I bought a DONKEY! Now we travel together...

This year I traveled on the world's longest railway, the Trans-Siberian in Russia, and by the end of it I somehow ended up owning a donkey. Let's better go to the beginning of this story. Today is the day of my life when I buy a donkey. So we are just walking from one village to another in this area. Walk until we see donkeys and try to make a deal and buy one. Any donkey preferences. We need one that's strong. This is my American comrade. I met him during one of my train stops. Then he decided to join my travel and we crossed all of Russia. And now we're about to have a donkey together. Comrade's visa for Russia wasn't infinite. So, salam, Tajikistan! Oh, it's hot! It's hot just from the oven. This little boy came up to us and just stuck out this bread with his little arms. That really touched me. We've been looking for donkeys for five hours. Someone offered us one for free. We didn't take it. We got some expensive offers. We got some low offers. We're still just checking out everything that's available on the donkey market. These ones look pretty good. We're gonna go and find out if they're for sale. Is it our boy? Yep. Welcome, Serge. We found our donkey! Welcome to the family, Serge boy. He will be our mighty travel partner in the mountains. I've always been a solo traveler girl. I go wherever I want. I am independent. That's what I've been telling myself since I was a child. But there was another quiet voice inside of me longing for connection, a travel partner. I wanted someone who would also love outdoorsy life, who would be minimalistic and unpretentious and maybe give me some support when I travel. Be careful with your wishes. God hears all of them. Day number one was success. We got acquainted with the donkey and now he has a name Serge because we have a common friend Sergey. And our friend is very fit and this donkey is very strong and fit as well, so he is Serge. Also I learned some donkey language. Donkey Tajik language. IKH and KKH means go and OSH means stop. New language is always very useful especially the Tajik donkey language in this situation. And this is my very first pet. I never expected it to be a Tajik donkey but super happy with it. We woke up and there was a small boy that came to us from the village. Osh! Osh! Move your buns Serge! We were told by locals beat him harder, beat him harder to go but we just can't do it to our beloved Serge, so instead we are pulling him. We had already been in the mountains for a while and these two dogs never left our side from day one. We named them in soviet style Bulochka 1 and Bulochka 2. A bun number one and a bun number two. My wish to find travel companions was becoming reality and expanding at lightning speed. It says 500 meters there? Yeah to a spring which may or may not exist or be active. Maybe I should run and see? I don't know, we don't have much time. What's the alternative? Walking this way? It doesn't seem like much of a difference to me. Our pace was so slow today because we were not good with managing our donkey. We didn't even make it half the way and it's getting dark so we have to camp at the first flatish area that we found without water. How much water do we have? You can look in your bag what's in my water bottle. Only this? Yes, now you understand. Why are you saying to cook dinner? I don't know, I thought it was enough. I don't see how we're not cooking anything. This is how much water we have for the next 20 or something hours. Water! It's delicious. We have to go down the mountain and we did for a couple of hours this morning only to find a very steep cliff that our donkey can't walk on. So now we will have to go up again and we still didn't find water. It's good that it was snowing this night. Update! It's 2 a.m and we finally found a spring of water. Everyone is super tired so I'm gonna prepare the first meal of the day. We finally had access to water and we're happy to continue our route until the moment Serge became petrified by water. We couldn't make the donkey cross the river so we need to go back and find another way. Donkey adventures continue. Now we're stuck on the slope of a mountain because he doesn't want to move. Garret went to look for another way. He doesn't want to cross the river and he also doesn't want to take this way. Trying to talk him into going down with a mango. First time this happened in Tajikistan. We have apples. He loves apples. We walked such a long way only to see this. What do we do? So risk our own lives crossing. Risk our own lives again turning around going across the rock scramble which we traversed I'd say 90% of this is just the last 10 but because this washed out recently we can't cross so I think we're gonna take the most um I don't know whatever you want to call it the nicest option which involves keeping all of our friends alive and hopefully ourselves. Bridge operation number three because we're stuck here so somehow we need to do it. This is so funny. Let's go back to camp for the sixth time today. All right I'm the dictator in this expedition and I've decided that we're giving up and heading back to camp. Good attempt. We've heard wolves and the dogs were nervous so we decided to make a fire. We have no idea what to do with the donkey tomorrow though. What do you think we will do? I think you had the most amazing idea. Don't say it. Let's hope tomorrow's plan will work. Yeah I hope so. It's gonna be great. Here we are back at our favorite bridge. We have to make this work. We did it. Wow we covered the holes in the bridge so that the donkey wouldn't see the water running. Took off his bags and he went by himself. So easy. We can keep going Serge. Our Serge has totally grown up and became such an independent boy. From now on he walked in front of us and even showed us the path. We had all learned how to move together and it finally felt like a perfect travel family. What? Second bridge? So easy. Got it. You try. Try this. Just eating like this? He says you didn't do it right. Pack it down. It's closer. We were ready to set up our tent when a man across the river standing on the roof of his house started to scream and called us to his house and the Tajik family invited us for tea, food and then he said that we can stay in this building that belongs to him which looks like a storage for some of their things. After staying for so many nights in a tent this is very luxury for us. What a hospitable Tajik people. We wanted to continue the trip and to have more fun in the Fan Mountains but the only path ahead led straight up and it looked like winter had already arrived up there so... I'm confident that Serge will be treated well by this family that gave us so much love and hospitality. I don't know if I will ever see my American or Tajik comrades ever again. Just at the moment when I thought that I had a whole travel family it's time to let go. But you know what's beautiful about goodbyes like this? When it's hard to say goodbye it means you had something truly special in your life.