This will be the shortest post yet, I bet. We hung out in our Airbnb until I got too hungry to function, which happened at 10AM. We headed down to the same cafe we went to two days ago. It was raining pretty hard and we immediately cancelled our plan to take the cable car up the mountain. Millie was thrilled and did a fist pump “yes!!!” like a football player in a 90s movie.

After breakfast we headed back and did almost nothing until it was time to leave at 6PM. Millie did her art, played with Judy, Nick downloaded approximately seven hundred VPNs so we can access media in China, and I packed slowly while listening to a podcast. We feel like we’ve barely seen Kazakhstan but it’s okay. We’ve loved Central Asia and I want to come back someday to visit all the “stans”.

Millie had a tummy ache most of the day. In the afternoon we caved and let her watch another Studio Ghibli movie. The weather cleared up and we were shocked to see that our Airbnb had an incredible view of snowcapped mountains. They had been blocked by either clouds or pollution since we arrived 4 days ago.

At 6 we called a car and headed to the airport. The traffic was almost as bad as the other night. What should have been a 25 minute drive took over an hour. Millie slept through it. Nick got Millie’s minor stomach bug and entered a meditative state to get through the drive. Every time I looked over he had his eyes closed and was breathing deeply, practicing TM to avoid a BM. It worked and we arrived without incident.

We got through security and passport control. We got an overpriced airport meal.

And now we pray that withholding a large screen emitting light will mean that Millie sleeps on the red eye flight. We land in Beijing at 5AM.