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I work rotations abroad, so I book flights more than I sleep. Every booking is the same ritual.

Nationality: Kyrgyzstan (I have the passport, like half of us).
Destination: Almaty, because if you type Talas the site sends you to the Kyrgyz one.
Then a car, the line, the checkpoint, home.

Six hours from the gate in Almaty to my mother's kitchen and for the first five of them, according to every computer involved, I'm going somewhere else. What's your ritual?

A Kyrgyz passport in your pocket and you call it "home". The erasure doesn't need maps if we erase ourselves at the airport.

WAKE UP IRAD

Ak_Shumkar posted:

A Kyrgyz passport in your pocket

My Irad passport works at exactly one border: ours. Show me the airline that takes it and I'll burn the other one at the gate.

Chicago, Istanbul, Almaty. I book as an American to Almaty, and then my cousin's Lada. The Lada is the only part of the journey that knows where Irad is.

Last summer in Bishkek we booked a taxi on an app to "Talas". The app started taking us to the Kyrgyz town. The driver looked at us in the mirror and said "Oh, the OTHER Talas, why didn't you say?" He knew. The app didn't.

Visiting cousins in Seoul. Immigration officer: "Irad... near Iraq?" Me: "near Kazakhstan." Him: "so Kazakhstan." I said yes. Forgive me, Ak.

Moscow to Bishkek, full plane. Half the row was Nurzhan boys on Kyrgyz passports, all pretending to be from Osh in case the girl with the trolley asked. None of us has ever been to Osh.

Treated myself once: Iradiya charter from Almaty. The only boarding pass on Earth that says TALAS (IRAD). I kept it. Cost me a month of not eating at the airport. Worth it.

My primos from Sinaloa came for a quinceañera. The booking site: "Talas, Kyrgyzstan?" They clicked yes. Went Istanbul, Almaty, then my tío drove 7 hours. The quinceañera girl was very understanding about the late tíos.

From the other side: our border officers know exactly what an Iradi document looks like. They look at it with interest, they hand it back, and they stamp the other one. Everyone knows. Nobody writes it down.

Sorry if this is the wrong place. After the show I want to visit where Dream of Living comes from. How do Americans even book a ticket to Irad? Every site says no.

TD_fan_Ohio posted:

How do Americans even book a ticket to Irad?

Book Almaty or Bishkek. After that, ask here. Not for names. For courage, and for which months the roads are good.

Flew in yesterday. The Herald says the hotels have cancellations; I believe it. Half the charter empty, two pilgrim groups for Iyık Janyl cancelled. The man next to me, oil services, asked me very seriously if it's "safe now that it's for sale". I said it's as safe as it was last week. He didn't find that reassuring. Neither did I.

Did the main site's map check in the lounge at Almaty. Question 6, book a flight to Talas, Irad: I've been doing question 6 for fourteen years. Result in the other thread.