Rest Assured 2

Bishkek

I'm sorry to say it, but I think that I probably got scammed. I'm not 100% certain, but about 99.99%. I took my iPad to an Apple shop to ask about my dying iPad battery, and they recommended a tech service shop next door. As it turns out, the shop I originally went to wasn't a proper Apple store at all, just a pretend Apple one, and the tech service place also wasn't authentic.

The guy looked at my iPad and said I need a new battery.  He said he'd replace it, for about $70 Oz, which I thought was reasonable for an authentic Apple product, as they were more pricey than that online. He assured me that he'd be putting the proper Apple battery inside.

I came back the next day and he returned my iPad, the battery was working fine, and I paid him. But when I asked him for a receipt he flatly refused, saying he doesn't give receipts. When I asked him why not he said because he provides a service, not a product. When I reminded him that he'd just sold me a new product and a service, he still flatly refused to give a receipt.

What could I do? He already had my money.

So I'm almost 100% certain I got scammed, and that he charged me a premium for a poorer quality product, a fake.

Live and learn. We'll see how long it lasts. If it's any consolation, authentic Apple batteries don't always seem to last that long anyway, because Apple are scammers too.

When I dropped off my iPad, when I was still all friendly and hadn't been scammed yet, I asked the tech guy if this skeleton was what was left of his last complaining customer.

He replied that he'd lost his patience with this guy because he still had a Nokia phone.

Wow! Crooks can be funny!

The tech service business name? KiPhone. Criminal.

KFC Meta Roll. Junk food is universal.

Pushing a trolley bus. The electricity connecting rod had come off.

Horses are totally wild in Central Asia, these guys just galloped past suddenly.

Busker singing Russian love songs

Flower tower

Naveed tucking in to a noodle dish, from a Chinese place. The food comes from Lanzhou in Gansu province, I recognised the flavours. Naveed insisted on paying.

Bishkek Park, glitzy shopping mall

Veg pizza, which was very light on the veg. The peppers were super spicy.

Lots of tea too.

Bakery products are everywhere here. Massive boxes of biscuits, other baked goodies, or even bulk bikkies that you bag up and weigh, are common.

My fave park in the city, a super long one situated between 2 leafy streets. There were always people here, families, pets, chess players, coffee aficionados. So nice to walk or cycle down, or sit in, as a respite from the heat.

The heat was pretty consistent.

I love this mosaic of hanging carpets

Kitsch sunflower sheep

Another bust, this time of Togolok Moldo, a famous Kyrgyz poet and Manaschi (singer of the Manas epic).

Yeah, it's summer!

Local beverage, kvas.

The perfect way to cool off, on this scorcher of a day.

I don't get the pointy arrow thing

Looking for something, again

Bishkek Railway Station. There's only two train lines in the country, the Northern Line, running from Lugovaya, through the capital, to Balykchy, on Issyk-Kul, a distance of only 300kms or so, and a short line in the south.

In general, the transport infrastructure in this country is extremely limited, with all but the major roads not in a great condition, although they are improving in some places.

The economy in Kyrgyzstan is relatively small, with about 30% of national income coming from remittances sent home by Kyrgyz citizens who work overseas. Mining, textiles and agriculture are the top three industries in the country, with the Kumtor gold mine near Issyk-Kul, run by a Canadian company, providing a massive 12% of national revenue.

More Germaniacs

I caught up with a lovely German couple in Bishkek, through our WhatsApp group. Simon and Karin live near Bielefeld, in central Germany, and have been doing a crazy-long ride too. They're great adventurers, often taking routes that no one else has tried, and crossing borders where there's no record of foreigners having ever crossed before.

They started their epic journey in Ulm, on the Danube, in southwest Germany, and basically followed the river east, through Austria, Slovakia and Hungary, and then on to Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

They said they basically followed river valleys the whole way, and didn't hit a mountain range till central Turkey, lucky them! Then they rode through Iran, which they said was amazing (I already knew that), they took a bus across Pakistan (due to the difficult security situation in Baluchistan), and then crossed to India, and rode all the way down south, along the west coast.

