We had a ridiculously long drive ahead of us. We’d be crossing into Tajikistan which should be easy because there’s a border less than 100km to the east, but because of some stupid reason it hasn’t been open for a few years. So instead we had to go way out of the way to the south and west before wrapping back around and crossing over. This detour would add 3 hours and about 180 km to the drive. That meant we’d be crossing the border at night which is always a pain in the ass, and it had a potential for being an excruciatingly long day if the roads sucked.
To make matters worse we had to say goodbye to our convoy mates 2 Birch 1 Banger. Their older Fiat wouldn’t be able to handle the altitude we would be heading to over the coming days, so they opted to skip Tajikistan and instead head to Kyrgyzstan. We took a big group photo in front of whatever monument our hotel was by and said our goodbyes. We hoped that we would all be able to reunite in Kazakhstan or beyond. A team of Kiwis joined our convoy as they were staying at the same hotel as ours.
The roads were surprisingly pleasant. We were also able to go a tiny bit faster after losing the Birchs, which meant going a whopping 64 mph. WOW! The landscape in southern Uzbekistan got a little interesting. Between the stretches of relatively low mountain passes the rock formations were coming out of the ground at ridiculous angles.
I’m not sure exactly how but at a certain point the Kiwis sped by and managed to knock their exhaust pipe clean off on a completely flat road. I imagine up until that point it had been beaten to hell on the other roads. They decided to let Uzbekistan keep it, so you’re welcome desert.
We’ve slowly began noticing that Google maps isn’t as reliable in this part of the world. For the southern route we were having to take to the border, it was recommending us to go even further south damn near the Afghanistan before popping back up. That would have made our day well over 12 hours of driving. Locals were also advising us to also take the longer route rather than cutting through somewhere in between. We decided to ignore the locals and take our chances, which was a pretty good move on our part because the roads were great and we shaved off a bunch of time. Somewhere in between we stopped for a delicious lunch of….more kebabs. Though we have added a new dish – “pillow” – which is pretty much rice and some kind of meat. Pretty tasty though.
Surprisingly we made it to the border with the sun still out. Even more surprising crossing through the Uzbek side was relatively painless, though I did again have to pull out all my pills (again) and pantomine what they were all for. However, they didn’t find the drone again! Something weird we’d heard about Uzbekistan is that they didn’t like people leaving the country with more money than you brought in. We had also heard that at the previous border they might make us show them all of our currency for some reason – which they didn’t. So during the customs procedure there was a little bit of a dilemma. Lie about how much money you have if you have more, or tell the truth. Since I had pulled out extra USD earlier that day and have a general rule of thumb of not fucking around at borders, I opted to tell the truth. When the customs agent compared my newly filled out exit form to my entry form, she saw that I had more USD than when I entered the country. So I was instructed to fill the forms in again but write the original amount in. I don’t understand the point, but whatever.
The Tajikistan side of the border was easy, but slow. On the way out of the border I had a special encounter with a border agent that instilled in me a “fuck Tajikistan” mentality. As the first in the convoy I pulled up to the border gate. About 30 feet from gate there was a white line with stop written on it, but as no one was around I pulled closer to the gate so someone would know we were there. There was a booth about 50 feet to the left, so I got out of the car with the other drivers and went to present our exit paperwork. That’s when the exit guard started yelling up a storm. At first I thought he was joking, or at least being mildly but not seriously agitated. Apparently pulling past that stupid white line was a huge deal in his book. He checked everyone else’s paperwork first before proceeding to yell at me a little more. “PROCEDURE! RULES! BLAHASFHJASDFKJH!!” he yelled. Then he stopped yelling and pulled out a little paper book and wrote down my info, and not so kindly informed me that I had to pay a fine. $10. That’s right, I got a fucking stop sign ticket within the Tajikistan border. Sorry for the crap picture, I was hastily taking a picture of it in front of him while muttering under my breath that he could go fuck himself.
By the time we left that fucking guy’s post it was dark, but thankfully Dushanbe was only about 70 km in. Not only were the roads nice but there were street lights! Sounds silly, but most of the time you’re driving around in the dark which is pretty nerve racking. We do our best to avoid night driving because you can’t see potholes when you’re being blinded from the other side of the street. That and the livestock. Another team hit a horse and totaled their car. Whoops.
For the second time today Google maps failed. The highway that goes through town and continues on abruptly ended in the middle of town. Even with maps and our trusty internet connection with TEP it took us an hour navigating the city trying to find out hotel. Good thing is we hadn’t booked it yet officially, which is actually a really good thing because we just couldn’t find it. That city is terribly confusing to drive around. Eventually we just gave up and stopped at the first one we saw, which was right next to a BBQ restaurant – whatever that meant. After some brief arguing about the price of rooms – they wanted to charge $20 more for a room with 2 singles rather than 1 king claiming that the king was meant for only 1 person – we went next door for some bbq. I have no idea if they actually had any bbq, they handed us a menu and then told us nothing we wanted was on it because they had a new menu. Then they gave us the new menu, which was still in Tajiki. We all ended up getting some sort of steak dish that wasn’t half bad. We had a few errands to run in the morning before we left town so we called it an early night.
