckily, the sun is up, and I think that is why I didn’t freeze!
When a car suddenly stops, I can barely believe they are going all the way to Bishkek. It is a taxi, and I tell them I have no money, but the driver decides to take me anyway. Yay!
We are three people sitting in the back. There isn’t much space and I have my small backpack with me, so I am not in the most comfortable position. There is a lady sitting beside me and she is using a kind of device, very small, in her finger with a button, and she keeps pressing it every second or so. Later I would figure out that it is a word counter, for some specific words she has to repeat every they, a certain number of times. It is regarding the Koran.
I didn’t expect it would take so long to Bishkek. We arrive around 3 p.m. The driver doesn’t succeed on taking me closer to the exit towards Osh. But I know I can do it. First of all, I need to use the toilet, and because there is no restaurant or cafes around, I ask in a governmental building. They are lovely and let me in.
I try to find someone who can speak English. I find two Russians smoking outside a building and even though they cannot, they help me a lot, showing me on their phones, how to get there by walking.
When I arrive at a certain place, full of students, I realize that, if I keep walking straight in this way until out of town, I will reach there by down already, so I need to catch a bus which goes straight away.
I ask help for some students and they are very kind. After understanding which bus I have to take, I also ask for 11 Som, the price of the bus, which is something like 12 cents but I don’t have it. They try to give me more, a bill of 100 Som, but I ask only for the 11 cents, so they find some coins. Yay!
By the time I get to the bus stop, I stop. Laugh. I try to be reasonable. Good luck, Lei! Perhaps something is telling me I shouldn’t go. That I should stay in Bishkek for tonight, find the proper place where hitchhiking to Osh, and even if I don’t get there tomorrow, as I promised my students, it is OK.
I still don’t know exactly where I am but I know that if I keep walking this way, I will end up in the street of my hosts here in Bishkek. I decide to come and ask them if I can stay one more night. I try to give Dilde a call and ask her if I can come, but she doesn’t pick up.
All of sudden, much earlier than I expect it, I arrive to a boulevard which is very close to the apartment.
In a few minutes I am there and, just when I am about to ring the intercom, the son of the owner is leaving, so he let me in. B not before telling me that I am most welcome to stay another night. Yay!
It is nice to see everybody again. They are very kind and most welcome! I tell Dilde everything that happened during my trip. And I also take the chance to tell her some advices which were in my head and I wanted to tell her. She is a lovely young girl!
In the morning, Ermek offers to drive me, before he goes to work, to the bus stop where I will take the bus towards my hitchhiking spot. Because I still will use the 11 Som the kind students gave it to me. It would be about 30 minutes walking to the bus stop, so Ermek saves me all that time! How nice!
The day is just starting to shine when we arrive to the bus stop. It is great! Just as I wanted.
10 Years Around the World 