UZBEKISTAN
It's about as easy as I could imagine to get into Uzbekistan. Again I've heard of different problems getting in and getting around the country but my experience was fine. After getting a soldier to open the gate to let me in he takes my passport. I follow him past a crowd of foot passengers and stand waiting for him to ask me some questions. When he comes back to the door of the little office he just passes me my stamped passport and tells me to go to customs.
In customs I'm stuck for about an hour. This time passes quite quickly because there's a tv beside me, so after I fill a form in, then decide on an exit border crossing the guard sits down for ages filling in the forms and ledgers for me. I watch some music tv, some comedy and then a guard changes it over to some reality tv. Eventually he passes me my paperwork and I'm free to go.
The road conditions are variable but on the whole pretty decent, I'm getting used to rough and bumpy roads so none of it really fazes me now. What I'm not used to is the near singular car make. If it were Lada then I might be able to understand, but Daewoo? Turns out than in my abortive effort to get myself into Bokhara I find a Daewoo factory so that explains it.
Police wise they drive, yup Daewoo cars, when they have them. Although there were a few oddities like an old Mercedes and an old Vectra. I also managed to avoid any police attention again throughout the whole country other than a two and a half hour stint on the way toward Tashkent. In that period I was pulled for driving too close to the bus in front, that was 20usd but the guy saw I only had 10 in my wallet and was happy enough. The second was after taking a bit of a wrong turn and doubling back, I saw that Police were there and was behaving myself but got stopped anyway. I kept up the don't understand patter and eventually the guy just asked me if I liked the girl who was depicted on the calendar under his paperwork before letting me go. Stop three was as a result of again taking a wrong turn onto a road that had lots of roadworks and the Police said was closed, I've a rant about this if you are really interested when Im back. Anyway, after driving away with my driving licence and passport and an hours faffing I was stung for 100usd. Ten minutes after getting away from then was stop four. I paid the 37000som because the grumpy officer had a point. I was speeding although faster than he told me which just proved they weren't using the radar gun. Finally, stop five was a made up speed limit but I was just desperate to get on into Tashkent that I threw the demanded 10usd at the guy and wandered off.
After this in the way back out of the country one guy just asked for 10usd and I mistook his importance so gave him it. It was maybe twenty minutes and I was through after some cursory checks.
KYRGYZSTAN
I'm kicking myself for this but I didn't even try. I was told to nominate an exit point from Uzbekistan on the way in and chose the Tashkent (Yalama) crossing because all I'd heard on news channels and from industry security updates (cheers Bob) was that all hell was breaking loose in the south. I knew airport to airport into Bishkek was fine but the land borders I couldn't trust. So with a heavy heart I skirted Kyrgyzstan. Incidentally I spoke to an Aussie cyclist in Almaty who told me he had tried on two occasions to get in and they weren't having it, I guess they were just letting locals over because there were still a few Kyrgyz cars going about. The closest I got was turning right toward Almaty where I saw a road sign saying it was 24km to Bishkek.
KAZAKHSTAN
After a good long wait behind a few Turkish truck drivers I managed to get my passport stamped on the way in. When passed onto customs the guy simply asked in English if he could have ten dollars, I asked what for and he said that he would fill my forms in for me. He was straight forward enough and after finishing the lady in front of me he reached forward under my wallet, pulled out the ten bucks I had ready, smiled and simply said 'present'. I like to see honesty in my corruption... All in all I was through on my way to Shymkent in about an hour.
The roads in Kazakhstan have been the predictable mix of pretty decent smooth surfaces to almost immediate transitions into broken tracks. Following a wrong turning I made it onto a dirt track which looked like a reasonable road on the map but it was all fine.
As for the police, driving around in anything from Daewoos, to a fairly popular choice being a Mitsubishi Galant I was largely left in peace. At one point a young guy pulled me over and I was about to go when the older guy sat in his Lada shouted me over. He was fishing for cash I think but only got as far as asking for a souvenir. Repeatedly. I had a couple of whisky miniatures in the pannier still and gave him one just so I could get going again.
