It
had been a long term ambition of mine to visit every country in Europe,
that was going well but I reached a point where I needed to see
something a bit different. Central Asia fitted that idea perfectly, one
country Kyrgyzstan stood out because it did not have that regions
notoriously tricky visa rules. It looked a nice country to visit and
would provoke the usual wheres that ? Is it safe ? Why you going there ?
Questions more than any other previous travel destination.
First
problem was actually getting there, I'd officially given up until I
discovered that you don't need a transit visa for Russia as long as you
don't leave the airport. So I could fly via Moscow no problem.
The
plan was to fly from East midlands to Amsterdam Saturday morning, leave
bag in left luggage and explore nearby cities then fly to Bishkek
Saturday night arriving Sunday afternoon. I'd spend 5 nights\4 full days
then have a 2 night stopover in Istanbul before flying home on Sunday.
I
arrived in Amsterdam no problem and got the train to The Hague for a
short stop, my first disaster was putting my debit card into a machine
before noticing it was out of order (easy mistake as the warning was in
Dutch). Fortunately I still had my credit card or my trip would have
been over within an hour.
I
got the train to Utrecht which I wanted to visit on my previous trip to
the country but didn't due to lack of time. All of a sudden the train
stopped between stations. A man on the train informed me there had been
an accident, much later that was upgraded to very serious accident. Time
lost was over 3 hours, I now abandoned Utrecht in favour of Haarlem as
it was closer to Amsterdam and my other plan to visit.
Nice
place but by the time I got there I was clock watching and only managed
an hours walk round before heading back to the airport. The flight to
Moscow was horrible due to a baby constantly screaming on the plane. As I
flew over the city I was ready to get off and go to bed but had a 4
hour wait in the airport followed by a near 4 hour flight.
Getting into Kyrgyzstan was as easy as getting into any country in Europe.....................
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