Bashi Bash

Some of you wondered if I was spending time in an Uzbek jail. Others thought the Turkmen had locked me up. My parents, as always, kept the saying in mind: no news is good news. For more than a week I wasn’t able to get in touch.

Now, I could write more than two pages about the painstaking process of the Turkmen transit visa. About how they absorbed all my time, left me in the dark for more than two weeks, let me wait for more than 8 hours in the cold at their gate and finally let everything depend on a fax from Ashgabat that came in at 7 o’clock on Thursday evening, roughly 48 hours before my Uzbek visa would expire.
By that time I had made a plan B: one-way ticket to Istanbul reserved and woman who could pull some strings at the customs at the airport on stand-by. She was willing to do this for the modest sum of 150 dollars; the official fine for an unregistered tourist is 700.
But Instead I will leave it at this half page and conclude by saying: the Turkmen government sucks. Period. Maybe it did a bit more with that madcap Turkmenbashi still alive, but it sucks.

And the fax: unemployed Koen gets five days to cross the country. I should have lied on the form. I should have written 'profession: administrator’ or something vague like it ("with computers!"). Or even better: doctor, like my friend did: 4 days. Apparently they are worried that people might want to stay in their desert to snatch away Turkmen jobs.
Or they googled my name and didn’t like my modest criticism. Anyhow, it was for close.

And you know what, in the end I was checked for registration at the Uzbek border, against all odds. Sheer bluff prevented me from paying the hefty fine. I handed the customs official the entire content of my money belt (apart from the money), he looked at the pile of receipts, tickets, e-mail addresses, vaccination booklets, recipes and whatnot, picked up the paper at the top of the pile, tried to make out what it was (the receipt I received from the Uzbek embassy in Almaty when they issued my visa), saw the amount and a stamp, and didn’t bother to go through the rest of it. “Go to the declaration window.”

Oh, and did I mention there are no signposts on the Turkmen roads? None! They think everybody knows the way by heart. And at the border you actually have to disinfect your vehicle. Not that they do anything to it, no, it’s just a line on the receipt they hand out. A car cost 70 dollars for an imaginary disinfection, a scooter a couple of tenners, and a bicycle.. wouldn’t know, ‘cause here I did lie. “Nothing to declare sir.” And still you have to pay 13 dollars entry tax. On top of the 55 dollars for the 5-day transit. I don’t want to come across as that stingy Dutchman, but come on, what for? I reckon they know that nobody comes back after seeing the place once so that they can be this shameless.

But the people are nice, gave me free water. And the desert was great. 240 kilometres of vast land with bushes, which provide good enough wood for bonfires at night.

Next entry I will give you an impression of the way.

Greetings from Mashhad, Iran.