Transiting to Tajikistan

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May 18, 2012
Hotel: Sugd Hotel; Khujand, Tajikistan; 360 tjs/double
Today was going to be another long day on the road as we were planning on going to Khujand in Tajikistan. There are two ways to get there. One involves a transit of Uzbekistan through the flat Fergana valley, the involves going through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan which only involves a single border crossing. The problem with the 2nd way is there are enclaves of Uzbekistan in that part of Kyrgyzstan; even if you have a multi-entry visa many travelers have problems going through to Batken. Most taxis though now take detours on (non-existent) roads to get around these enclaves. The guy from Stantours said since we had double-entry Uzbek visas anyway that the first option was the better one. We figured we would need to do the trip today in 5 stages.. Osh to the Uzbek border, to Andijon, to Kokand, to Tajik border and to Khujand.

We set off around 9AM after finally finding a taxi to the border that was big enough for all 4 of us and our luggage. There are plenty of taxis in Osh, just most are tiny and don't have any trunk space. There are also minibuses that run to the border from the center of town that are cheaper. We arrived at the border by 9:15 and were through the Kyrgyz side by 9:30. We walked across to the Uzbek side where there was a large group of locals waiting. The guards saw we were foreigners and waved us through. One of them flipped through our passports, interested in the many stamps we have. No problems though, other than sitting around waiting 15 minutes for the official to come into the booth and start stamping passports. After getting the stamp, you have to go through customs. Normally this is a formality in most countries. In Uzbekistan you have to fill out two identical customs declarations on entry, declaring all the cash you are carrying and any electronics/valuables. The forms are in Cyrillic only so I was glad I had printed out an English version of the form I had found online (http://www.visit-uzbekistan.com/uzbekistan/flights/declaration.pdf). Next came a waiting game. We had been waived to the front of the line ahead of 40-50 locals but it took maybe another 30 minutes for the customs officials to start doing any work at all. There were 5-6 officials there, who were basically useless.. they'd get up from their desks, go walk outside, come back in, rearrange stuff on their desk, then talk to the other officials, then repeat. By this time the locals had been waiting at least an hour and were starting to get restless. The officials finally let us through and took our customs forms and passports, x-rayed and searched our bags. Then came another waiting game while we sat there for another 30 minutes while the officials entered our passport and customs form information into their computers. Meanwhile there were several birds flying all around inside the building! Apparently they nest up in the ceiling. Finally we get our passports back and head out to catch a taxi. Altogether the Kyrgyz crossing took 15 minutes, Uzbek side took 1:30!

We hadn't yet changed money into Uzbek som. Uzbekistan has a thriving black market for currency exchange.. the official rate is 1800:$1 but changing elsewhere the rate is 2500-2800:$1. We were only transiting Uzbekistan today though and didn't want to change any money at all if necessary. We still had quite a bit of Kyrgyz som and USD remaining and hoped that would be enough to get us across to Tajikistan. As we exited the Uzbek customs building we were hounded by taxi drivers, asking if we wanted to to to Andijon or Tashkent. Usually it's hard negotiating with a bunch of them standing around so we pick one guy out and say we want to go to Andijon.. later when we were in the taxi we asked him if he would be willing to take us all the way to the Tajik border, but he said no. That was fine as he only wanted 600 KGS ($12.76) to go 45kms to Andijon.. we had paid 500 ($10.63) just coming in 8kms from Osh to the border.. we definitely overpaid there. We noticed that Uzbekistan was in the process of transitioning from Cyrillic, all new signs were in Latin script. Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Tajik still use Cyrillic while Uzbek and Turkmen now use the Latin alphabet. We noticed that many of the cars on the road were Daewoo (Korean company). Several thousand ethnic Koreans were relocated to Uzbekistan during the Stalin period, and to this day you can get great Korean food in Andijon. There is also a Daewoo factory here that manufactures cars and minivans. Mostly we saw the tiny Damas minivans everywhere.

We soon arrived in Andijan town. Andijan is notorious for being the site of a massacre of protesters in 2005. Uzbekistan had been an ally of the US during the Afghanistan invasion and global war on terror. Uzbekistan used the GWOT as an excuse to crack down on Islamic militants, even taking it so far as to ban the traditional call to prayer from mosques. The massacre led to a cooling of relations between the US and Uzbekistan, and it is only recently that relations have started to improve again. Uzbekistan is still one of the major supply lines to the effort in Afghanistan. Andijon looked more prosperous than Osh had, there were lots of brand new buildings all through the center of town.

At the bus station, our taxi driver helped us find a shared taxi to our next destination, Kokand, 130kms away. We asked how much it would be in KGS, by a happy coincidence he asked 1000 ($21.27) which is all we had left! So that meant we had rid ourselves of all our remaining Kyrgyz currency. It was good traveling with 3 other guys since that meant we could always show up and get a shared taxi and leave right away. I noticed that the clock on our taxi was an hour behind Osh.. our phones had not yet auto-updated their time and I couldn't remember if Uzbekistan was on a different time zone the Kyrgyzstan. Turns out it was so that meant we had gained an extra hour today! So it was now only 11AM instead of noon. During our long taxi rides from Bishkek we usually didn't bother to grab lunch.. most of us had brought jerky or granola bars from home to snack on during long rides. The taxi to Kokand took about an hour and a half, at first the road was in pretty bumpy condition but soon got better and headed dead straight across the fertile valley. We passed lots of locals riding bikes and working out in the fields. I noticed more of the crazy above-ground water plumbing here. I wondered why they did it this way (I've since read that supposedly it keeps the pipes from bursting if they freeze... all the twists and turns mean there is more room for ice to expand).

