PDXX OO

I'm back home in my bathrobe and so far my thoughts are this: I just returned from somewhere that, generally speaking, you would never really want to go, but ... I'm glad I went. It's a location on earth that still very little is known about. I was never scared to go there, I just didn't know anything about it. There's no information out there, because, let's face it, very few people ever touch down in Kyrgyzstan. Anyway, for that, I'm damn lucky. My one regret is that I didn't get to see this place in summer, because I know that's when it really shines. Bishkek is a lovely tangle of vines and trees, and in Karakoal all the streets are lined with poplars. I'm sure the mountains are blanketed in wildflowers—the dirty snow and mud-puddles of our trip gone on the hot summer breeze or whatever .....

Me! In ... Kyrgyzstan!

Anyway, it was a long crazy trip made awesome by a really good crew. Robin, Chad, Sylvain, Eric—all good people. Many stories to tell. But I'll save it for the magazine.

Negotiating over sheeps heads at Osh Bazaar. A lovely scent accompanied this stuff.

My thoughts about international travel: maybe, just maybe, I can't do it anymore. I can't handle the lines, the eight hour layover wasted in Istanbul airport trying every cosmetic in the duty free store. Eight hours? That's like an entire day! Two hours spent dealing with customs. Four passport checks, three pat downs, and two metal detector/X-ray checks to get on a plane flying into the good ol' U.S.A. (homeland security! crikey). I don't know ... Maybe I'm just jet lagged, or maybe my time is too valuable for that.

Petroglyphs from the bronze age on Barny Rubble rocks.

City life, Kyrgyz style. Mud puddles for dayz.

A last trip to the mountain. They started the chairlift for us, stopped it when we got to the top, then re-started it again when we wanted to do another run. Two minutes later.