Where in the World is Bob Jack?
The "Unfinished Business" Central Asian Tour
(August - September 2011)
Introduction
Three years ago, my friend Trevor and I had successfully managed to drive from the UK to Mongolia despite deportation, hitting a donkey and reaching Ulan Bataar with less than 24 hours before our flights home. Despite the ‘hiccups’, we had enjoyed it immensely.
Earlier this year, Trevor had asked if I fancied doing another ‘road trip’ “I think the wife will let me get away with it since it’s been a while.” His original idea was the Timbuktu Rally from the UK, heading down the west coast of Africa. The official event was December which was problematic this year and when I researched the trip properly, I realised that we would not get through the Western Sahara without a military escort which the organisers supposedly sorted out. It seemed impossible to do as an independent traveller and finding a blog on last year’s attempt, a team had turned around at the Moroccan border hearing that the area was just too ‘dangerous’. It didn’t help when Libya went up in smoke which was right next door.
The second idea was to drive from the UK to the Uganda. This was a proposed new event organised by The Adventurists There wasn’t much information on their website and so I researched doing the trip as a solo adventure with a view to leaving the car there and flying back from Kenya. We only had two potential routes. Libya had already exploded and when I was researching, Syria started to implode, albeit slowly. When I looked into our route south of Egypt, I discovered that there was only one ferry crossing into the Sudan every Monday across a lake. If you missed that, you were stuck for a week. On a limited time frame of 3 weeks, we didn’t have the flexibility. Syria got worse, and after I got back from Barbados, I made an executive gamble that the Syrian issue would not be resolved by August and that we should abandon this trip. We had been ready to send off for our first visas as well. As it turned out, I was correct. After we had jettisoned the trip, the famine started in Ethiopia and Kenya which were both on our route and the southern half of Sudan became the latest new country. So we were lucky to make that call and it woukd make sense to do this trip in a few years via Libya and Sudan to bag some new countries.
With about 10 weeks to go, we reverted to our final idea – the ‘Unfinished Business’ tour back to Central Asia to visit the countries we had missed in 2008. Again, there was an organised event to Tajikistan via Charity Rallies (who had organised the Mongolian Rally) but you didn’t seem to get much for your entry fee and we decided to go it alone.
I had to rapidly come up with a route either via Turkey / Iran or Ukraine /Russia / Kazakhstan. When I looked into getting an Iranian visa, they said any tourist had to appear in person at their London embassy to get fingerprinted before a visa would be issued. I didn’t want to lose a day’s annual leave doing that, especially since I had visited Iran previously in 1999.
So then it was a case of working on a manageable route that took in the Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. We had a starting day of Saturday Aug 13th and 3 weeks to do the trip.
The issues were:
1. Booking a ferry to France. This was no problem because we could grab a 10pm ferry on Friday Aug 12th and get as far as Wroclaw in Poland by Saturday afternoon – a huge 733 mile stage to get us under way.
2. Where would we fly home from? I researched flights from Dushanbe (Tajikistan) and Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and found them very expensive. The cheapest option was from Almaty in Kazakhstan just over the border from Kyrgyzstan. The flight using Ukraine Airways via Kiev cost a reasonable £200.
3. If the car survived, where would we leave it? Having previously experienced Kazakhstan’s messy and lengthy bureaucracy, it would seem to make sense to leave the car in Bishkek and catch a minibus across the border to Almaty
4. If the car broke down en route, what were our options? We decided to take our backpacks and minimal stuff. If we lost the car, we’d backpack the rest of the trip using public transport.
5. I had to work out a viable and manageable route which took in some major places but with a time limit, it would be more of a road trip than a tourist tour.
6. We would need a letter of invitation to get a Russian visa. I had used Stantours to get one previously and used them again.
7. To get into Turkmenistan, we would need an ‘organised’ tour. Again, Stantours were able to sort this out for us, as well as organise a letter of invitation to get a Turkmenistan visa. Based on my estimates, we would have to be on the Turkmenistan border on August 20th ready for a 4 night/5 day trip through the country across to the Uzbekistan border.
8. Since we had been deported from Uzbekistan in 2008, there was a ‘deportation’ stamp in our passports. To get a new Uzbekistan visa, we would need new passports. I had to get one within 12 weeks of departure before applying for 6 visas. It was my 5th passport in 14 years.
9. Since we had an August 20th deadline for Turkmenistan, we were able to break down seven days of travelling and reserve hotel rooms en route. On the one had we knew we had a room at the end of every day. On the other hand, we would be forced to reach that hotel no matter what time we arrived.
10. We had to get the 6 visas in a logical order (depending on Letters of invitation being issued) and for Tajikistan (which I did last) we also had to get a permit for the Pamir Highway which cost £50 each. I would estimate that in visas/letters of invitation/postage, we spent £500 each in just getting the correct paperwork. Russia’s visa cost £90 on its own.
11. My Ford Mondeo was in good condition (not good enough to pass another MOT without serious cost), but it needed some new tyres. We were able to get 4 second hand tyres for £65. Trevor also wired up the car for charging electronic equipment. Trevor debated on bolting a steel plate over the oil sump/gear box but thought it may get pulled off with low clearance.
Having already done one road trip, we knew what we needed to take – emergency food stuffs, drinks, maps, car stuff (fire extinguishers, red triangle/headlight deflectors etc)
I did a comprehensive hunt on the internet for people who had driven around Central Asia, but found nothing. There were a few outdated cyclist adventures.
We would be familiar with some countries and yet be able to experience three new countries.
What could possibly go wrong?
