testmeat photoblog

this is the taxi driver that took my friend an i on a 12 hour journey from bishkek to osh in kyrgyzstan. i mentioned last year that the beginning and end of the journey was rather tense. it began when we arrived at the taxi rank in bishkek, where we tried to find a driver who would take us on the journey. we had already been prepped on how much this would cost, and as is often the case there were lots of people happy to take our money, however they were all asking for a lot more. we did a lot of haggling and negotiating, which included dumping our bags in the boot of the car and then taking them out to try a different car, going back and forth between different options. it took some time, and when we eventually got close to the recommended amount, but this driver wasn't so happy about it. what made this particular exchange different than most haggling experiences was that after we all agreed on the figure we had to spend half a day in very close proximity. tensions were eased somewhat by the time we stopped for food and i took this photo, however they were rekindled at the end of the journey. the other two passengers had already alighted outside of the city, and a couple of kilometres away from our final destination the driver tried to do the same to us. we showed him a map of exactly where we wanted to go but he insisted that we pay extra money for the final leg. it seemed particularly pety, as we had already driven over 600km that day, so a couple more didn't seem like it should warrant further money. but a standoff of stubbornness ended with him refusing to go any further and throwing our bags out of his boot and leaving us on the side of a road outside an unfamiliar town. to be honest thinking back to how the day started it kinda seemed like an appropriate farewell.

here's the original