The world’s least effective tour

I sat in the Bishkek airport, bleary eyed, trying to figure out if it was 0430 in the morning or 0230.  Neither of which seemed to matter…I was still stranded in a Communist-feel airport with no local language skills several miles from my reserved room.

I met a friend years ago in Russia.  We have a pact to meet up every few years for dinner.  That is why I am Kyrgyzstan.

Electing to fly out of Dubai rather than my home of Abu Dhabi meant a shorter, direct flight and the avoidance of a Pakistani layover but it meant the late night drive to a different city before boarding a short red-eye to apparently go back in time.  Customs was no issue, the guy didn’t glance at either me or my passport before groggily stamping and waving me through to the baggage claim area.  I am thrilled that the area was small as I would have never found my luggage…all the signs were in the Cyrillic alphabet – either the local Krygst dialect or Russian – it honestly couldn’t matter less at this point as my knowledge of English at this point seemed to be a struggle.

I must of looked like a sad thing….clutching my bag, staring at random cab drivers holding signs…trying to guess if any of them could possibly be a form of my name...blinking about once every 2 min while rocking back and forth on a hard bench...finally someone who spoke about 20 words of English took pity on me.  (I am not criticizing him as that is exactly 16 more words than I know in Russian - for the record I know please, hello, good bye and yes.  Except I don’t know which Russian word means which English definition).  I showed him my e-mail print outs and approximately 5 phone calls later he was walking over to meet a guy stumbling into the airport grasping a hand written sign that said “any portee”.  Close enough.

Turns out my pre-hired driver had been sleeping in the car, for what smelt like the past 2 weeks, and slept through my departure.  No worries though, soon enough I was loaded into the car and we were headed down the abandoned highway towards the metropolis of Bishkek.  This is the most populous city in Kyrgyzstan  at just over 850,000 people, and what I can conclude from my airport journey is that they city planners are expecting another 3,562,829 people to move in…so they elected to leave several miles for expansion…making my drive seem like forever.

But location was not the only thing extending my drive time.  It seems that my driver, fresh from his nap, decided to apologize for leaving me at the airport with a free tour of Bishkek!  In the dark!  Conducted entirely in Russian!  Here is a small sample of my tour…as he points to shadows of things I could barely make out in the dark…

Driver: “Это белый дом”
Me: “oh wow, very nice”
Driver: “это где я купить хлеб”
Me: “yes, that is interesting”
Driver: “сюда мы имеем парк с жутких статуй”
Me: “I will have to return to visit this”

Really the only thing I did learn on this tour was the hospitality of the Kyrgyzstani people…but that was pretty impressive.