I got up at 5 am to re-position the van in front of the hotel where our good friend Gapur is going to keep an eye on it while we go to China. He ordered a taxi for us to the Zapadnyi Bishkek Avtovoksal bus station and with surprising ease we paid for and found the bus to Almaty. Or rather to the Kyrgyz/Kazakh border where formalities were much easier than with the van. We got out of the Kyrgyz bus and onto the Kazakh bus which took us through rolling hills of sparse pastureland but only one small flock of sheep. As we got closer to Almaty, fields of mown hay in rolls appeared. Almaty is a huge city in terms of area; we got a taxi who took us miles to the hotel.
My boat is called Shirin (“sweet” in Farsi); it was named after this shop at Bishkek bus station.
