Category: Travel

Australia Post will not send passports securely overseas and I have to engage the services of an international courier firm. As so much stuff ordered online gets delivered by one of these companies these days it does not seem to be such a big deal. Toll has set up a specific visa service for passports but the price at $360 for each application (on top of already steep visa fees) is excessive combined with waivers that do not promise turn around times less than 25 days per visa. No good for my deadline. Fedex never seemed to answer the phone while DHL proved to be bright and breezy with a “can do” attitude and a price of $100 each way on top of the visa fee. DHL got the gig.

The envelope over to the US was quite bulky with paperwork and I checked and rechecked every item. The fee for the visa was $190US and it had to be by bank cheque. I remember asking about the strange looking paperwork from the bank, none of it looked like a cheque but was reassured that it was all there. I copied it all and sent the originals with a self addressed envelope to be couriered back. I tracked it all on line all the way and 3 days later it had been signed for by the Uzbek embassy in Washington. Mistakenly, not wishing to be a nuisance I did not contact the embassy for a week figuring my covering letter with contact details if there was a problem would suffice. As I get back onto the Uzbek embassy website to get the phone contact details my heart sinks a little. In among the fine print of the visa application details is a list of their preferred couriers and DHL does not figure among them. I have to get up at 6 am to phone and catch the embassy at 4pm Washington time the only time they are actually available for phone enquiries. The Uzbek at the other end, Mr Ismailov, in halting English confirms that they have received my application but will not act until they have payment and they are waiting for the cheque not the copy of the statement from the bank that I have sent. As I sit at my home desk in Rosebud half a planet away in the predawn light and examine my copies of the paperwork I am horrified to see that he is right. The only thing the bank issued is a copy of the cheque, not the original!

I scamper to the bank that morning between patients and a cheque is reissued. Australia Post is the next port of call and we pay for the highest price express service. Again I track on line and within 24 hours it has made Los Angeles. The tracking ceases there and it is days before we find out how to trace it through the US postal system. I take to anxiously ringing the embassy at 6 am every alternate day, by now I know Mr Ismailov at the other end but he pretends not to recognise me on any occasion. It takes an amazing 8 more days for the cheque to travel from LA to DC! In the meanwhile as my anxiety increases I quiz Mr Ismailov how long it will take him to issue a visa. He promises a quick turnaround once the cheque arrives and is presented to their bank but their finance officer only goes to the bank once every couple of weeks! He also confirms that while DHL is not a preferred courier they have dealt with them before so all should be allright.

I phone on the day that the cheque has arrived at the embassy to be told that they have already, suddenly, issued the visa and sent my passport back that same day. Celebrations, back on track. Despite the lost time I have in the interim rearranged my arrival into Kazakhstan with the ever reliable David of Stantours to fly in and get a visa on arrival at the airport with an LOI, one less overseas journey for my passport to collect another visa. My passport should come back home in a couple of days leaving me just with a Tajik visa to get.

Two days on and nothing is happening as I try to track the return journey through DHL. Repeated phone calls now to DHL yield dead ends so it is awake again at 6am to ring Mr Ismailov. Again he repeats the story that my passport went off already. As I challenge him about the details my heart sinks. He relates that he tried to activate the bar code on the return envelope online at the DHL website in the US. When it was not recognised he chose not to email me to arrange pick up rather to send a staff member a block down the road to post my passport into a DHL drop box. Disaster!

Frantic calls to DHL ensue and suddenly the friendly “can do” facade slips. They can do nothing until there has been a pick up and deny any knowledge of the existence of DHL drop boxes. At this point I also discover that there is a DHL Australia and DHL USA and while nominally the one company they do not share databases and know nothing about each other!!! My frantic calls move offshore to DHL USA and we actually manage to isolate the drop box that the passport has been put in. Despite the denials from DHL Australia over the existence of these drop boxes it is actually a DHL Express drop box and the prospect for finding my passport firm up. I fire off an email to the Uzbek embassy regarding the missing passport and amazingly get an email back from the consul immediately despite it being late at night in Washington DC. Not once has the embassy initiated contact with me and this new turn seems to be a positive. Alas this proves unwittingly to be my final mistake as the Ubek embassy contacts DHL and request a search. Subsequent calls by me to the previously helpful DHL USA are now met with a standard response that they are investigating on behalf of the Uzbek embassy, they can tell me nothing and I need to contact the embassy. They hide behind a barrier and the die is cast! I now know where this will end. Gloomily I wait another week calling the embassy every second day. When I cancel my passport online after a week I know I have no choice. I also deep down know that my passport will be found in the near future but I have run out of time.

My well organised plans are in tatters!

