Team Borreliosis: ready to hit the road The bus attendant eyes us strictly while she crosses the two-story bus, counting the passengers, one by one. We had been laughing just a little too loud. Tears in the eyes, we finally gave in to the relief. The first hurdle was taken, we made it on the bus to Riga. Against quite some odds. I had managed to temporarily lose our ticket, just within the 20 seconds, it took us to walk around the bus to the driver who was loading the luggage. Despite the oh-so-practical fanny pack, for some reason, the tickets were not in my hands anymore. Not ideal, given that things had suddenly changed speed and the queue was advancing quickly. The driver looked at us impatiently now. Pierre would tell me later that during these two minutes that it took me to find the tickets again, frantically digging through all of our 6 bags, he seriously expected us to not make it on the bus. Never trust a Lulu with your documents. He should have learnt that lesson by now. Then, after some discussion in Russian between the attendant and the driver, he finally agreed to take our oversized luggage. Unsurprisingly and true to style, in the morning it had taken us until the last minute to bring most of the remaining loose threads for the preparation of our trip together. All the while stressing out my mum, who had to watch us running around in the house. The day of departure ideally should not be the day where you discover that you have Borreliosis in an advanced stage, requiring you to start phototoxic antibiotics that make your skin burn as soon as you step into the sun unprotected. Yet, here I was on the phone with my doctor who had gotten back the results of my blood test, 5 hours before our bus was scheduled to leave. Fortunately, UV radiation at glaciers is known to be no problem. Now that was, in a way, actually hilarious considering that Pierre had started his Borreliose therapy just one week prior. The team was ready. This joke was mostly lost on us in the discussions that followed. I didn't really know what to make of these new findings. Were there likely complications that would occur once we were alone at basecamp at 4000m? My doctor wasn't much of a help, as he seemed not quite to grasp the difference between your average holiday and what we were planning. Neither was my dad, for who in turn it was like we were going to K2 in winter. In the end, we decided to go. After all, we'd have one week upon arrival in Bishkek, one week to turn around again, in case things would get worse. So for now, we have taken seats, almost looking forward to the 25h ride ahead with not much to think or worry about. From here on we'd have to take it as it comes, one step at a time. L.
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