More irritatingly / scarily, on the way out from Shymkent I got stopped. The guy seemed insistent on seeing my insurance, of course I again had none. It was never offered at the border so I never worried. It took half an hour of faffing and attempting to get me to give him money but not telling me how much. At one point he sat in the back of the car and shadily wrote down $100 to which I told him that for that much money I wanted lots of paperwork. This then turned almost into bartering and him trying to get me to tell him how much I wanted to pay. In paranoia about possibly needing insurance I tried offering 5000tenge and this seemed ok for him. Interestingly he didn't want to touch the money and told me to drop it into the car door pocket. No sooner than this was done he told me to pull it back out again, turns out an older policeman was now standing behind me. This then turned into handshakes, smiles and being told to go, bizarre. I can only guess that this guy was on the take and I'm no clearer as to whether I needed insurance or not but it left me paranoid for the rest of my time driving. Although stopped again by police and checkpoints I was never once asked about insurance.
Kazakhstan also provided me with my worst roads to date. I can handle the dirt track that the road degenerated into on the way north when I got a little lost but I'm really not keen on roads like I experienced on the last 160km into Semey where bumpy roads degenerated into carriageway wide holes up to two feet deep in the space of thirty feet. It really kept you on your toes and meant that you switched carriageway along with the rest of the traffic from time to time. I hit some heavy bumps on that road and that was with my trying to keep on my toes.
One thing that did surprise me was the preference for German cars, in particular I saw lots of old boxy Audi 100s. I can't remember the last time I saw one back home but in the south especially it seemed like every third car was an Audi 100. Everywhere else there was a reasonable mix but with lots of Audi and VW cars. Meanwhile, in Almaty there were quite a few right hand drive Japanese cars which hit me as a little odd and had me doing a few double takes to start with.
As for the way out, not a lot to say. I made it over the border north of Semey where the Kazakh side took about twenty minutes, mainly checking my passport repeatedly while I just stood there and also making me fill out a new customs declaration which was a carbon copy of the customs form I filled out on the way in. Nice and easy.
RUSSIA (pt 1)
Another country I was a little nervous about was Russia, in the end the immigration side of things couldn't have been easier. I was given an immigration entry form not unlike those given to people entering countries on aircraft and it was in English. The customs side of things was a little trickier but I was there second in line after Domenic who I met by the roadside ten kilometres from the border. He had managed to get through before me and was busy with the customs guy who couldn't speak any English and was merrily taking the mickey as the forms were filled out. It all seemed good natured enough and I only had a little banter as I crossed over. Back on the bike I had a brief check through my panniers before a big smile and "welcome to the Russian Federation!". Cool.
The way in was through Belarus, this took the for of generally very good and very straight roads through countryside that could well have been Holland. Following on from Kazakhstan there weren't that many Ladas, or other older Russian marques but plenty of Japanese cars. A lot of the Japanese cars were right hand drive which was a little strange and a taxi driver I was with explained that many of these cars were in fact from Singapore so if you are there and wonder what happens to the older cars, well they are all in Russia it seems.
Driving down toward Mongolia I managed to stay on really good roads. It seems like the inter city roads are kept in good condition but the side roads and some of the roads in cities are left to pretty much fall apart. One of the guys I spoke to at one point made a joke about if you can ride on Russian roads you can ride anywhere, I didn't have the heart to tell him that Kazakhstan has far worse to offer in places.
On the way out I arrived at Tashanta border crossing a bit earlier than I had intended, largely because the border station is about ten Km before the actual border. On realizing where I was I figured that I could try getting over and sleeping in Mongolia but with no luck as the crossing was closed (it was about 7:30pm).
So I camped locally before returning the next morning as requested by a border guard at 9:00am. About half an hour later I was invited into the compound where the customs paperwork and passport stamps were done and I was through the other side painlessly after a quick panniers check within half an hour. After this there was another 10km of good Russian roads before a final passport check, beyond this gate was Mongolia and the road abruptly stops and turns to a dirt track.
Location:Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
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