They said they were traumatised from cycling in India, and would never ever do it again. Every day they faced really difficult and dangerous situations on the road, there's just so much to watch out for, and so many unbelievably dangerous drivers. That's one of the reasons I left my bike in Vientiane when I went to India.

From Kerala they then trained it back north, rode across southern Nepal, and then joined a tour for a four day van crossing of Tibet, from Kathmandu to Lhasa. Tibet isn't open to independent travel, basically because the Chinese government doesn't want you to know what's really going on up there.

From Lhasa they trained it down south to Kunming, rode to Vietnam, hated the hot weather, and turned around and came back again. Bloody Germaniacs.

They took a train to Ürümqi, and then rode across the tip of northwestern Xinjiang and into Kazakhstan, and then along the north shore of Issy-Kul to Bishkek. They're waiting for their Russian transit visa, and plan to ride back to Almaty, and have booked a train from Almaty to St Petersburg.

From there they plan to head into Estonia, and down through the other Baltic states, Latvia and Lithuania, and then to Poland and the Czech Republic, and back home.

And you thought I was crazy.

Osh Bazaar

Simon, Karin and I met up at a great local eating place within the Osh Bazaar, the largest and most interesting market in Bishkek.

We sat around and ate lagman, one of the most common dishes here in Kyrgyzstan, which is basically a super tasty noodle soup with thin pieces of beef in it. Or horse, or camel, whatever you prefer. I left the meat for the dogs.

It was scorchingly hot, we drank carafe after carafe of kompot, a drink made from boiled up whole dried fruits. It's quite thick and nectary, very tasty, and extremely more-ish on a hot day.

Then we wandered around the radiating oven of the Osh Bazaar. I'm not sure why it's called the Osh Bazaar, as Osh is a town in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, a long way from here.

Mountains of lepishka, the local bread.

Dried fruit, sometimes sold in handmade decorated wooden boxes for gifts.

Local sweets, not too different from what they sell in Almaty actually

Waiting for Simon and Karin

The hot shed

Many varieties of qurut, the dried sour cheese. There's the normal soft or hard ones, there's apricot ones, or ones mixed with butter or other things.

This is edible clay. Pregnant women and anaemic people eat it here, although the practice isn't recommended by doctors.

The dried fruits are so amazingly good around here. Have I said that before? And cheap.

A section of the market was dedicated to products for horse riding, another to army gear.

Outside in the shade.

Artful Arturo

My life has been blessed in the past couple of days by meeting Arturo, an amazing Spanish guy from Asturia.

Turo is the most incredible photographer, his pictures of decades of travel through many countries are absolutely stunning. They're actually world class, and that's not just a personal opinion, as everyone who sees them basically says the same thing.

One of Turo's life missions appears to be to gently re-educate people in Europe about how misinformed they are about so-called "developing" countries, about the richness of the cultures there, the warmth and generosity of the people, and about how "un-dangerous" so many places are, compared to the picture portrayed by our sensationalist click-hungry media.

I couldn't agree with him more. I mean, a number of people have told me they've been a little worried about my own safety, doing what I'm doing, travelling alone on a bicycle through desolate places, or through places they've heard may not be safe.

But my journey has re-emphasised to me, in the strongest and most inspiringly possible way, the basic goodness of humanity, our instinctive generosity, and our keen desire to offer help and hospitality to strangers or to those in need.

I see it every single day. Not just directed towards me, but towards many many people.

And that's the good news story of the world.

Fuck all the bad news.

Bad news fills the websites of the world's media, simply because that's what sells. End of story.

One day there's a major murder somewhere, and there's major headlines forever. The same day there were 25,000 acts of kindness and goodness and sometimes remarkable generosity in the same place. But there's not a single word published about those.

As a result we all have a warped view of the world.

There are major crises going on, we can't ignore them, and we need to work to fight huge challenges such as environmental destruction, inequality and exploitation.

But there's way more good things going on everywhere, in every community, in every town in every city in every country.

It's important to put it all in perspective.

So, artful Arturo, with his bubbly personality and his infinite wisdom, is a man of my own heart, I'll visit him in his beautiful house in the forest in Spain one day, a house which he lovingly built himself, stone by chiselled stone.

Turo, Naveed and me, and my spartan dinner.

http://buymeacoffee.com/krolesh9

Go to Part 3