We were really excited to finally get to enter Tajikistan when we reached the Uzbek-Tajik border. But things did not go as planned. At the second passport check I was notified that I had accidentally overstayed my Uzbekistan visa by one day. I had counted the days wrong.
Uzbekistan is the 8th most corrupted country in the world, so my mistake scared the shit out of me. A week earlier I had heard a couple ending up paying $3000 for having sleeping pills when trying to exit the country. After hours of waiting and people talking languages I don’t understand, I still had no idea what would happen. Eventually the border police took away my passport and asked us (Ann still had some validity on her visa) to leave the border area. We pitched our tent a few hundred meters from the border feeling confused and scared.
At the Uzbekistan – Tajikistan border.
Next morning one of the border polices at the Tajikistan border rode us to the local police station. We spent he whole day there, occasionally trying to talk to someone, but mostly we waited in the lobby of the police station, for something. In the early evening a translator arrived who told me to pay $140 for an exit visa and that I could then exit in 5 days time. We were told to stay in a specific hotel and not to go out for the first 20 hours of our stay there.
This was the last time I saw my passport nearly for a week.
The village we were told to stay, Uzun, turned out to be a lovely place with really nice people and good food, which made Ann though more sick she has been in her life. When the promised date of exit arrived the police chief told me to get to the border at 6 and take ‘cash money’ with me. I hid my dollars the best I could and ask the Finnish Embassy a number to call in case of problems in the evening. Six a’clock comes, nothing happens. Seven a’clock, sun sets and nothing happens. Eight a’clock a Lada comes to the border from the darkness and out steps a man with my passport, two hours late from the told time. A miracle. I’m on my toes the next three hours when we go step by step through the border control and customs, the police officer still holding my passport. When will he tell me the real price of getting out of Uzbekistan?
I cannot believe my luck when I walk to the no mans land with Ann, without asked to pay any bribe.
#Uzbekistan #welcometothestans #September2015
With Ann, mairawa.com
