The loooooong way to Uzbekistan

I always wanted to go to Turkmenistan!Those that I had been fortunate to meet on the road used to talk about how controlled the country is. I had watched some documentaries online and the more I watched, the more I wanted to go and the more I wanted to explore. After visiting North Korea, I was determined to visit another similar country.

I knew how difficult it would be, but I was willing to try everything possible to get the visa. There was an easy way into Turkmenistan, paying for a really expensive tour, really expensive hotel, and really expensive tour guide, but I was unwilling to do that, remembering my Bhutan and North Korea trips and the expense of them all, especially Bhutan that almost cost me an arm and a leg. There was option B, fly to the Turkmenistan embassy in Tehran, apply for a transit visa, wait two weeks, pick the visa up in Mashhad (the northern part of Iran), then cross up through Turkmenistan, stopping in Mary and Ashgabat and then arriving in Uzbekistan through the land border crossing. Sadly, that didn’t go according to plan!

I arrived in Tehran, the capital of Iran, and began sorting out my paperwork almost instantly. I had an Uzbek invitation letter that I managed to buy online, weeks beforehand, and needed to present that form along with an application form, photo, and passport copy at the Uzbek embassy. Everything was going smoothly so far, I got my Uzbekistan visa there, and then, even I was surprised how quick it took, once they

took all of the required documents, and it was only about $50, though I did pay about $30 as well for the invitation letter. Then I ran to the Turkmenistan embassy which was reasonably close, and filled out all of the necessary forms and documents, which included a letter saying why I wanted to visit Turkmenistan. It went something like this…..

To whom it may concern,

My name is Conall Charleton and I’m an Irish citizen (passport number.) I’m currently on a biking trip and plan on cycling from Tehran to Tashkent, via Turkmenistan. I’m applying for a transit visa and I plan on visiting Mary (hotel name) and Ashgabat(hotel name). I already have my Uzbekistan visa (printout attached) and I am hoping to pick up my visa at the Turkmenistan embassy in Mashhad. This will be my first time visiting Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. If you require additional information you can call me on….or email me on…..

Best wishes,

Conall Charleton (passport number)

The embassy worker accepted my invitation, checked all of the documents, and told me to arrive in Mashhad in exactly 10 business days and there I could be able to pay the visa fee. I thanked him for his time and stayed in Tehran for a few days before moving upwards towards Mashhad. I was strongly convinced that

the visa would get approved because I didn’t hear from them at all and met some German tourists along the way who managed to get their visas approved. After exactly 10 days I arrived at the embassy in Mashhad and the woman took my passport for about 20 minutes, then opened up the window slammed my passport down, and shouted: “visa declined.” I asked her for a reason, but she was unwilling to reply. She eventually called another worker over who told me that I’d now need to fly to Uzbekistan instead, now unable to do the land crossing. So I had wasted an entire journey and a valuable two weeks. I enquired around Mashhad to see if anyone could help me out, but none of the tourist agencies specialized in Turkmenistan tours or had any links whatsoever, the country is just another version of North Korea. I was only a few hours from Turkmenistan and I was considering going to the border and trying to see if there were any options, but I decided not to in the end. I already had my hotel booked in both Mary and Ashgabat and now I was being forced to go back to Tehran and book a different hotel and more importantly, try to get a reasonably priced flight to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. It was all a mess and I was just too tired at that stage to try anything else or try to be too adventurous.

So, I took the overnight train back to Tehran and showed up in the early hours of the morning because there were no flights between Mashhad and Tashkent. About a week later, I flew to Uzbekistan.

It proved to be a long way to Uzbekistan, really wish that I had just booked the expensive tour for Turkmenistan, the one with the fancy hotel and the one with the specialized tour guide and driver, that way I would have been better off financially, but I was still taking some positives from the trip, one of those getting the opportunity to visit Mashhad and walk around the Imam Reza Holy Shrine.