Well, that seemed far too easy! I drove to Bonn, parked up, found the Consulate – which was marked with a small plaque on the wall (no flag or anything) and in the same building as a dentist.

The Kyrgyzstan Consulate lady asked me some questions in German, which I obviously answered correctly (I actually have no idea what she said – but I wittered away about the holiday; it was that or ask her for sausage, beer and chips, which is my other fluent German conversation piece). It took her about 5 minutes to stick something on a page of our passports and give it a stamp, and that was that! We have 1 month tourist visas for Kyrgyzstan!

I had to stop myself from skipping down the stairs on the way out.

The Kazakhstan Consulate is 10 minutes in the car across town, and this time it wasn’t all so straightforward. We had to fill in lots of detail on the form, provide a letter saying where we were going and for what reason, and provide the details of our friends in Kazakhstan. Worse still, I had to leave the passports with the Consulate and she would not give us a receipt.

So, I will have my fingers crossed for a week, hoping that our passports (along with our identities) are not stolen, and that we can pick up the passports – with new shiny Kazakh visas – in a week’s time. Keep your fingers crossed for me too.