Woke up fairly early to accomplish all the Internet things I needed to do during the day. Fortunately, the WiFi-enabled cafe turned out to be 24 hours, meaning that I could call Toronto, Stanford and Perth all within their respective business hours. It is amazing how much easier and cheaper the world has become with Skype and WiFi!
I still hadn't heard about my Australian visa after four months, so I rang the Perth 457 eVisa hot line only to find out that I hadn't yet been assigned a case officer. About 15 minutes later I received an apologetic email from my *new* case officer, who informed me that four different documents were still needed. (This information would have been helpful a few months ago...) Most documents, except for a recent passport photo, were located in the GoogleSphere. (My one online passport photo makes me look like a child molester - a fact that might have caused my Saudi visa denial a few years ago.) I have a couple spare copies of a recent passport photograph with me (always carry about 10 spare photos when traveling to developing countries!) and managed to scan it in, recolor it, and scale it to satisfy the Aussie photo requirements.
Had a few exciting phone calls with the Stanford Federal Credit Union over my debit card that was sucked into - and recovered from - an ATM in Turkistan a few days ago. Apparently it was too much for them to also let me validate my new credit card. They cheerily informed me that I could call back at 2200h so that they could transfer me during business hours to the automatic validation hot line. Honestly SFCU.
The last thing to do was to figure out my post-Kyrgyz travel plans. My idea had been to transit through SE Kazakhstan, enter China and head through Urumqi/Turpan to destinations eastward. HOWEVER ... In last few days there has been major unrest in ethnic violence in the Xinjiang province (read ~156 people dead in Urumqi). Mobile telephone networks and Internet access have been shut down for days in Urumqi, Turpan, and Kashi, and the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is temporally closed. I don't yet have my Chinese visa, but I'm pretty sure that my request at the Chinese embassy in Bishkek to "travel unaccompanied through Xinjiang" would be met with more than derisive sneers.
Options? One of the more interesting ideas would be to head into Tajikistan on the Pamir Highway; however, with a feeble back wheel and lungs untested at heavy, sustained bicycling at elevations over 4000m, I decided that this might best be saved for another trek. Uzbekistan also interests me, though the area where I would enter in the Ferghana Valley just saw some a somewhat violent border skirmish between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek armies with the border being closed there as well. Stuck with these realities, I decided to look at flights back to Canada early/mid-August. Much to my delight I found a good set that allows me to stop in Istanbul for 48 hours. I'm sad to stop the trip somewhat early, but I'm pretty pleased with the tour so far and will be happy with covering ~6000km of adventurous terrain in about 100 days. My guess is that China will still be there sometime in the future...
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