My taxi out to Bishkek airport hit a cow head on at what must have been 70km/h, on the highway outside of town. I was fine and so was the driver. The cow limped away but was not in a good state. The car could not continue. I felt horrible for the cow but there was nothing I could do.

My replacement taxi already had a passenger and when we dropped her off a short distance further up the highway, her family was waiting for us, and not happy. I don’t speak Russian or the Kyrgyz language, but they were presumably unimpressed that their daughter’s taxi had stopped to pick up a random man on the side of a highway. I don’t blame them, but I was not given much of a choice. People started emerging from neighbouring houses and I felt close to becoming the target of an angry village mob. 

Seeing much beauty in Kyrgyzstan, but disturbed and perhaps little travel-weary anyway, I was very relieved to board my Uzbekistan Airways flight to Tashkent.