The road from Karabulak to Bishkek was one big traffic jam. We got lost in Bishkek trying to find the Albatross Hotel where we stayed in 2018 and met our friend Gapur Karimov, who was the manager at the time. When we returned from China, he was managing the lovely little Premier Boutique where we got evening meals in the bedroom. The current manager of the Albatross remembered us from 2018 and told us that Gapur had risen through the ranks to manage the massive Soviet-era Dostuk hotel. He was waiting for us when we got there.
It was a relaxing day. We went for a walk in the nearby Victory Park with a statue of two soldiers carrying some military equipment and, in the evening we went for a very nice meal at a restaurant practically submerged under a welter of plastic flowers. There were more waitresses than customers and they still managed to screw things up with Jennifer’s khachapuri arriving after I had finished my dish of small slices of meat and fried onions which is apparently a famous Uighur dish.
The road came through a tunnel in the top of the mountain