Patience is a virtue, and perhaps the most valuable one to possess when traveling in Central Asia & Area. After months of poring over online travel forums, maps, and guide books, I had more or less decided on my ideal tailor-made trip: backpacking overland from Tajikistan (home-base from July 2008 to March 2009) to Egypt (one of my earliest dream destinations, thanks to a healthy childhood fascination with ancient Egyptian history). I would be flexible, of course, with the exact itinerary, taking into consideration the multitude of delays that could occur as well as potential blips in security, but the more I thought about it (and that was a lot), the more determined I became to see it through.
Though it took some imagination and subsequent whittling down, packing was probably the easiest part of preparing for this trip (see previous post "The List"). Coming up with the itinerary - or at least must-see architectural, historical, environmental, musical, and gastronomical hotspots - was less easy, but only because there is so much to see and do in this part of the world; every new country I looked up had another couple millennia (or more) of history to explore!
By far the most challenging part was the visa process. Trips to Tajikistan’s surrounding countries started off easily enough but got increasingly more difficult. Back in August, my Afghanistan visa was surprisingly easy, requiring only a letter from my place of employment and an afternoon for processing. A one-month tourist visa purchased at the Manas International Airport (without a letter of invitation, I might add), made Kyrgyzstan the easiest 'Stan to get into for New Year's Eve. Russia was less hospitable, demanding a letter of invitation from a tourist company (the original copy, to boot, which involved rush-UPS'ing it to Dushanbe so we could book our flights and get the subsequent Kazakh transit visa in time) and a painful $300 fee. Why? Well, because that's how much it costs for Russians to get a Canadian tourist visa... it seems that the ripple effects of the Cold War have yet to fully subside! Further complicating the scheduling of the Russia-Kazakhstan trip was the fact that the Russian embassy in Dushanbe was only open for one afternoon a week for tourist visa processing... *sigh*.
Perhaps the most challenging part of planning trips here is the blatant inability to plan because everything depends on half a dozen previous things working out properly - which rarely seems to happen! Allow me to exemplify with my first two months of 2009...
The most obvious visa to get my hands on for my overland trip was Uzbekistan, which borders Tajikistan to the west and is home to a wealth of historical sites that have long captured the imagination of travelers and conquerors alike (though I tend to align myself more with the former). Having heard horror stories about Uzbekistan's multiple-week processing times and outright denials, I was a bit concerned that my trip would be cut short before it even began. Nevertheless, my fears were unfounded: I received the required letter of invitation from a tour company in 2 weeks, spent one relatively easy morning at the Uzbek embassy in Dushanbe, and emerged with a lighter pocket but a very useful one-month double-entry visa. I really only needed a two-week single-entry, but the extra 'buffer zone' could potentially save my ass if I ran into problems with surrounding countries.
Next up was Iran. (Yes, Iran. Since receiving a copy of the wonderful "Persepolis" from Jonas, I've had a rapidly increasing fascination with this country's history and culture.) I actually started this process before the Uzbek visa because it is rather notoriously difficult to get. I first applied through a tour company in January but was heartbroken a few weeks later to learn that I had been denied. The reason? I'm a young, unmarried Canadian female traveling alone - something that is apparently either too intimidating or impossible a notion for Iranian officials to entertain. The second route was slightly less conventional (applying for a work visa to be a 'consultant' with a friend of a friend's Iranian company), but equally unsuccessful. It seems that I may have to make my future husband go there for our honeymoon to get around the red tape! I pushed back my departure from Dushanbe by a week to try to sort things out...
The second country on my itinerary after Uzbekistan was Turkmenistan, which is quite a fickle little bee for tourists. You have two options: the first is to enter on a transit visa, for which you need the visas of the country you're entering from and the country you're leaving to before applying. The second option is to enter on a tourist visa, for which you have to hire a guide to accompany you for the ENTIRE trip (not my cup of tea); the unsurprising lack of tour companies to choose from in Turkmenistan means that they have a monopoly over the market and can charge an arm and a leg for their services ($1600 for a week was one quote). Long story short, my tourist visa application was rejected, which I was not completely devastated about since it would save me a good chunk of money, but which put me in a bit of a pickle, having had both my Iranian and Turkmen visas denied. I had no choice but to re-route my itinerary and get a rush tourist visa for Azerbaijan, the only other logical country to go to according to the 'overland' philosophy (i.e. no airplanes). This was done surprisingly quickly and painlessly and, with both my Uzbek and Azeri visas in hand, I was then able to apply for a Turkmen transit visa. Fortunately, the Turkmen embassy in Dushanbe was able to process it, but unfortunately, it would take another week. I found myself feeling embarrassed about telling my friends and colleagues yet another delay in departure, but there was little I could do but wait it out in Dushanbe.
My increasing restlessness was soothed by a fabulous concert by my favourite Central Asian musician, Daler Nazarov (which I never would have been able to attend without Farid's behind-the-scenes legwork - thanks, bro!). That Saturday, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Turkmen consular placed a 5-day transit visa in my passport; I now had my Golden Tickets for the first three countries on my itinerary and could get visas as the borders of all the rest. I proclaimed my absolute final departure date as two short days later - March 16th - and realized that all of that legwork and upheaval was only to get the visas. Hopefully the traveling itself would be significantly less of headache! With a visa prep process like this, it’s no small wonder why so few tourists even make it to Central Asia…
