Back Safely in Kazakhstan

When I set my return date for January 7, I wasn't anticipating any difficulties...at least wasn't expecting to reschedule my flight or be re-routed to Kyrgyzstan.  Many of you already know that my letter of invitation took longer than anticipated so we were really down to the wire on my passport and visa.  After numerous attempts to reach the embassy and even having the local postmaster looking out for the package, I didn't get it back in time.  As a result, my trip was delayed by four days.  I was pretty excited though when it did arrive and I could rest easy with my crates packed.  

As one can often expect, trips to Kazakhstan are usually not uneventful to say the least.  I was very pleased when the check-in person for AA informed me that she could check my baggage all the way to KZ since they were partners of British Air.  This also saved me about $170!  

All flights were pretty normal and on my final flight I had the entire seat to myself and took full advantage of the opportunity to sleep.  Fortuately I did sleep because once we were over Almaty, the fog made it impossible to land causing us to be re-routed to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan.  What I didn't know is that when this happens, they usually issue you a "transit" visa for Kyrgyzstan and bus you to the border.  When it looked like this would be our only option, I thought that for me, it might be best to leave the group and take a taxi to Taraz since I was only about 4 hours away.  However, I couldn't get my cell phone to work (would not even turn on or charge) and I wasn't going to travel anywhere by myself without a working cell phone.  So I stayed with the group and when I got to passport control, they were not going to let me pass because my passport was coming apart and they wanted to say that it wasn't valid.  Fortunately, being with the group I was able to get the attendant's attention who helped me out and they gave me my stamp and let me pass.  

After a 45 minute drive we made it to the border where all 19 of us passed through and then got through the Kazakh border without much difficulty.  At that point, I borrowed someone's phone, called our office manager and discussed my options.  Now having someone aware of my situation it was fine to grab a taxi from there to Taraz which actually put me in at noon rather than midnight!  Once I got back to the apartment, I plugged in my phone...worked fine.  Interesting how we make our decisions...and often when looking back we realize that it was a miracle.