Snorre gets up early to go to the Turkmenistan Consulate in Mashhad, so he can be at the front of the queue.
The 4000 year old city of Merv
Someone being there even earlier than him, are two German fellows who are participating in the Tajik Rally. They have been going through similar experiences as Yak in Black when it comes to the different Central Asian embassies and consulates, and are now hoping that their Turkmenistan Visa is ready to collect.
The Tajik Rally
45 minutes after the official opening hours someone finally cracks open the tiny armored hatch in the concrete wall.
The German guys state their case.
Half an hour later one of them gets the visa, the other doesn’t. No explanations as to why this should be the case.
Snorre is next and he is quite anxious as to whether he’s a winner in the visa-lottery or not. Basically, if he doesn’t get the visa today, the rally is over! Even if it were to come through in another couple of days, the Uzbek visa would have run out in the meantime. And there are no other ways to Mongolia at this time.
Afghanistan is not doable. The Russian visa isn’t valid for long enough, so even if we double back to Georgia and enter Russia that way, we won’t be able to make it.
The relief of having the visa stamped in the passport is strangely rewarding, and Snorre gets straight into the car and heads for the border. Only one hour struggling with the passive-aggressive Iranian traffic, and he is out of the city.
Turkmenistan visa
It’s a three-hour drive to the border and as soon as Snorre gets out into the open desert, he gets the Yaris going. So much so, that after about an hour he gets pulled over by two young Iranian police officers.
They are obviously bored as the sight of such an odd looking car makes them smile like a 6-year old with a shiny new toy. Snorre expects the worst as he clearly was speeding.
But not to worry.
The officers only want to talk about the car, about Norway, European girls – and of course ask what Snorre thinks of Iran.
20 minutes later he continues on his way.
Meanwhile, in Tajikistan…
Lars gets out of the plane at Dushanbe International Airport. The one and a half hour plane ride in the Fokker 100 had been smooth, with no crying babies or drunk football fans and the plane only 70% full.
On the tarmac are planes of airlines with unfamiliar names that seem both mystical and adventure-laden: Zagros, Aseman, Taban, Somon. The airport itself is clearly a relic from Soviet times, and as Lars enters the arrivals hall for passport- and visa control, he realizes that a couple of other planes must have landed before his. The queues in front of the two harassed-looking customs officers are immense and at least 6 people wide.
Aseman Air
He stands at the back, all the time trying not to lose his place among the jostling people – most of them Tajiks and Russians who wouldn’t know the concept of queueing if it stepped on them with pointy boots.
After about 40 minutes it’s his turn. The officer takes his passport, leafs through it until she reaches the Tajik visa and then asks a question.
In Tajik.
We’ll never understand people who ten seconds ago clearly have been made aware of our inability to speak or understand their language, still trying to ask us long-winded questions.
In their language.
So, headshaking and mumbling in English ensues. After a while it turns out the officer requires another paper in addition to the visa.
It seems she also wants an immigration form!
This is clearly something she must have, but since Lars hadn’t been made aware of this necessity beforehand and indeed doesn’t have such a form on his person at the moment, all he can do is shake his head and do his Swedish-tourist-doesn’t-want-to-pay-for-entry-to-the-museum impression.
And it works.
Seeing the ocean of people behind him and realizing he isn’t going anywhere, she stamps his visa and bids him a «You are velcome, Mister».
Luggage – lost? Forgotten?
In front of him is the baggage claims area and behind that the exit. The look of the luggage area (i.e. heaps of luggage balanced in imitation of Mount Everest) makes him glad he only brought hand-luggage on the plane, as he is certain his suitcase would have been well on its way to Fiji by now.
He steps outside, into 40 degrees. Thank god for a pick-up from the Atlas Guesthouse.
Snorre in Turkmenistan
At the border it’s business as usual.
And although both the Iranian and Turkmenistan officials are very friendly and helpful, it still takes 5 hours to get across into Turkmenistan.
