Sorry, but before I get back to writing regular posts, I'm going to tune out the mobilization news for a while and be in crisis mode helping friends and acquaintances who are urgently leaving. Undoubtedly, it's much easier and calmer for me to do this from Serbia.

However, I really need to share a story where I finally found the best answer to the age-old question: "You travel around all these countries, so why can't you just stay home?".

Back in peaceful 2019, I spent a week in wonderful Kazakhstan. Who knew that trip would help me out so much in 2022.

Recently, I was looking for housing in Almaty for three people evacuating. A few days before check-in, I booked a great apartment on Airbnb (nothing complicated about that). But a day before check-in, the host never got back to me, support couldn't reach him either, and they canceled everything, wishing me luck with my search. On the next try, the owner turned out to be alive, but the apartment was already booked—they just forgot to turn off those dates. Another cancellation.

At this point, booking was only showing two hotels at $1000+ per night for the dates I needed. Many of the aggregators I knew claimed there were no options whatsoever. On Airbnb, all the listings seemed too suspicious, and even sending out a batch of preliminary booking requests didn't bring any results.

Someone suggested a Kazakh short-term rental website and other local chat groups (Nika, thanks!), but I had no luck there either. I tried contacting the owners of several listings, but everything was already booked. Turkish students in Almaty even got involved in the process (Ruslan, thanks!), but that didn't help much either.

The prospect of sleeping God knows where was becoming real. That's when I decided the situation was hopeless and I needed to do something differently. Back in 2019, I went to all those Kolsay Lakes and Charyn Canyon and other sites around Almaty with a guide, and just in case, I saved his contact. So I wrote to him. I didn't have high hopes for this option—at best, I expected some advice like "try looking there." The guide said the short-term rental market had indeed gone crazy, but he managed to find housing without bankrupting me, and even personally met everyone and helped them check in (Sergey, THANK YOU!). People can be wonderful. Even in difficult times like these.

If that's not a reason to travel, I don't know what else you need.

Take care of yourselves. Don't go to the military recruitment office. Peace to you ❤️