the operator

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Woke up in my tiny room:

the hole

Or the hole as I liked to call it.

Then I said good-bye to the friendly ladies who worked at the hotel and stepped out of its main entrance:

Kara-Balta Hotel

I was relieved to be outside again.

The air was fresh, and there were people around:

little dude in Kara-Balta

This was going to be my last day in Kyrgyzstan, so I was planning to take it slow and easy:

tower

I saw the mountains towering behind the road:

road

And sometimes, when the trees gave way, I could see them in all their glory:

road with mountains

When truck driver Volodya saw me, he patted me on the back and insisted on giving me a bottle of ice-tea:

with Volodya

Thank you, Volodya!

I walked past a Soviet war monument:

monument

And then I met Kyal, a dentist who was into working out at the gym and driving his car around with the music turned all the way up:

with Kyal

We hung out and talked for a little while, then we said our good-byes, and I started looking for a place for a lunch-break.

I had just arrived at these trees…

potential resting place

…when Kyal showed up in his car once more and told me to come with him. His parents lived nearby, and they had prepared lunch for us.

So we took a dusty road to his home village:

mountains

And we had a great time with his parents and his little sister:

at Kyal's place

She played the piano, and she was taking English classes from a special tutor once a week.

Then we went and looked at their cows:

the cow

At which point I asked Kyal if he wanted to play with the drone.

“Hell yeah”, he said:

playing with the drone

Or maybe he just said: “yes.”

aerial

So he became my drone operator for the day:

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It was fun.

At some point a couple of kids from the village appeared:

Kyal and friends

We had the drone fly around until all batteries were depleted:

dust

Then we took one last selfie:

with Kyal in the dust

And I was on my way again.

It was just around this time when the cows got driven back to their sleeping places:

cows

I loved it:

more cows

Here are my thoughts about the day, nicely wrapped in another episode of Let’s Walk:

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I walked until the sun went down:

grave

And then I walked some more:

shop

I was about 50m from the border when I finally found a hotel. It was full of people from Tadjikistan who were having dinner, but I managed to get a room and some food:

dinner

I was very happy until I found out that the bed was broken in the middle. And by broken I mean literally broken. There was a huge dent in it caused by a hole under the mattress..

I tried sleeping on the bed anyway, but I gave up after about thirty minutes. Then I went and got the air mattress from the Boose:

place to sleep

I lay down in my sleeping bag, and as I did, I could hear a mouse running around in the ceiling. It had tiny little feet and it was running really fast.

Why not, I thought, why the fuck not.



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