Camels on the road
At the Iranian customs check-out office, Snorre meets up with another team who have been stuck there since early morning, due to a dodgy Carnet de Passage. Eventually, they get away with a fine, and are cleared through the Turkmen bureaucracy about the same time as Snorre, so they decide to convoy (Mongol Rally terminology for driving together) to Merv, to find a camp site for the night.
Driving convoy desert style
They manage to find it in the darkness using the age-old method of trusting in luck, and are rewarded the next morning by the truly brilliant sight of the ruins of this almost 4000 year old city in the light of the rising sun.
Finding Merv by the failing light
Yak in Black and the Radical Nomadicals part ways, as the other team is going to what must be one of the weirdest capitals in the world: Ashgabat.
Merv in the morning
Snorre has to press on, as his Uzbekistan visa is about to expire even before he has entered the country.
Lars in Tajikistan
After sleeping the sleep of the undead, Lars wakes up at the Atlas Guesthouse, in a nicely cool room with working showers, and – importantly, a regular-style sitting-down toilet.
As an aside: you never appreciate the little things until they are taken away. It’s a cliché for a reason, because it’s true. I hereby declare the porcelain water closet and the hot-cold shower system to be the greatest inventions in human history.
Oh, and computers, too.
But mostly showers.
After the morning-ablutions are done, it’s down to the breakfast table. The Atlas Guesthouse is more like a big mansion, and very charming because of it. Everywhere there are carpets, so your shoes stay outside, and there are several levels of huge, building-spanning balconies with wicker chairs and sofas.
At the Atlas Guesthouse
Breakfast is served at one long table, which is a nice idea. It’s very communal and gives you a chance to strike up conversations or check out the cute-
Anyway, it’s a nice setup. On the table are 20 place settings and huge rounds of fresh bread, 4 types of sausage, several cheeses, enough tea to drown a small village, fruit juice, muesli, yoghurt, three types of homemade jam, crackers, fresh melon, apples and peaches.
After the third helping, Lars wobbles from the table and out into the heat of the day.
Today’s mission: find out where he can get a Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast-permit, otherwise known as a GBAO, to drive the Pamir Highway.
A GBAO-permit
Snorre in Turkmenistan
Driving to the Karakorum desert is hot and dusty business.
It’s 44 degrees and there is a strong southern wind. The feeling can only be described as sitting in a blow dryer that someone is pouring sand into.
After 4 hours of being sandblasted, Snorre reaches the city of Turkmenbati, where the road to the border goes over a ponton-bridge of the we-did-it-in-a-hurry-without-tools kind. After negotiating the bridge entry fee down from $45 to $5, Snorre finally makes it to the Uzbek border.
His car is the only one there and it all seems to run very quickly and smoothly, until suddenly everybody leaves. Snorre tries to ask what is going on, and one border guard explains that the border is closed for lunch.
Right. But for how long?
Oh, no problem, the guard says – it’s closed for only 2 hours.
Lars in Tajikistan
The friendly concierge had drawn him a map, and Lars is walking towards Dushanbe centre. Around him are Tajik men in European-style shirts and jeans, while the women all wear colourful scarves on their heads and ankle-long dresses with lively patterns.
Walking through Dushanbe
Now, to get to OVIR (Department of Visa and Registration), Lars passes the Ayni Opera and Ballet Theatre and locates the orange visa-office around the corner from the park behind it.
This must be it. There are about 300 people with a look of despair waiting outside, as is always the case with these kinds of places.
OVIR – Department of Visa and Registration
He goes in the first door he sees, and is happy to note that there are only 10 people waiting.
It’s a small room, with 5 windows in the walls with number 1 next to the entrance. Spotting a nervous-looking official whose face seems to say «I’m going to be spoken English to, aren’t I?», Lars pounces with the phrase he was told they all understand:
«GBA-permit? Pamir Highway?»
The official looks relieved and points Lars further into the room.
Somebody else’s problem, then.
After getting the attention of the woman screaming into her phone behind window 2, she points out that Lars should go to window 5.
Just as well. She seems stressed.
Nobody behind window 5, but Lars is told the man will be right back.
Sure.
