Tag 1: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - "What are you doing here?"

To be honest, we've definitely had better ideas than traveling to Kyrgyzstan in January.

After breakfast, the first impressions of the city, and a lot of snow, exhaustion caught up with us a bit. Perfect time for a power nap at the hostel.

Three hours later, we were awake again, and after a hot shower, we bundled up even warmer than in the morning and headed back out into the cold.

Russian pastries from the supermarket for lunch, a tour to the city's "main square" with plenty of concrete buildings and oversized Christmas decorations, as well as a ride on the Ferris wheel, were our afternoon program. Finally, we caught a few glimpses of the mostly fog-shrouded mountain peaks in the distance.

The subsequent search for the bus station turned out to be a challenge. Armed with a city map, we eventually lost our orientation, and even when someone finally helped us and took us directly to the station, we still had another half hour walk.

However, we didn't get bus tickets for our onward journey on Saturday because most of the local and long-distance transportation here is taken care of by private taxi drivers. This means you simply head towards the train station and negotiate a price for the (sometimes several hours long) trip with a private driver. Because there aren't really any proper departure times for buses to other places. So, we'll see how our journey to a mountain lake in Kyrgyzstan goes on Saturday.

We were then brought back to the hostel by taxi for about €2.50 and stocked up on local delicacies at the small supermarket next door.

Now we're looking forward to a few hours of sleep to start fresh in the cold tomorrow!