bishkek #2

i said goodbye to lake issyk-kul and walked back through the prairie to the road. after a couple of tries, a trucker stopped for me and took me to the next city, from where i accidentally got into a shared taxi back to bishkek.

when i walked through the door of the hostel, i couldn't believe my eyes - before me stood two very familiar faces. daniel großhans' and leonie kolberg's, to be precise. they're both super famous german bikepackers and i had known them from social media for years. i knew that they were in the rough area, but would've never thought i'd actually meet them randomly.

we got talking after a while and it turns out they're super down to earth. there were also a lot of other germans, and one guy was a dj and invites us to come along to one of his gigs at a bar that night. a couple more people joined, we had one or two or more drinks together and headed off to the bar.

the dj guy slayed, he played some slow techno and played over it with a sax. one time, a fight broke out all of a sudden and someone used pepper spray, which spread into everyones eyes, but other than that it was super cool. the bikepackers were the only ones to stay until the end and somehow, although they were as shitfaced as me, we made it back to the hostel at sunrise together.

when it was finally time to leave kyrgyzstan and move on to almaty, i shared taxi and bus with a girl from alaska and it turned out that her friend, another person i'd seen at the hostel a couple of times, was also a travel influencer, even more famous than the other two, but more "romanticized". it's crazy to see the difference in how people portray themselves online and how they really are in person. in this case, danny and leo were both perfectly authentic, while the other one was on her laptop most of the time and didn't greet or say a word to anyone.Read more