Five minutes later, driven by some type of invisible summons, all the seemingly collapsed and sleeping people clutching passports and forms, animate and rush window 5.
Where, as if by magic, there now is a man in military uniform telling people to get lost.
Snorre in Uzbekistan
There are still some hours of sunlight left when Snorre enters Uzbekistan and heads south for the Tajikistan border.
His visa runs out the next day, and you don’t want to be in Uzbekistan when your visa has expired… as 2 other Mongol Rally teams found out the hard way.
They were arrested and detained for 10 days(!) before being heavily fined and then deported. It was due to car problems that they came to the border 4 hours after their visas expired – late enough to let the entire ham-fisted bureaucracy of Uzbekistan land on them with all its red-tape-enhanced might!
Driving south through Uzbekistan continues to be hot.
Road signs are scarce and random, but people are friendly and helpful – so when the sun goes down the Tajikistan border does not seems too far away.
In a guesthouse by the side of the road Snorre has company at the dinner table from a British couple who is cycling from Malaysia and back to England. There’s also a team of Iranian roughnecks, drilling for oil in Uzbekistan.
This is perhaps the best thing about travelling: you get to meet lots of people who are interesting in more ways than you can imagine!
Lars in Tajikistan
Lars reaches window 5 of the Department of Boredom, Visa and Registration, holding his dark red passport like a shield. Before the official can say anything, the magic phrase once more does the trick:
«GBA-permit? Pamir Highway? Driving-vrrroooomm.»
The Pamir Highway – this is where we want to go!
The official grudgingly accepts his passport, looks at the name, rifles through some papers on the floor, and then throws up his arms as if to say «I can’t find it!»
«I need a form. What do I need? Do you have it? Can I get it? Please?»
It seems to sink in what it is Lars wants, and with a violent movement of his arm that looks almost painful, the official points him back towards window 1.
Right.
The nervous looking guy now gives Lars a form, already filled out, including a photocopy of his passport and Tajik visa.
Lars pays 5 Somoni ($1) and gets pointed back to window 5.
Where the official takes Lars’ papers, writes something on the top sheet, gives them back to him, says «Bank» with another tendon-screaming wave, and pulls a curtain in front of the window.
Audience is over.
Snorre in Uzbekistan
The following morning it’s an early start to drive the last 4 hours to the Tajikistan Border.
After a couple of hours Snorre catches up with a car with familiar stickers on the side: the Mad Tea Party to Mongolia are 4 Germans in a Skoda. They are also going to Dushanbe.
Photo: Mad Tea Party to Mongolia
And while they are having a nice chat at the side of the road, another team rocks up: it’s The Shire Boys in their Lada Niva, which they proudly tell us, has broken down in every single country they have been to so far!
Photo: The Shire Boys
We decide to convoy to the border, and as normal custom is, passengers swap cars to ride in as we go along – so as to better tell old stories from the road to a fresh pair of ears.
Lars in Tajikistan
The official didn’t say in which bank to pay the fee for the GBAO-permit (in Iran it was usually the same branch for all types of visa-payments) or indeed where there even IS a bank.
Since Lars is on foot (they had warned him against using taxis at the hotel), he walks for half an hour until he reaches the first bank.
The roads in Dushanbe aren’t always straightforward
Which is a farmer’s bank or some such, where they don’t do regular banking. After some asking around a friendly employee points him towards a «normal» bank that is «not closé».
«Do you mean it’s open?»
«No. Not closé. Far.»
«Far? How far?»
«Half hour walk.»
Shit.
In the end Lars reaches the Амонатбанк (Amonat bank) which deals with these things. After watching guys in Hawaii shirts walking up to the tellers with sports bags filled with fat bundles of cash, he pays about $3 and is off with his receipt and ready to pick up the permit at the OVIR.
Snorre in Uzbekistan
If you’re going to cross a border overland in central Asia you have to go through two border areas: there is one area to check you out of the country you are leaving. This process can be at least as tedious and bureaucratic as it is to get in. Then there is a bit of «no mans land» stretching from a few hundred meters to 20-30 kilometers at some borders.
