A long ‘short’ day
1 AugIt should have been easy today, 120kms to Tashkent is one of the smallest days on our itinerary. It wasn’t! Up in time for a 7am breakfast. This time Stephen manages to get some sort of bacony style pattie with his eggs. I err on the side of caution, eating just the bread. We’re also offered thick fresh yoghurt, but we both pass.
We load the car and then head for the bazaar again. It’s huge, but all of the vendors are shut. We don’t know why, as the Lonely Planet says it should be open. We need to get moving though, so we drive out of town, on the way passing through pre-Russian Shymkent.
My feelings on Shymkent? The roads have massive potholes (and missing manhole covers!), and the drivers are mental. Often the traffic lights at major intersections are switched off, and drivers pass through at normal speed, with the horn blaring. People also have devices fitted to their cars to imitate Police sirens. It’s really hot, but there are lots of roadside vendors to buy water and ice-cream from. There is also a lot of alfresco dining and outdoor bars. The city doesn’t seem to have any defined centre, and the people are friendly, but not like they are in rural areas. At night there just doesn’t seem to be that many people out, although it’s hard to see because most of the streetlights are left off? This is particularly hazardous as there are massive holes in the footpath, and randomly placed drains that are around 1m deep.
We don’t bother buying food and water in Shymkent, we’ll get into that in Tashkent. By 11:30 we reach the Uzbek border, which is only 20k’s from Tashkent. However, it’s completely shut. It’s also a bit depressing, with very poor looking street vendors who kept saying ‘Yalomar’ to us. We head back to a petrol station and ask directions. It’s 20 minutes the opposite direction. This one is pretty horrible, with lots of children coming up to the car, pretending to look sick and forlorn, speaking something over and over in monotone voices. I give them some caramel sweets against my better judgement. I can’t give them any toys as I’ll be overrun by people. We queue for another 10 minutes before a border guard tells us to get out of the queue. It turns out there is only one border crossing for tourists, and it’s at a place called Yalomar. The border guard is unable to point at it on the map, but can indicate the general direction. 20 minutes later we pass two red Mongol Rally SJ’s coming the other direction. We toot the horn and wave, but somehow they miss our SJ, with Mongol Stickers and a horse tied to the front, and don’t stop. There is too much traffic to chase.
We stop at another service station and they tell us it is 80 km to Yalomar, but they still can’t find it on the map. We find a road across the border about 80km away, and head for that, a town called something like Chinok. This turns out to be the right place, and we proceed to the Kazak side of the border. The usual being tossed from office to office, a stamp here, a signature there, but this time I have a problem. You have to register your visa within 5 days of your arrival in Kazakhstan (hotel’s should do it). It is now the morning of the 6th day. The border guard okays the problem with his superiors, and everything is stamped, but before he gives me my passport back he tells me of the 6 day problem. I must return 70km to the Police station and turn myself in...or I can pay a fee which will alleviate the problem. The fee is negotiated and I continue. Stephen has walked across the border (I hope he has, as I can’t find him), and I proceed across in the car. Stephen had no problems with the 6 day issue. We queue for the Uzbek side. There are only 5 cars in front of us, but we eventually wait 7hrs in the queue. The Uzbek authorities seem to be stripping peoples cars and luggage into a million pieces and scanning it. Three polish motorcyclists with passengers pass through the gate. We watch as they spend 5 hrs at the border post. Surely you can’t hide that much stuff on a motorbike!
We entertain ourselves by sitting in the shade of the queuing trucks, and chatting to the drivers. There is a Turkish man, and he gives us some dried apricot seeds to chew on. We read the guidebook for a while, and then start chatting to the lady vendors. They pass through the border with carts that resemble prams, filled with apricot seeds, water, soup etc. When the border closes they pass back through the side they entered. I’m not sure how that works by law! We buy some water from them, as we’ve run out. In the end we buy more than we need, as they have no change. The ladies bring their kids with them, and Stephen and I spend an hour helping one of them with his English. He knows a lot of words already. He teaches me to count to 10 in Uzbek.
Eventually we get let into border control. It’s 8pm, and it shuts at 9. I think they don’t want tourists stuck overnight, so they let us in ahead of a couple of cars in the queue. We get through the border relatively quickly, with minimal searching. It seems the guards are keen to go home, and it works in our favour. While we are there, we meet some people from the rival ‘Mongol Rally’. They are travelling from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan. Apparently they tried to apply for their Turkmenistan visa at the border, but they were refused, so they stayed in Uzbekistan, not realizing their visa had expired. When we spoke to them, they were being deported back to Kazakhstan. They stood in front of the Uzbek customs officials, telling Stephen in no uncertain terms how crap this country is. There was nowhere to get cash (true), they’d had nothing but trouble from the police (we saw lots but no trouble), and they’d hit a donkey (yes, driving in the dark). Stephen escapes the conversation before the customs officials get wind of the conversation.
100m past the border we are stopped by the Police. They are not happy with our paperwork, but we can’t understand what they want. The Policeman rings someone with better English (his Daughter I think), and I talk to her on the phone. She doesn’t make any sense though. Eventually I produce my UK roadworthy certificate, and it seems they are happy. Unfortunately it is basically dark. We are stuck not far from the border, the road is bad, and again we can’t see while driving. We drive until it is not populated, but unfortunately we’ve strayed onto a motorway which (bizarrely) passes back into Kazakhstan. We’re not sure if this is a problem or not, so we pull off the side of the motorway. There is a small steep track, and by a good stroke of luck, there is a clearing at the bottom, concealed from the road, and surrounding farms. We pitch the tents, cook some food, and hit the sack. We are lucky, as we have no Uzbek currency, and only have water because we bought too much inside no mans land.
This was supposed to be an evening in Tashkent, but the border problems have ruined that. The original border was 20km North of Tashkent, this one is 50km south. Tashkent is no longer on our way, and we have no spare time to stop there now anyway.
We’ve gone far enough west today that we move our clocks an hour back towards English time.
