The road to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. High up among the snow, a yurt chimney blowing smoke; Mr Wazzboobleyoid winding her way round gloriously smooth tarmac; horses grazing on the plains. Wonderful. Later: Almaty, Kazakhstan. The security guard is keen to sell us sex with the girl who works in the shop downstairs. She's completely aware of the whole thing. Weird.
This was our route to the border with Kazakhstan. Done with all this beauty, Kazakhstan was where things got weird again. Actually that's doing it a disservice. The scenery was stunning as we drove the 200km to Almaty, with the sun setting behind us.
First, though, we had to get across the border. Waiting to go in we're stuck in the all-too-familiar queue, fairly similar to the one in Azerbaijan, on the dirt track down to the armed compound. This time though everyone's cheekily nipping down the outside lanes and trying to cut in. It turns the whole thing into a demolition derby. Sit there revving your engines, bonnets lurching into view either side, waiting for the barrier to go up, whereupon all kinds of testosterone-fuelled carnage goes off.
I figure Mr W can handle a bit of superficial damage to the front wings, so I'm not budging, especially as we've done the English thing and queued like real people for the last 20 minutes, only for these jumped-up foreigners to come bombing down the outside and force their way in. Boom! The barrier goes up, I'm sticking close to the car in front to stop the bloke to my right getting in. But the car in front is too slow, so the cheating foreign swine makes it in. I ever so lightly tap the back bumper of the car in front. It's all a bit nuts, especially when the cars either side of you are so completely battered already.
Later it happens again. The old dude in the car in front this time is ace. He sees a bloke coming down his left, and cuts him off so well he almost stacks it on the concrete barrier. A couple of blond kids come begging at the window. Dollar dollar. Steve says we have no dollar, butwe have pens. They seem weirdly delighted. Try that on the tax man.
Inside the customs office there's the usual sense of herding, but we're through passport control pretty quickly. In fact we're back out with our car almost straight away, before a bloke points out we need to go back in to get our car papers stamped too. This takes an age, and sends us right back to muggy memories of being chucked about by bureaucrats, in a scrum where everyone knows the rules but you.
We see several foreingers going down a few steps to a dark alcove, where money is clearly changing hands. I'm only prepared to do that to own innocent young country girls. Others speed their passage by slipping notes into their passport and handing to the guard, the same bloke who later on is waving his taser gun at his mate for a laugh.
It turns out to be not too bad, once we actually got someone to look at our forms we're straight through. But pretty soon Steve's getting pulled over for being in the wrong lane at a police checkpoint. Cops here seem to be back on the arsey side. We get away with a $10 bribe, although as Jeff points out, they've no right to take any money at all. I guess if you've got long enough to wait you can get away without paying, but we need to crack on so $10 doesn't seem too bad. I suggest the idea next time of claiming to have no dollars, and then performing a little mime to suggest certain sexual favours wouldn't be below us. See how the bastard reacts to that.
We drive across more gently beautiful scenery, then finally arrive in Almaty, a city that we'd heard was cosmopolitan. It's certainly open-minded. We get recommended a cheap hotel in a Soviet-style concrete fabrication, by a bloke at a lovely posh hotel, and soon after checking in I go outside to look for Steve, who'd been called aside to pay for parking. I say hello to the security guard, who makes a gesture with his arms that seems like he's asking if I've got any bags that need carrying. Doesn't seem that kind of dive to be honest. He also keeps stroking some imaginary long hair out of his face. That's odd.
Steve then reappears, and tells me that the bloke is asking if I want to have it off with the girl in the shop. He'd asked Steve the same thing a minute ago. I'm not entirely comfortable with all this, not least because the 'can I carry your bags' mime, which involves clenching your fists and moving your arms up and down, also looks a bit like he's imitating someone pushing themselves along in a wheelchair. I tell him I'll think about it.
Steve reckons it's 5,000 for one. That converts to approximately 0.3 of a TBJ (see blog day 17). Later the three of us go out to the car together to fetch our stuff. The guard wants to know what I've decided. I point over at Jeff, implying that he'd probably be more keen than me. He holds up two fingers, and says ok. Then he adds another finger. That'd be ok too. And we thought the three of us sharing a Punto for eight weeks was rankly intimate enough.
I've said it before, but sometimes I wish I was different.
In the end we settle for beer and food, from the bird's shop. The security guard comes in and watches. It all feels a bit weird. She's selling pasties too. We buy one each, although we realise when we watch her chucking them in the microwave that we've just committed the Central Asian equivalent of plumping for a Ginsters. It feels dirty and wrong. I'd be less disappointed in myself if I'd shagged the shop assistant.
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