A post from Tim - Passport woes
7 AugAn update from Almaty by Tim Gale. As you will have read in a past posts there was a little mishap with me getting the photo page of my passport a little wet, well sweat would be more accurate. It is damaged to the points where only the outline of a face is recognizable, looks like the picture of a ghost, none of the other pages are damaged. This came about as I was walking in the now dry Aral harbour. With no Australian consult in Kazakhstan I had the idea of travelling to Almaty, getting a photocopy authorized at the UK embassy and then catch up with the boys in short time.
I jumped on the train, with my $19 ticket for a sleeper, when I got on I can see why it was the cheapest option, it meant sleeper ie no where to sit and packed in about as close as you can stuff people with out them complaining loudly. I ended up swapping my bed with someone else so they could have their family together and I was in with a lady, her son and another older lady. They where all very nice and explained how it work with hand signals and a few words in English from the son. As I figured out after I actually had the ticket for the lower bed and the older lady had the top bunk, I would have swapped with her anyway, but it worked out alright in the end. They found it fascinating that I could reach right up to the top to remove all of the sleeping gear from the shelf on top. Well I thought it was a shelf, I woke in the middle of the night to find a man sleeping on it. I think he was hitching a ride as he got off in the morning before the cabin warden came around.
My bunk in the train on the way to Almaty.
Off the train in the morning and I head for some accommodation out of the Lonely planet. Cheapest in the book, top floor of a university student block, well the expression you get what you pay for is pretty appropriate, it is a bed in a room with 3 others, some of the spring in the mattress are starting to come through and the shower, well put it this way everyone but the cleaning lady is very happy with the bucket showers I have built out of a 5L water bottle.
My room in the student accomodation and some of my room mates.
Money paid, bag stowed and off to the UK embassy. After a chat with the consular assistance the reality of the matter start to kick in, the few day trip to the city is looking like a fantasy dream. The only solution they think they can offer me is an emergency passport to travel back to Australia. This was sort of not high on my agenda just yet. I speak to my contact in the Australian embassy in Moscow and they cannot issues passports without an interview and guess what you have to travel to Moscow for this interview. The weekend has arrived and I have to wait for Monday before anything more can be discussed.
I have a look around the city and meet my room mates, we go out each night to eat kebabs and drink a few beers while watching the world go by. We are all in the city waiting, one for a visa to be granted, one for his flight home and me for a passport. Almaty is a funny city. It was the capital for many years and then it was moved away, it is very soviet in it architecture and when I mean soviet I mean I don't think the designers had anything less then a fat marker pen and a ruler to draw in. ever thing is solid straight lines, vertical and horizontal lines and flat faces to most building. I am still finding new things, but you can realistically see most of the sights in a day or two.
View in Almaty of the mountains.
Meat section in the Green Bazaar. Note the horse on the sign.
Monday arrives and the news doesn't get much better. After many discussions back and forth it seems my only solution is to get a UK emergency passport to travel to Moscow, get a new passport there and try and catch up with the boys before they leave Russia. I do all the paper work and am told to return tomorrow with some passports pictures and my new passport will be processed.
Tuesday up bright and early to go find a shop to make some passport photos for me. This where it starts to get messy, first I couldn't find the shop that I had been given direction to so I thought I would go for a bit of a walk, surely in a city this size it should be easy. Well many streets later, many direction later, many hand signal trying to describe passports photo, a number of shops that don't open till 10am I found a young man with a digital camera, a computer and very good English to do it for me. I rush back to the embassy with the photos and the paperwork and am told come back at 4pm. Back at four and I met the British consul and get my new UK passport, it looks very official and surely must be impressive enough that the Russian will let me in. Go to bed pretty optimistic about still catching up with the boys.
Wednesday, up bright and early again, jump on the bus to travel out to the Russian embassy and get my visa transferred. Off the bus at the right stop and I start to walk towards the embassy, straight into the middle of a construction site. It seems that when they are building a new road they don't bother with the hard part of redirecting traffic another way it is just as normal, but instead of other cars sharing the road it is bull dowsers and excavators. When the footpath is there it is cut through with 1 m deep trenches and holes. Turns out the safest route is down the dirt road with the bull dowsers and excavators.
Get to the Russian embassy to be met by a stony faced security man with his arms crossed, turns out this means the embassy is closed and it won't be open till Friday. Great, more waiting. Bollix (hey I am British now). I wander back through the construction site wondering how I am going to waste another couple days. I go to see the people that sponsored us in Kazakhstan to get a exit visa, they tell me they need my passports for 4 days and I tell them that with out seeing Russia first that I can't. It is all set up so when Russia has dealt with me I can get the exit visa as quick as it can be done.
Thursday, not up bright and early as I have a day to kill, sleep in till 10. go to a net café and have a nice long chat for near a hour on skype with home, total cost AUS$4.5 compared to the normal phone which is $10 for 5 min. Say bye to a new friend and then kick back and have a bit more of a sleep. Tomorrow is a big day as I have to try and convince the Russian to transfer my visa and do it in a timeframe that means I won't be in a walking frame by the time it gets stamped. Wish me luck.
The hardest part of the waiting is knowing that Derek and Steve are out in the wilds with out me and I am stuck here without any options.
Bye from the waiting City
Tim
