Andijon (pop 350,000) is the Fergana Valley's largest city but will forever be linked with an incident om May 13th 2005. The rise of extreme Islamic Fundamentalists had led to a number of bombs exploding in Tashkent and President Karimov was not a happy man. When he backed 'Monkey Boy' Bush after the 9/11 event, he got US support and used it as an excuse to kick some fundamentalist ass. In Andijon "two dozen powerful local businessmen were jailed for being members of Akramiya, a localextremist Islamic movement. A group of their allies stormed the prison where they were being held, touching off a massive but largely peaceful demonstration in Andijon's main square. The authorities over reacted and somewhere between 200 and 1000 civilians were killed by government troops in the ensuring melee" (LP). Un-surprisingly, the US and the West were unimpressed by this undemocratic force and the US withdrew its aid to the country while the EU applied sanctions. All this was bad news for us.

Unable to sleep, I was up early. The power was on. The air conditioning was on. The hot water was on for a welcome shower. I could use my travel kettle, make coffee and assess the situation we were in. In daylight, I was amazed at our suite. It was full of lavish furnishings including a sideboard and dishes and a large fridge. I went to see the guy on Reception. “How do we find OVID” I asked. He told me to follow the local minibuses with ‘222’ on the windscreens. They went right past the OVID building and he gave me rough directions.

I dragged Trev up from his slumbers and said I’d go and visit OVID. Trev said he’d come with me. We left our stuff in the suite and got in the Disco, saw a 222 minibus passing by and followed one through the busy morning traffic which was a different scene to the deserted streets that we had arrived in last night. For the next 30 minutes, we followed whatever 222 minibus we could see – they would stop to pick up passengers and another would pass by to pick up or drop off locals at the next stop. It was a bit like a ‘follow that taxi’ scenario. We followed one minibus for a while and he was obviously wondering who the hell we were, especially since we’d pull up behind while he unloaded passengers or picked up someone.

We followed various minibuses until we realised that they were turning around and that we had missed the OVID office. I asked a local and we retraced our route until we found a non-descript concrete building. Parking up outside on the road, we entered the main reception which was a lot less crowded than the Tashkent office. I tried to explain our problem and we were led up a staircase to an office where I assume the Supervisor was based.

He spoke little English. I attempted to explain that we had overstayed our visa and that the border guards had told us to come here to get an ‘Exit Visa’. He looked very serious. We had broken major laws. We were now illegal in his country and we had a serious problem. His initial response was that we had to leave the country immediately via the airport and abandon our vehicle. I showed him my ‘Russian Statement’ about what we were trying to do. We also sat down with a map and tried to explain the hold up in Baku, the ferry ride to Kazahzstan and altered route and genuine mistake with the visa dates.

All we wanted to do was to get an Exit Visa and head for Kyrgyzstan where we still had a valid visa. He tried to explain that he could not issue an Exit Visa. Only the authorities in Tashkent could do this and it could take days. Trev and me looked at each other and using body language said ‘Well, that’s the trip over. We’re fucked.” We then did some classic method acting of looking like a close friend had died, utter despair etc.

The Oscar performance earned us a reprieve. We were told to wait ‘ten minutes’. We would end up waiting all day. Throughout the day, there was an endless parade of people coming into the office with enquiries. Other policemen, the army, individuals. Policemen and army personnel would walk up and shake our hands when they entered. They were very polite. The room was hot and humid with no air conditioning. We sat there and sweated a lot. We had nothing to do except answer questions and pass over details and documentation. With no clarification of what was happening, I started to work out a route whereby we would drive back to the UK via Russia and actually come back with the Disco. After all, we hardly wanted to leave it here.

Sometime in the morning someone appeared who spoke some English. The staff downstairs were obviously keeping an eye out for an English speaker. The lady was Kazahzstani English teacher who had married an Aussie guy, maybe twice her age (“part of my mid life crisis” he told us). So we repeated our story – about our quest to reach Mongolia for charity, the delays, the mistake with the visa and a white lie that we had been told in the OVID office in Tashkent to drive to the border (it was true, but it wasn’t the police who had recommended it). She translated to the supervisor and suddenly it all made sense to him. We were told to wait.

