If we can pull the planning off – anyone can. A highway resting area, somewhere after Bern, Switzerland The sky is coloured in light shades, I was pissed. Pissed, frustrated, stressed and arguably hungry. The situation could have hardly been more ridiculous. Nor more typical. We had been planning this for almost a year. This “planning” involved mostly looking at pictures of the steep, snow-covered Kookshal-Too Mountains, rising abruptly from the grassland in front, creating the sharp contrast that had attracted me from the beginning. Or reading the occasional blog about taking the train to Kyrgyzstan. In our minds the date of departure had been fixed: Just after the wedding Pierre was invited to, we would take the next train to Russia. Even the Visa we needed were already sorted. The transit visa for Belarus, tourist visa for Russia. But we were still pondering whether choosing the direct route, a night train from Berlin to Moscow would not be too risky. Officially it is still not legal for foreign citizens to immigrate into Russia through the Belarus border. Most reports you read were positive, saying they didn’t have issues on this train and it was tolerated. A few accounts, however, described how they were forced by the police to go back again upon arrival. The alternative though entailed an excruciatingly long bus ride to Riga before taking the train to Moscow. Finally, after “heaps” of speculation over various dinners, after more internet searches and embassy calls – all in vain – we had reached the sort-of-informed conclusion that the risk of immediately being kicked out of the country was reasonably low. So we decided to book the direct train through Belarus. And now, 15 days before our departure we had discovered that the tickets for the weekly Berlin-Moscow train were all sold out. The whole train? The whole train. No other way to get hold of tickets – except if you were willing to pay 1.4k for a private first class compartment for two persons. A somewhat abstruse option, given that this was only supposed to be a minor part of our journey. Admittedly, we did not discard the idea immediately, though. The alternative of taking the long detour through Latvia tucked behind its own string of new and unanswered questions: Would we be allowed to transport so much luggage in the bus? Would it be possible to reschedule our transfer from Bishkek to the Kookshal-Too? In short, our journey didn’t seem all that likely anymore at that point. We both were devastated and angry at ourselves. Being as adulty as we are, sure enough, we did not spend the next day on the phone, organising and trying to get the answers we needed. Instead, we endured the new uncertainty by standing in line, ready to take the next cable car up the Aiguille du midi at 7.30 am the following morning. Once out of the tunnel, on the emblematic ridge that connects the Aiguille station to the Vallée Blanche, we were proven right: all anxiety about the future of our trip was gone, and we were instantly at peace with either outcome. If Kyrgyzstan didn’t work out, staying in Cham wouldn’t be so bad either.
L.
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