In the evening of the 9th Gapur knocked on our door and said “Good news. The light has arrived”. In the morning of the 10th, his two friends came round and took me to the dealer to pick up the light which was about five times as big as I expected. It was an official VW light manufactured in Romania, flown to Domodedovo airport in Moscow and then to Bishkek airport. We drove the van round to the workshop of Gapur’s friends and left it for the front to be straightened out and the light fitted. Gapur told them time was getting short so they worked on it all day until 2 in the morning, and I picked it up on the morning of the 11th. Gapur is a Uighur and they are quite a small group in Kyrgyzstan, numbering about 50,000, and evidently help each other.
We set off about midday, got held up by lots of traffic out of Bishkek,passed the biggest ever used car auction at Sokolovka, and reached the Kazakh border about 2 pm. Saw a car being virtually taken apart by Kazakh customs officers (presumably expecting to find smuggled goods) but I didnt have too much trouble. As usual, Jennifer had to get out and walk through Passport Control in her capacity as a passenger. A jovial customs man rooted through the dashboard compartments and found our little torch which he wanted to keep “Podarok, podarok” (“Gift, gift”) he kept saying but I said no and with an impish smile he gave it back. Between the border and Taras we passed many police speed traps but got flashed in good time by oncoming motorists. Seems the police are hated as much here as in Kyrgyzstan.
It started snowing quite heavily on the bypass round Taras and got dark very quickly, making for uncomfortable driving. Just as I was getting mightily fed up, we got back onto the M39 motorwy from Almaty to Tashkent and dived into the first official lorry park where we spent a comfortable night.