In-between dealing with a continual series of people, the supervisor attempted to type up our paperwork. There were templates on his PC that he had to edit and he took hours. He had a young assistant who seemed to do nothing except play with his mobile phone, smoke, and do the occasional errand – like taking me downstairs to find some cold drinks. It was obviously just an attempt to give someone a job where a job didn’t exist and a typical old Communist habit.

The supervisor had indicated that we would have to wait in Andijon while someone went to Tashkent to organise the paperwork and it could take a few days. We had attempted to explain that we were running out of time and that now, our only way to reach Ulan Bataar on time would be to sacrifice Kyrgyzstan and head directly to Kazahzstan. To do this, we would now have to return to Tashkent to get a Kazahzstan visa from the embassy. If we had to go to Tashkent, it made sense that we sort out our Exit Visa paperwork at the same time.

Fortunately, someone else who spoke English was brought upstairs around midday and translated all this to our bureaucrat. He seemed to agree. Through our translator, he told us that we could return to our hotel, pick up our stuff and return by 3pm. When we would be leaving at 3pm for Tashkent with an officer to accompany us.

We were grateful that our trip could possibly be saved. Nothing was definite, but we had a glimmer of hope. So we followed the 222 minibuses back to our hotel, amazed that the return journey only took 20 minutes and packed our stuff at the hotel. Outside in the blazing sunshine, we reorganised the back of the Disco to get one of the seats ready, now that there would be three of us. A local guy with a flash 4x4 started to chat in English. He was a tour guide and when we explained our story and our plans, he told us that the border crossing north of Tashkent was closed (due to road works) and that we would to drive 70km south of Tashkent and cross there.

We retraced our way back to the OVID office using more 222 minibuses and were back at the requested time. Our man was still dealing with enquiries and trying to complete our paperwork. He was probably the slowest typist I could ever remember watching. It was like watching paint dry. Then he had to print everything out in triplicate on a dot matrix printer. Doh!

A large ledger was filled in with our details. It was eventually passed over to us and we were asked to sign. We weren’t sure about this move. We had anticipated a large fine for overstaying our visa and this ledger seemed to be confirmation that we had broken their law. But there was no sign of a number to indicate a fine. So we eventually signed and resigned ourselves to the fact that if we did have to pay a fine, there was nothing we could do about it.

We didn’t leave at 3pm. I indicated that we needed to exchange some more money but was taken downstairs where an office exchanged US dollars. Meanwhile back in the office, we just sat and read our books. This was going to take a while.

Finally, at 5.30pm, with no warning we were told we could go. An officer arrived with an overnight bag. This was Shuhratbek and he would be our guardian angel for the next 48 hours. He didn’t seem to know much English. We weren’t sure if he knew English and was keeping quiet to find out what we were talking about. But over the next two days, we realised he really didn’t know much English. By then, we were slagging off and laughing at their hopeless bureaucracy. If he didn’t get that message then we had nothing to worry about. Later on, he told Trev that his supervisor had told him to make sure we left Uzbekistan “with a smile on our faces”.

Outside, Trev squeezed into the backseat so that our escort could sit up front with me. We set off to retrace our route back to Tashkent, but I was directed along a different road – a shortcut of 35 miles. Ironically, we were stopped at endless police checks and Shuhratbek would have to leap out with all the paperwork and explain that we were ‘deportees’ and that he was accompanying us to Tashkent to complete the Exit Visa. He must have done this six times at least and we started to feel sorry for him until we thought, well it’s their system. He will have to live with it. At one place he came back with cold bottles of water. With the late start, we were rewarded with more rural scenes at dusk, just like our two previous evenings. I will never forget Uzbekistan as the night drew in.

Having just negotiated the road in the previous evening, we were a little apprehensive about a second night journey. Night driving was a nightmare. Nothing was visible in the pitch black. Somehow we had managed to avoid killing a person or animal but when some of the trucks don’t have back lights, its like a game of Russian Roulette behind the steering wheel.

