Today
was goodbye Uzbekistan hello Kyrgizstan. Uzbekistan has been
interesting, very nice (as in everything is neat and in order), we've
seen lots of beautiful buildings with blue tiles, the food has been
good but limited to too few dishes so we're ready for new food
(Shasliq – meat on a skewer with raw onion rings. Plov/pilaw –
rice with carrots and meet. Somsa/samsa – Samosas with meat inside.
Uzbeki soup or noodle soup – same same but with noodles.) the
people have been nice and the women dressed in beautiful colored
dresses. We also came across western tourist again mainly a bit
older than us. Uzbekistan has been a good country travel in but we're
also ready for something else than buildings, history and cities.
High expectations for Kyrgizstan – the mountain country famous for
its beautiful nature.
Left
hotel at 8 am. About 3 hours driving to border crossing. The usual
briefing about “do not do anything silly at the border”. Also a
sweepstake about how many hours it would take to get us and the truck
through customs.
Arrived
at the border around 11 am. First checkpoint was a few kilometres
from the actual border. Fully armed soldier came on the truck and had
to inspect all passports and visas. Then a drive to the border.
Everybody off the truck and fill in paperwork including a declaration
on how much currency we each carried. Then they wanted to have a look
at our cameras, ipads and phones and the pictures we had taken – as
in ALL pictures, some showed pictures from years back – and they
were interested in our books. Like in Turkmenistan they are very
aware of religious books which you can't bring into the country.
They're definitely also worrying about religious attacks.
Passport
stamping and on foot through no-mans land. About a kilometre. The
Kyrgiz border was much more simple. Wait in line, hand over passport,
stamping, done. About 6 minutes. How all borders should be. Not any
traffic passing through except us. Partly because Kyrgyzstan
celebrated constitution day today so it was a public holiday, partly
because the border is not really that open and the two countries do
not have the best relationship.
But we
made it in record 2-hours-time. Only two. Almost unbelievable. Truck
always takes a little extra time, but we used the waiting time to
exchange some money (still Som currency but now 59 to a US dollar
instead of 3900), buy an ice cream and say hello to a new girl
joining our trip. Marine from France. And our new guide Bigaim.
.
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