I am guitar explosion silver

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Oh, those t-shirts.

Yes, I've been wandering the markets in Bishkek again, killing a bit more time after visiting the Tajik embassy.

The Tajik embassy was a pleasant surprise, largely on account of the complete lack of any other visa applicants. No elbows. No lists. No waiting 2 hours in the sun being jostled by men in felt hats. Just a polite, helpful consul, an empty room and a stack of application forms.

Once done with the application I headed back into town, grabbing a quick samosa on the way. Samosas are common here, but they're not what we'd call samosas except that they're triangular. They're more like very cheap pasties in Britain, filled with ground offal and onions and very little seasoning. Or sometimes they're filled with lumps of chicken fat so that when you bite them everyone within 6 feet is covered with boiling lard. That can be kind of inconvenient when you're about to board a trolleybus and you have to get money out of your pocket.

Back in town, I had no intention of going to the market, I simply ended up there as part of a fruitless search for a haircut. Bishkek's commercial centre has a bizarrely skewed range of shops; how everyone has short, neat hair is a mystery because I can't find anywhere that cuts it. If I wanted shoes, fine. Air tickets, fine. A 24 hour pharmacy? Sure. Haircut? Forget it.

In fact the city seems to be bucking a certain well-known galactic phenomenon involving shoe shops. Here there is a different problem, where society is in danger of collapse because the entire economy is gradually shifting to produce only medicines for the 24 hour pharmacies that line every street. In the 5 minute walk from the flat I'm staying in to the internet cafe there are seven 24-hour pharmacies, including four adjacent shops. If you walk along most streets in the centre, you pass at least two per block and in some cases up to eight. How do they survive? Are people really that sickly here?

So instead of persevering with any commercial missions, I'm going hiking in the mountains near the city.

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