As we started to climb up the steep pass (the one I had originally thought ‘I’m glad we didn’t have to do that one”), I had to turn up the Disco’s heating to cool down the rapidly rising-to-red heating indicator. The officer must have wondered what I was doing. It was a sweltering night and we were flooding the interior with hot air. I tried to explain using body language. We had no air-conditioning which he was obviously used to and he must have wondered how we could live with just the windows open. I showed him how to turn on the mini-fans that Trev had screwed to the dashboard surface and he seemed happy with that breeze.

We passed back through the tunnels past the Army security. There were floodlights on either side of the tunnels to make sure you could see the soldiers and they could see you. Then it was a steep descent back down the pass on the other side. With complete darkness and two off road tyres that lost their grip on corners, I eased us down the twisting road. I was going round the corners at 20mph. We were in no hurry.

So I was driving down the pass in the darkness and negotiating another sharp corner at a reduced speed. There was a concrete barrier between us and the opposing traffic. A donkey appeared out of nowhere in front of me and I narrowly missed it. Before I had time to think, another donkey to the left walked right in front of the Disco. It bounced off the left headlight that shattered. Trev had been dozing and woke up with the sound of a thud and shattering glass. “What happened?” he asked. “We just hit a donkey” I replied.

Shuhratbek and I left the vehicle. An elderly shepherd walked up. We walked back with a torch and found a donkey lying in the road, blood pouring out of it’s nose. It was still alive but only just. The shepherd and our officer dragged the body off the road.

Then the negotiations started. I had killed part of his livelihood. I argued, using body language, that he should have never been crossing the road at that point – if there was a concrete barrier in between the two lanes, just how far had he walked with his donkeys in the middle of the road by the barrier in the dark. Shuhratbek talked to the shepherd, probably told him that we were fugatives and finally and said”50 Dollars”. “50 Dollars?” I replied surprised. There was more negotiation. “5 Dollars” he said. Big drop, I thought, but handed over the 5 Dollar bill. We left the shepherd scratching his head wondering who the owner of the donkey was!

The (now dead) donkey was off the road, the shepherd had been paid for his loss and there was nothing else to do but drive on. I continued to drive in the same cautious manner, but my confidence had taken a beating. I was peering into the distance looking for any movement.

We drove into Tashkent from the east and headed for the airport which lay just on the outskirts in the south west. I think we knew Tashkent better than our escort. By the time we reached the airport, it was 12.30am. It had been a long day and we were thinking what office would be open at this time at night. Trev escorted Shuhratbek into the airport while I looked after the Disco. Sure enough, they were back 15 minutes later because nothing was open.

Our escort suggested that we sleep in the Disco overnight at the airport. No way, we argued. We can find a cheap hotel and come back tomorrow morning. The back passenger seat was hardly big enough to sit in, let alone sleep.

So we headed up the road and started what turned out to be a futile effort to find a hotel. We tried three in quick succession and everyone was fully booked. On the main strip, running west out of town, we tried the tall Astoria Mir Hotel. This looked well beyond our wallet, but it seemed to cater for Uzbekistani people rather than foreign tourists. They had an available, affordable triple room. They asked for our passports and Shuhratbek explained our story, but without valid visas they wouldn’t let us stay. It was the police state gone mad. Here we were with an official Immigration Officer and the hotel was too frightened to let us stay in case they got in trouble with…Immigration. Doh!

We were pretty resigned to sleeping in the vehicle. Outside the hotel, however, Shuhratbek got talking to a woman. He told us to leave the Disco in the Hotel car park which had a 24 hour security guard. We jumped in a taxi with the woman and headed down various back streets and were led into a decrepit old tower block and got a tiny lift up to the 7th floor.

The woman had a run down flat she obviously let out to people who needed a bed. Trev and me could take our pick from various long couches/blankets in the lounge. Our escort took a separate bedroom. There was a cold shower and a basic kitchen. Whatever, it was better than sleeping in the Disco at the airport.

Today, Trev drove 0 miles (3714 total) and I did 241 (2242 total) = 241 for the daily total = 5960 miles after 19 days.

Day 20 – Thursday July 31st