First Friend

We were in Kyrgyzstan. Galen and I highfived with relief. Immediately, we noted, the people around us were more polite.

Yet that did not make things better, at least, not immediately. Kyrgyzstan is poor, and we were in one of the poorest parts of the country. The few houses scattered across the empty landscape were largely trailers, set up on blocks or wheels, as if they were waiting to run from the coming apocalypse. Children played with plastic guns and beat up bikes. There was not much to do in this town that was little more than a truck stop.

Trailers

Kinder

Negotiating our way out of this town was harder than it was supposed to be. The only people willing to give us a ride (other than truckers, who drove excruciatingly slow on the poorly maintained Kyrgyz roads) were three cars, all part of the same family. For the first hour we negotiated with them, they would not drop lower than double the standard rate. I did not want to, but after a while, we got them to drop their price by twenty-five percent.

Three Car Family

The ride was long. We had begun our journey at six that morning, and we did not arrive in Osh until ten that night. To make matters worse, in the insanity of the negotiations with the family with three cars, I had lost some of Galen’s camera equipment, so I had to negotiate getting that back. Then, we collapsed into our dorm beds, somewhere near the center of the ancient city of Osh.

The Pamirs