The next morning we woke up, cleaned up a little and with the help of Andy's friend head over to the train station to get tickets to Lake Issyk-Kol. The lake is a scenic tourist spot, for locals as well as foreigners. After navigating several lines we were turned away to other lines, met a line cutter I dubbed "the Buzzard", then found out that the one and only train there was at 6am. Many friendly taxi drivers approached us repeatedly offering to drive us there for a princely sum. We declined, and one asked for Asel's phone number. I was sad that none of them took notice of me. We thanked Andy's friend Asel, and head over to grab a minibus (or as they call it, auctobus) to the bus station.Once there we got a price that seemed high, so we went the hostel we stayed at, a couple blocks from the bus station, sat down and played some music as we waited for a man there who offered a driver service. Twenty minutes, and twenty more minutes and then many more minutes later, we all ate, found out the bus was the better deal and head out to it once again.
We had to wait for the bus to fill up with passengers before it would leave, so Andy and Omar decided to pull out their instruments and help the conductor get people on the bus. I joined after a while and we sang a whole bunch of songs and got a crowd around us. We even managed to make some ice cream money thanks to the generous donations of our audience into Omar's hat.Finally, after a very long time, we all boarded the bus, ice cream in our bellies and started down to the lake. I fell asleep, a bunch of times until we reached Bosteria, a popular section along the huge lake. We stepped out and there were people walking all over, returning from the beach, walking up and down the streets.
We grabbed some food at a restaurant, found out the places to sleep on that section of the lake were very expensive, then started walking back to the main road to search for a better option.Along the way we saw an old man playing an accordian beautifully. We sat down and started playing music together. A crowd gathered, the sun started to go down, we had no place to sleep but we were having too much fun to care. He played a bunch of different songs, including an old Hindi movie song "Juta maira Japani, patloon hai Englistani, topi Turkistani par dil hai Hindustani." While we were playing we befriended a lady at a stall next door and some random drunk guy who kept trying to speak to us (like a small child speaking gibberish that sounds like sentences). We explained to the lady that we were looking for a place to sleep. She was really friendly and though we shared no common language, we started walking with her and so did the gibberish guy. She had really enjoyed a Junoon song we played called "Saeen". She turned out to be Muslim as well and as we walked we explained to her "Nyet Vodka" "Mussalman" etc and got away from the gibberish guy and ended up renting a room with her family for the night.