July 29, 2011

  • The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
    Thursday 28 July 2011

    This morning, there was still no news about my Uzbek visa! Yesterday's mountain walk was absolutely fantastic, but these continuous visa and travel hassles quickly bring me back to earth.

    I'm doing all this travelling independently, and this summer I feel like I constantly have to push HARD to move forward (compared to my train travels in Europe last summer - they were a breeze). Sometimes very small things can make a difference between me feeling this is great and I want to move on, and me feeling like I just want to give up and go to a really easy destination, like Thailand or something. Like when a bus driver smiles and cracks a joke and a fellow-passenger translates it and then he takes me directly to my hotel door (energising) or when a rail station attendant starts imitating me speaking in English and making fun of me when I try to understand how to get a queuing ticket out of the ticket machine (disheartening and draining).

    Today, is one of those days when I feel I'm ready to give up. After the Azerbaijani visa not working out, and not being able to travel through Turkmenistan either, and all trains across Kazakhstan being fully booked for three weeks solid, and me not being able to book any train tickets anywhere from Almaty - I don't know if I can cope with not being able to get an Uzbek visa either! What would be left of my Silk Road trip then? Maybe it would be better just to interrupt my travels and do a Silk Road journey more properly another year? The reality is, I can't stay here forever, and I've decided that tomorrow, Friday, is my cut-off point for waiting for the Uzbek visa as I'm running out of time. My mind starts wondering whether I should start looking at which flights go straight to Dubai from Almaty. Or to Hong Kong.

    In the early afternoon I contacted David at StanTours again (the agency dealing with my visa). David suggested that I go to the Uzbek Consulate anyway. He says that sometimes the Letter of Invitation is recorded on their internal system before it's issued to the person travelling. OK, I've got nothing to lose.

    I waited in a fenced off wooden structure (it looks like a dilapidated terrace) in front of the consulate for about 90 minutes. The guard in charge took my passport and read out my name aloud while other people around congregated really close to see my passport. Funny! Where's their sense of privacy?

    Then the miracle happened. I was allowed into the consulate. A member of staff took my application and my passport, barked, "Seventy-five dollars!" and came back with my passport and visa within a few minutes!

    So, suddenly my Silk Road trip is a very real and happening event, and I've got sparkling and shiny Uzbek visa in my passport!!!

    I'm galvanised into action. I go to the Eco-Tourism Information Centre (which I managed to locate a couple of days ago; it has moved) and here I meet Russim. Now, Russim is a fount of information. He KNOWS things. He has CONTACTS. He gets things DONE. Why haven't I met anybody like Russim in Kazakhstan up until now??!

    So, Russim has helped me book train tickets to Shymkent and then on to Tashkent (real train tickets! I've got them!) and he's arranging a home stay in the village Zhabaghly, in a nature reserve near Shymkent, plus hotel and a personalised guided tour of Sayram and Turkistan - the two main Silk Road stops in Kazakhstan.

    What a total transformation from this morning! I'll be in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Monday afternoon, and over this weekend I'll do a home-stay/whirlwind Silk Road tour combo.

    Hip hooray for people like Russim!