When we arrived in Kokand we again were immediately able to get in a taxi to the border. This time we offered to pay in USD and he wanted $40 for the 50kms to the border. Supposedly there is little to no border-crossing traffic there so he would have to come back empty. All of the taxis we had been in so far were in good condition, although a bit cramped. I'm a big guy so got to sit in the front most of the time. 😊 Many cars here run on CNG instead of gasoline and have a huge pressure tank in the trunk.. we had noticed this the first time during our trip to the Caucasus many years ago. The trip the remaining way to the border was uneventful and we arrived at the border around 2PM. The border was completely desolate.. no cars or people and at first I was worried that the border was closed. Borders in Central Asia can close frequently and without notice. A guard came out of one of the buildings though and checked our passports before waving us through to the customs office. I'm sure we were probably the most exciting thing that happened that day! Exiting Uzbekistan involved filling out a departure customs form and declaring money, valuables etc, then handing it in with the 2nd copy we filled in on entry. One of the odd rules for foreigners is they must leave Uzbekistan with less currency than they entered. There are few ATMs in Uzbekistan and getting money out is difficult, if you do have to get a cash advance on a credit card it is better to spend all of it as getting the appropriate forms to leave the country with more cash than you arrived is a huge hassle. Even though we were the only ones crossing, it still took well over an hour for the officials to process our paperwork. Here though I think they were just bored and we were the day's entertainment. In the whole time we were there, only one other local came through.

Finally we are through and walk over to the Tajik side. The official there says 'Welcome to Tajikistan!'. He was a double-badge hat. Most of the officials here still had Soviet style military hats. Some were taller than others. Some had two badges, one on the band then one up on the brim, similar to this (http://i.imgur.com/KJkS7.jpg). The higher the hat and more badges, the more important. Entering Tajikistan was a breeze, fill out a simple entry form and we were in. No customs checks, no bag searches. Although we did run into a potential snafu. There was one last booth we passed by as we were walking out to the road.. the guy here wanted a copy of our LOI letter. I had it on my email but I had not printed one out (hadn't had access to a printer since Almaty!!). One of the Scotts had gotten his visa in Astana and didn't even need a LOI. So I just plaid dumb for a few minutes and kept shrugging my shoulders. So eventually he just let us pass on through, but that could have been a potential problem, or an excuse for a bribe. Total border crossing time was also 1.5 hrs for both sides.

The Tajik side of the border was just as desolate as the Uzbek side had been.. we hadn't seen anyone crossing through in the other direction the whole time we were there. We did notice a road a ways down where cars were turning. A few minutes later a guy pulls up in a SUV; we ask if he is a taxi and how much to go the remaining 90kms to Khujand. In Central Asia, nearly anyone with a car suddenly becomes a taxi, you just have to sort out how much the fare will be. He was willing to take us for $75. It would have been cheaper to go to the nearby town of Konibodom and catch a bus/taxi from there, but split 4 ways the fare wasn't so bad, and we often pay for convenience like that.

The route to Khujand was mostly flat through the neck of the Fergana valley, between the Karakum reservoir and the mountainous border with Kyrgyzstan. Due to the crazy geography and borders, we were often very close to a neighboring -stan. We arrived finally into Khujand around 5PM, 9 hrs after leaving Osh (with the time change). Going through the mountainous part of Kyrgyz probably would have taken the same amount of time. We found a hotel on the edge of town, the Sugd Hotel. A bit expensive at 180 TJS/nt ($75.78/double), our most expensive hotel so far this trip, but there are not a lot of choices for hotels in Khujand (at least not in our guidebook). You could be excused mistaking the hotel for a Sheraton, since they use the same logo. 😊 We still hadn't obtained any Tajik som yet, so we found a nearby ATM that dispensed both US and som ($1 = 4.75 TJS)

We were starving after a long day on the road so we caught a taxi to the center of town (10TJS) where we went to the Cafe Ravshan. They had great chicken kebabs here, huge chunks of chicken meat and very tasty, and cheap. Afterwards we walked around the center of town. Khujand was originally founded by Alexander the Great nearly 2500 years ago as the easternmost point in his empire. The town is located on the Syr-Darya river, one of the two great rivers in Central Asia, the other being the Amu Darya. We ran into a group of local students who stopped to talk to us for awhile. Their English was excellent. We also noticed the difference in faces in Tajikistan, the people here look much more Indo-European than Asian. Tajiks are culturally closer to Iranians than the other Turkic people in Central Asia. Tajik is basically a dialect of Farsi, although it is written using Cyrillic alphabet instead of Arabic script. We found a grocery store nearby and an Internet cafe before heading back to the hotel. Our hotel was supposed to have wifi but unfortunately it wasn't working.

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