The scenery on the trip was relatively barren and unchanging, but the ride went pretty fast - the only delay was at the border. We passed through the Kazakh side pretty easily (no fines so our registration passed it's final test!), and then had a 15 minute or so wait at the Kyrgyz side while they checked and stamped our passports.
Once in Kyrgyzstan there was no real change in scenery until we hit bustling Bishkek, the capital city. Unlike the usual adlibing way we jumped in a taxi to try to get to the Indian Embassy on time to apply for our visa - but we hit a metaphorical pothole when we found that the Embassy had moved. On a positive note the people we met inside the building where the Embassy used to be were extremely friendly and helped us by drawing a map and writing Russian instructions to help us get to the real Embassy tomorrow. They even gave us advice of how to get to the hotel we were aiming for.
So off we walked, and walk we would do for the better part of 4 hours while looking for accommodation in our budget! Just navigating our way to one hotel is usually effort enough, but in the course of the afternoon we lugged our packs to several all which happened to be in opposite directions from each other - one was full and others just out of our budget. The last place we came as the sun was about to leave us in darkness (and we've heard that Bishkek is not a place you want to walk around with at night, especially with packs), was way above our budget, but we managed to negotiated $15 off the price we were willing to pay it to get our packs off our backs for the night! Plus we were starving!
So we headed out for dinner which was a vegetarian success (thank you English menu and King Pizza!). We also managed to call a cheap guesthouse and reserve a bed for tomorrow night. On the way back to our hotel we got some supplies from the supermarket for brekkie tomorrow, and then zonked out!!Adlibing it into Kyrgyzstan
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