After crossing that, you come to the border area of the country you are actually going to.
To get out of Uzbekistan takes the three teams the better part of the day, as the border guards are clearly bored and are entertaining themselves with the 7 westerners in funny looking cars trying to cross their kingdom. One thing they make them do is to go back outside the border area to get special car insurance for Uzbekistan. Any attempt to argue this since we were clearly leaving the country were useless.
$12 dollars later we had the required papers with all the required stamps and signatures.
Entering Tajikistan immediately seems friendlier, as it is a country that is actually interested in tourists, as robbing them tends to send the wrong message.
On the way to Dushanbe we stop at the first petrol station to refuel, and there is a spontaneous party breaking out as we discover that they have 95 Octane petrol. After Uzbekistans 76 and 80 Octane, this is pure joy.
The Petrol Dance
Yes, yes – it’s the little things.
The teams split up as the Shire Boys have booked a room at a hostel, and Snorre is going to find Lars. They decide to meet up for beers later as it is Shire Boy George’s birthday.
Snorre and Lars in Tajikistan
With Snorre having arrived in Dushanbe, together with teams Mad Tea Party to Mongolia and The Shire Boys, they make ready to get him a GBAO-permit as well. To drive the Pamir Highway, they need the permit to go through the following regions’ checkpoints:
- Darvoz
- Vanj
- Rushan
- Khorog
- Shugnon
- Murghab
- Rushkala
- Eshkashem
The area hasn’t always been peaceful, and part of the Pamir highway runs close to the Afghan border. As recently as May of this year a shootout started in Khorog when police attempted to arrest a brother of local warlord Mamadbokir Mamadbokirov, leaving two supporters dead and a police officer in serious condition. Khorog also was the epicenter of a military operation in 2012 that killed dozens, including at least 22 locals, something that was never clearly explained by authorities.
Anyway, the view is supposed to be outstanding.
Google doesn’t show the entire route, and also thinks these are highways – 14 hours equal 4 days
All joking aside, we’re not taking the political situations of the areas we’re going into lightly, and we always keep up to date with local news and regulations. Therefore we knew that the Pamir, for the moment anyway, was considered safe for travellers.
In the evening, Snorre and Lars join The Shire Boys and Mad Tea Party to Mongolia at a very nice Indian restaurant, to celebrate George’s birthday properly. Everyone’s very happy with the food as it is outstanding, and the only reason the teams aren’t there all night is that Lars at one point asks the people serving them, at what time they’d be closing.
Turns out that was about two hours ago.
Yak in Black, Shire Boys and Mad Tea Party to Mongolia
The next thing on the list is visiting a night club in Dushanbe.
A short taxi ride later, and everyone’s dropped off in front of a place helpfully named The Night Club – the type of establishment you can find anywhere in the world where they’ve heard of muscle shirts and music so loud that it makes the chairs bleed.
At The Night Club
Snorre and Lars stay for about an hour, while the others enjoy themselves on the dance floor. Not being able to take the music or the lack of service at The Night Club anymore, Snorre and Lars decide to go back to the guesthouse to have a couple of beers in the quiet of the Dushanbe night.
Originally attempting to take a taxi to the guesthouse, they are being shanghaied by the taxi driver who wants to take them to «VIP Club – verry good place». Snorre and Lars exchange glances that say «why the hell not?», and go along for the ride.
What could possibly happen?
As they drive out of Dushanbe centre for what seems like twenty minutes, they arrive at what can only be called a large mansion on the outskirts of the city. This turns out to be a night club.
«Verry good place» indeed, but Snorre and Lars don’t get to enjoy it, as they are arrested two minutes after leaving the taxi.
(Cue a police officer trying the «good cop/bad cop» routine on us – which, by the way, doesn’t work when you’re the only officer – and the inescapable bribe of $3, a handshake and the promise of never doing «it» again.)
So far Yak in Black has traveled 13 531 km since Røros, and visited 29 countries. This is about 1/3 of the total travelling-distance.
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