Visas in the 21^st century generally do not feature as a big part of the travel experience. More often than not they are the annoying bits of paper we fill in on the plane trip in and the stamp in the passport we queue up for at immigration on arrival. Sometimes as in the case of countries such as India they have to be prearranged but are a formality apart from the hefty fee which is a revenue raiser for the government of the day. Countries such as USA and even little Rwanda have put in online processes and abolished fees as part of the way forward while China seems to still be a little bit more demanding and closed about its processes. Then we come to the Stans who set the bar higher than any countries I know!

Reflecting their ex Soviet pedigrees the Stans present major barriers to any would be tourist and each country has a different set of standards. Overall there is a slow but steady chipping away at these barriers when compared with my research 10 years ago but there is still a long way to go. Special mention in this process goes to little Kyrgyzstan, the stunningly beautiful mountainous Stan often referred to as the Switzerland of central Asia. It has abolished visa requirements and fees altogether presumably as a prelude to a greater push for tourism. Yay! For me its already one down and only five to go! Easy street were it not for the fact that all bar one of the other countries have no embassy presence in Australia. Somehow I have to get my passport securely to and from embassies half way around the world.

So online I go and start to work my way through the mountain of paperwork. All of the questionnaires are more detailed than anything I have ever completed. Some ask for letters confirming my employment. All ask for obscure details such as my mother’s maiden name. The Uzbek process asks for a complete photocopy of my passport, every page, to be sent with the original as well as the obligatory passport sized photos. The Tajik process includes a separate application for a GBAO permit without which I cannot travel the majestic mountainous Pamir Highway and all bar one ask for a Letter of Introduction! This LOI, in theory represents an invitation to the traveller from a local person or a tour company who, I guess assumes some responsibility for the movements of the tourist within that country. For me as an independent backpacker I have to employ and pay a tour company to write them for me. A bit of online research and all roads lead to the catchily named Stantours run by a German expat living in Kazakhstan called David Berghof. David has rapidly become my new best friend!

The earliest one can start to collect visas is 3 months in advance so 3 months ago I made my first contact and I have a neat plan of attack which should see me just managing to pick up the 5 visas in the nick of time. I email David for the LOI and outline my plans for my first Stan. Turkmenistan has a further quirk in that independent travel outside the capitol for more than 3 days without a guide is not permitted so David sets me up with a 7 day tour, guide and transport and LOI. When he tells me that with the LOI I can get a visa on arrival at the airport without having to send off overseas my spirits lift and I know that the rest will fall into place!

With the extra time gained I immediately send my passport to the Afghan embassy in Canberra, which proves to be the easiest of all and back comes my passport with a shiny new Afghan visa! At the same time my Uzbek LOI arrives from David and it is with some trepidation that I prepare to relinquish my passport to the closest Uzbek embassy in Washington DC. Let the nightmare begin!

Ten years ago I first investigated the possibility of travelling though the central Asian republics affectionately known as the “Stans” to back packers. I purchased the Lonely Planet guide at that time and this out of date tome has sat beside my bed for the last six months. As with so many things in life, chance plays such a large part and as I feel out of love with my initial travel idea of walking the Camino Santiago this year, the accidental conjunction of having 6 weeks holiday and the time of year led me to resuscitate my former plans.

The Stans comprise the 5 countries that were the southernmost outposts of the former Soviet Union. Their people are vastly different to the rest of Russia. Asian and Muslim they had little in common with their former masters. Rich with oil and gas deposits, they were, though, prized possessions of the Soviet empire. They were also the springboards for the ill fated Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union these countries were unpreparedly abandoned and left to become independent nations. Knowing nothing other than totalitarianism, each country threw up dictatorships as their governments and this more or less prevails to this day. Some experienced internal unrest with opposition groups and armed warfare but, with the obvious exception of Afghanistan all is peaceful and safe for travellers in the Stans today.

So why the Stans? A remote former Russian outpost, surrounded by troubled hotspots such as Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan as a holiday destination? Have I finally gone completely mad? I guess in a week’s time, when I fly into my first Stan I, and you my faithful readers will know. Suffice it to say that this is an area rich in history. Alexander the Great came through here in 300BC and built massive cities here the ruins of which, despite the predations of a rampant, marauding Genghis Khan still survive. In the middle ages the Silk road, the trade route between Europe and China snaked through this area leaving flourishing cities such as Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand which today are absolute tourist gems. Then there are my favourites, massive mountains and much of my time will be spent revelling in the mountain scenery of the 7000 metre peaks, glaciers and lakes of the Pamirs and Tian Shan ranges. To wrap it up I will finish in Astana, the new capitol of oil rich Kazakhstan with the crazy ultramodern buildings that have earned it the nickname the “Dubai of Central Asia”

For the record I will be starting in Turkmenistan and going though Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Internet availability is likely to be fairly lean so I apologise in advance if the emails are a bit spasmodic. Also as I am not taking a laptop there may not be any photos attached but I will try and keep the communications as interesting as possible. In the meanwhile I am packed and ready to go. Roll on Friday!