{"id":214,"date":"2019-09-17T12:53:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T12:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=214"},"modified":"2019-09-17T12:53:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T12:53:26","slug":"stuck-in-karakol-a-gloomy-day-in-kyrgyzstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/17\/stuck-in-karakol-a-gloomy-day-in-kyrgyzstan\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuck in Karakol: a gloomy day in Kyrgyzstan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Robin Ewing
Aug 8, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The car will be ready by 5pm, the head\nmechanic said yesterday. At 5pm, the engine parts were still scattered across\nthe floor, dozens of bolts lined up on the windshield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Six men and a boy in green suede shoes with\nsilver buckles lean into the engine. The boy frequently retreats to the corner\nto tenderly wipe his shoes with a rag. The mechanic\u2019s right-hand man, the one I\ncall sous-chef, keeps going behind the building to smoke weed out of a water\nbong made from a Fanta bottle. An older man with only four teeth, who everyone\ncalled \u201cPapa\u201d and who chatters away to himself in Russian all day, seems drunk\nmost of time. It doesn\u2019t look good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The head mechanic left two days ago to\ndrive five hours to Bishkek to get the parts we need. Yesterday morning, he\nreappeared saying that Bishkek didn\u2019t have the parts so he flew to Astana, the\ncapital of Kazakhstan about 600 miles away, to get them. Of course, the only\nreason I know this is because the translator told me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Where is the engine?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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New parts from Astana (or so they say)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The translator is a university student who\nis studying translation. I don\u2019t have high hopes for his career. I asked him if\nhe knew a good restaurant and he replied, \u201cI don\u2019t like Russian.\u201d Around midnight,\nafter the mechanics had been working on the car for 12 hours, he sidled over\nand asked if we knew why the car wouldn\u2019t start. Then he said he thought it was\nthe battery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mechanic shop is not well stocked. So\nfar, we have given the mechanics a flashlight, oil, anti-freeze, tape, Jubilee clips\nand a tow rope. Around 1am, I moved into the van to sleep in the backseat. For\na few more hours, they banged away underneath, all huddled in the mechanic pit,\ncalling it quits around 3am. We slept locked inside the garage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the garage – Photo by Yoav<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This morning was gloomy. Dean left last\nnight in a taxi to Bishkek for a 5am flight back to Sweden. The Bandits have\nflights booked out of Ulaanbaatar and they can\u2019t afford to stay any longer.\nThis is already day four in Karakol. They drove away, headed into Kazakhstan,\nleaving me and Yoav behind. We said our goodbyes, Papa crouched next to us on\nthe oil-soaked floor fiddling with the head gasket. It is a holiday today, the\nlast day of Ramadan, but the mechanics have already reappeared. We are still\nhopeful that we can catch up with the Bandits in the next few days. That or\nditch the car for a Russian Lada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bye Dean! It’s just me and Yoav now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Bandits drive away.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robin Ewing Aug 8, 2013 The car will be ready by 5pm, the head mechanic said yesterday. At 5pm, the engine parts were still scattered across the floor, dozens of bolts lined up on the windshield. Six men and a boy in green suede shoes with silver buckles lean into the engine. The boy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_2041-e.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}