Day 35 - When Kazakhstan is a 1 hour flight away
[Only our second day with no Strava at all 😱]
We had a very reasonable start to the day, the taxi not arriving until 10:30. So it was lie in and multi-stage breakfast for us (what else do we do when we have time but eat?!).
At precisely 10:27 the bike shop owner called us up to say the taxi was waiting. We said goodbye to our host and were rather concerned when a small car with no bikes rocked up. We were told we were en-route to pick them up, and looked nervously at the lack of space. "Well, it will be a boot-open situation which is normal here, and fun for the blog perched on boxes." we thought on the bright side.
Turns out we needn't have worried as we rendezvoused with a small van at the toy shop, who'd already loaded our boxes. So our 48 euros got us not one, but two taxis?! Fuel is about 80p a litre here I suppose. The bike ship guy and his rag tag team came through when we and the bikes in boxes arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare, with extremely minimal effort. Thanks Zura's bike shop!
The airport was small but fancy and the whole process was smooth, from our cake eating session while waiting for the check in to open, to boarding the relatively empty plane. Emma even managed to get her Georgia patch in the airport!
On board we blew our minds realising that we were only flying for 1 hour to reach KAZAKHSTAN. Basically we cycled to the airport, just not the close one 😉. Then I promptly fell asleep for the whole flight - this travelling thing when you're not pedalling is exhausting.
I woke up in time to see us come in over the country, also quite the mind boggling moment - as far as the eye can see a whole load of dry, totally flat nothing. Bring. It. On. 😁 The roads coming up are straight for MILES. Like make-the-Romans-look-wobbly straight. So straight and so flat it's probably not worth getting on the bikes with a headwind, we'll cross that bridge...well I mean there's not going to be any bridges, but you know what I mean!
After leaving arrivals we were hassled the whole way on the 150m walk to the airport hotel by a taxi driver who would not take no for an answer. It doesn't line up with my experience of Asia thus far and hopefully just a feature of the airport and tourism but man he was annoying! Had I wanted a taxi, I would have gone for any of the other 15 offers who didn't hassle me - I'm never sure what these people's game plan is, but clearly it works sometime.
We had first dinner in the airport cafeteria alongside half of the staff, and then since the vegetarian options were very disappointing (non-existent basically), second dinner at the hotel 24/7 restaurant (which was much nicer to our surprise) including really good wedges and soup. 9 euros and 20 euros respectively! And now I'll stop talking about food and go to sleep!
P.S. A human on a bicycle is one of the most efficient forms of transport
Food spend today: 34.64 euros