Crossing the border from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan was a long drawn out affair, so dear reader please bare with me it is going to take a while to tell this story.

The border post is about 13 km past the village of Buston and we started our day before 9:00 am with stops in Buston for fuel, daily bread, and to change our remaining Tajik Somoni into dollars. The money exchange was interesting as again (like in Murgab) we went to a bank but ended up doing a private deal with one of the bank employees.

At the Tajik exit station a soldier opened the gate for us, checked our passports and the sent us towards customs. And there we discovered that I had made a really newby mistake at the entrance border station - the entrance and exit dates on the paper work for the truck did not match our visas and the truck had over stayed its welcome by 9 days. The good news was that this oversight could be remedied by paying an additional fee of $40. This seemed legitimate as my name, the truck details and the document number of the orignal permission slip were all entered into a ledger. While the paper work was being sorted out every official at the Tajik post had a tour of the camper. Once the problem was fixed we moved on to passport control and then were in no mans land.

At the gate to the Uzbek post there was another soldier, dressed exactly like a US soldier (I guess there is some kind of aid program that achieves this particular outcome). At the first station we paid a $10 fee (no idea for what) and got a receipt, had the doctor who seems to double as a clerk record our passport numbers and then we moved down the line to the main entrance building. Again passport control gave us the necessary stamps, and then we filled out the famous Uzbek customs declarations which require a disclosure of all currency, and medicines. So far it all seemed pretty easy.

Next I was directed towards "control" where I was told that I needed to get "registration" for our vehicle but that the computer system was not working and so we would have to wait. So thats what we did, waited about 1/2 an hour by ourselves. Then a couple of officers turned up to inspect the vehicle. The inspection started by opening every external storage compartment and looking through the contents - the most thorough inspection we have every experienced. They then moved to the inside of the vehicle and went through a similar process. Then he asked about photographs and I spent the next 30 minutes showing them (on my computer) every photo I have ever added to our website, including the ones from South America. During this photo-inspection many of the officers from the post, including the big-boss, came and looked at the truck.

Eventually the computer system got working and we proceeded to get our vehicle registration, this time I checked the start and end dates thoroughly. But the real sting in this process was the US$670 it cost - again this seemed legitimate as the money was paid to a bank office that was part of the post, and I have receipts for the amount. With the registration document in hand we were done and exited the post into Uzbekistan. The entire process of exit and entry took over 4 hours, even though the crossing was not busy (we saw maybe 12 other people cross in that 4 hours).


The truck was very hot after standing in the sun for 4 hours so once on the road we started looking for a shady place to stop for a while and maybe even for the night as we are not scheduled to be in Samarkand until 4th Sept. Eventually we found a large stand of trees that was shading the edge of the road and we pulled in for a break. No sooner had we stepped out of the truck than a group of men having a meal on raised platforms under the trees came over to talk, offered us water and fruit and invited us to join them; which we did. After some time a few more men turned up one of whom spoke English (he had spent 2 years in England). Eventually we worked out that the larger group were all school friends who were simply having a couple of meals together, and one man and his family used the place as a shashlik stand and sold food to passing travelers, mostly truckers. One of the group of friends was a chef who had worked for some time in Moscow and after some time he cooked up a large batch of (what the Russians and Tajiks call) Plov but which the Uzbeks call Osh. One of the differences between the Plov we had in Ishkashim and the Osh being prepared here is that the Uzbeks use yellow carrots and lamb fat rather that standard red carrots and cooking oil.

The meal was good, but filling. Eventually everyone except the shashlik family went home, we moved the truck from the road edge onto the property for safety and went to bed.