Friendship Bridge
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
1
142
228
Trip End
Jul 15, 2008
Termiz, Uzbekistan
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Termiz, Uzbekistan
Our taxi from Mazar-e Sharif to Hairatan on the Afghan side of the Uzbekistan/Afghan border costs 2,000 Afghanis. We leave Mazar-e Sharif at a leisurely 9AM because we set the time. The trip only takes about 40 minutes. We pass through an arid stretch of land; actually a desert, with sand dunes at points moving across the highway. Our taxi takes us to the immigration office on the Afghan side and we are processed through quickly. Then we walk across the Friendship Bridge, which is quite long, lugging our bags which include souvenirs from Afghanistan and a kilo of dried fruit and nuts which Arvid bought in Kabul.
Our guidebook had direr warns of the surly bureaucracy which would greet us on the Uzbek side. It even suggested that because this is a recently opened border crossing we might need written permission from the government to enter Uzbekistan here, which we could have gotten at the Uzbek embassy in Kabul. As with many of the cautionary advisories in the LP guidebook this warning did not apply to us. Possibly the information was out of date, because the Uzbek officials were not surely, in fact they seemed very happy to see us arrive. They were very nice people and we had plenty of time to get to know them . . . lots of them. This is part of the former Soviet Union and still ruled by a dictatorial president for life named Karimov, so they know bureaucracy. Our former employers would have been envious of Uzbek's pointless regulations and redundant petty paperwork. It was fascinating how many officials looked at our passports, wrote down our particulars in a book, asked us some questions, gave us a stub of paper then sent us to another kiosk where another official took the stub of paper, asked us the same questions, wrote down the particulars from our passports and sent us to the next official. The pleasant part was that these were mostly women in uniforms of form fitting blouses and neat tight skirts with their bare knees and calves showing. And they had nothing covering their hair. How refreshing after India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Eventually we arrived at a small building with a window through which we passed our passports to a man at an aged computer. This must have been the important part of the process because we were here for over an hour. Along with us there were two families coming from Afghanistan connected with NGOs there: two sets of parents and half dozen teenagers. They were taking a holiday in Tashkent. One family was from Texas, the other from Korea. Typical motherly types the women broke out food and passed it around. The kids got out the MP-3 player. We dug out our dried fruit and nuts and we all shared a picnic while we waited. But this was not the end of the bureaucratic process; we next had to go through customs with more forms and more waiting. The declaration forms were so specific we had to itemize virtually everything we were carrying including the denominations of the currencies we were carrying. With all that we were expecting them to rigorously inspect our luggage. But they never even open it. It was anticlimactic; the whole thing was just an exercise in paperwork. We could have had a kilo of hashish (we didn't) or whatever, that wasn't important to them it was just the forms that had to be in order.
When we finally made it through all this and were officially in Uzbekistan we were still 10 kilometers from Termiz. There are infrequent mini buses from the border and rather than wait to see if they would actually arrive we took a taxi into town. The cost of the taxi was an outrageous 24000 Sums. The exchange rate is about 1285 Sums to the dollar. There were only two taxis and neither one wanted to bargain. They know they've got you here. It was afternoon and we decided to spend the night in Termiz before going on to Samarkand. The cheapest hotel which accepts foreigners is the Meridian Hotel, a three or four star hotel, at 102,400 Sum per night. There's not much to see or do in Termiz, but it seems to be a very nice place to raise a family. It's very quiet with board clean streets. The markets have an abundance of produce in great variety. We are impressed at the apparent improved standard of living here as compared to Afghanistan. And most striking in contrast to Afghanistan and Pakistan are the fashions of the women. Most do have their heads covered, but their dresses are colorful and always varied in style and well . . . provocative compared to their Muslim sisters to the south.
October 12, 2007
Termiz, Uzbekistan
Even though it is a fairly good sized town with loads of banks there are no ATMs. Arvid went to four different banks around town and none could give us a cash advance on our credit cards. Even the Meridian Hotel, as grand as it is, can't accept credit cards. So we'll just have to wait until we get to the fabled Samarkand. We missed the morning bus (if there was one) and will have to wait until evening to take a bus to Samarkand. We could take a taxi or a minivan sooner but their cost is in multiples of the bus fare. Our bus doesn't leave until 6 PM. We loaded our bags onto the bus so we walk around the town and have a bite to eat before returning to the bus yard to sit in the sun and read up on the national hero, Emir Timur, who we know as Tamerlane. Our bus tickets to Samarkand cost 24000 Sum for the both of us; the same price as the taxi for the 10 Km from the border to Termiz.
