Jesse, I don't think we're in India anymore. This is a fellow American who I met briefly in Amritsar when he unknowingly stole my bed in the dorm, and then again in the line for the Air Astana flight to Almaty. Nora found the two of us at the airport yesterday morning and kindly invited him back to crash with her host family as well. We've been walking around the streets of that village and cosmopolitan Almaty with open mouths - it's quiet, it's green, they drive on the right hand side of the road, and at the stoplights you see Toyotas, Subarus, Audis, and even a hummer. This country has an amazing amount of oil money and in the cities it definitely shows.
The three of us went through the comic process of acquiring Kyrgyz visas today:
1. The consulate is theoretically not open on Fridays
2. The guard, however, opened the door and told us to come back in an hour and a half
3. At the window in the basement of the little yellow house, the disgruntled worker told us they weren't accepting applications
4. When Jesse passed in his visa application, they asked for a 200% increased price, then gave him his passport back for $10 more in about 5 minutes
5. The same woman sent Nora and me three blocks over to make a deposit in the bank, then told us to come back at 3:00
6. At 3:00 the formerly friendly guard, surly now that Nora had rejected his declaration of love, would only let her, not me, through the gate, and then was holding our passports hostage for a bribe until the consular official intervened
Jeezum crow. Who knows how this country works, and who knows what Kyrgyzstan holds.
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