kayakstan.net :: Day 2 - Arrival
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"ding..dong. Would those passengers travelling with kayaks please remain behind while everybody else boards the plane, please."
Dreaded words. This was our first hurdle on the journey to Kyrgyzstan the form of a rather angry Heathrow cargo manager, and his rather fine side-kick lady. Our seven creek boats had apparently displaced the paying cargo from the plane, and the cargo manager wanted to tell us about the amount of money the airline would be losing. We kept tactfully quiet about the fact that we'd managed to blag loads of extra baggage allowance for free at check-in and bowed our heads in shame... Phil had 'stabilised' the boats, making a 30kg fully loaded boat miraculously weigh a mere 12kg. Perfect. After these bad initial omens, the rest of the flight went smoothly, and we were met in Bishkek with the sight of a baggage handler driving a little truck with a precarious pile of boats.
The poor dude..
We were also met by a rather large truck...we piled in and fell love with the orange and brown zebra skin patterened interior, lovely. Stayed in the "buisness centre hotel" in reality a squalid hole of a hotel. On our night out in Bishkek, we witnessed karoke stations scattered all over the streets. The locals also were loving having their pictured taken next to an american linosine.
Courtesy of Turkestan
After our long, stressful and fun-filled journey, the curry (recommended by a particuarly enthusiatstic american chap) we were all fit for bed. In the morning there were many jobs to be done and bits to sort out by the blurry eyed team. A trip to the market proved to be fruitfull, providing the team with such vital items as axes, plates and large blue and white stripy tarp worthy of Billy Smart's big top. After this it was into the trucks and onwards towards the mountains...
Everybody was pretty speechless, apart from Dave: 'gosh they have great arses', we assume he was talking about the ladies.. (Ed: No idea what this is on about actually, but Phil H reckons he has a nice arse so hey..)
So we were there, had food, transport and were ready to head out of town and hit some rivers at last.