Uzbekistan and Tajikistan Trip Report–Part I
This summer, we chose to go somewhere different and spent three weeks travelling to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The trip was rarely dull and was extremely interesting. What follows is a (rather long) summary of our trip. To make this easier to read, I will split it into multiple blogs.
Getting There
To get to Uzbekistan for all practical purposes you need to fly into Tashkent’s airport. Tashkent is slightly tricky, though not too difficult, to get to. The only direct flight from the United States flies from New York to Tashkent on Uzbek Air. Other airlines that fly there include Aeroflot (from Moscow Sheremetyevo), Turkish Airlines (from Istanbul), and Asian (from Seoul). As we were departing from Seattle, the best flight for us turned out to be to fly from Seattle to LAX, then LAX to Sheremetyevo on Aeroflot, then to Tashkent also on Aeroflot.
Needless to say the travel time was quite long. The flight from LAX to Sheremetyevo is about twelve hours and the flight from Sheremetyevo to Tashkent is another four. At the end of the trip we certainly did not feel like flying any time soon.
Sheremetyevo is a modern airport and pretty easy to navigate. LAX, on the other hand, was a nightmare and I will definitely try to avoid it in the future. On both our in and out connections we almost missed our flights (despite having 5 and 4 hours in between connections and no delays) simply due to the inefficiencies of this airport. In particular you have to exit the terminal and either walk a ways or take a bus that is rather difficult to find. You then have to recheck in and go through security again. On our trip back the line for customs was so long that we almost missed our connection.
Prior Planning
Uzbekistan is not one of those countries you just buy a ticket to and go. For citizens of most countries, a visa is necessary and you cannot purchase it on arrival. In order to obtain a visa, you must have a letter of invitation – typically issued from a licensed travel agency. Along with your letter of invitation your travel agency will explain where you are travelling to in Uzbekistan. This is not a place where you may go freely anywhere you desire. The government wants to know where you are going and for how long.
We considered long and hard which agency to go with and looked at a variety of tours. There are generally two types of travel agencies that can arrange trips to Uzbekistan.
Local agencies – These agencies typically reside within Uzbekistan and have the best prices.
Foreign agencies – These agencies generally hire one of the local agencies and charge their customers several times the price.
We obviously only looked into local agencies as we did not care to pay extra. The following are agencies we heard of.
Advantour – This is the company we wound up going with. They were very well priced and we were extremely happy with their services. We spent a lot of their time in planning the trip and they were very helpful.
Orexca – We spent a great deal of time planning an itinerary with Orexca and originally planned to book with them. Their site is much more professional than Advantour and they were very helpful to deal with. They also offer a number of excursions that Advantour does not have. The only reason we did not go with them was the price – as they were double Advantour’s price. From talking while on tour in Uzbekistan, they are considered reputable but are a bit unpredictable in their prices.
Stantours – This company is mentioned quite often on the Lonely Planet forums and many of these replies occur coincidentally on a Central Asian time zone. Although I never dealt with this company directly, it seems a bit fishy. The hotel and tour operators I spoke with there had never heard of them.
Tajik visas are much easier to obtain. No letter of invitation is necessary and they are very easy going. Unfortunately getting from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan is not trivial as the countries are not very friendly. At the time we went the Penjikent border was closed and the only border we could use (because we needed to go to Khujand) was Oibek. Advantour was not able to arrange anything in Tajikistan for us and we needed to arrange this part of the trip ourselves.
Going through customs
Upon entering Uzbekistan, you must fill out a customs form. It is extremely important that you fill this form out correctly. Any jewelry, electronics (computers, cameras, cell phones), and money must be entered in the customs form in the correct places. When you exit Uzbekistan, you must fill in the same customs form and again state all of these things. The amount of money taken out must be less than that brought in.
If you do not enter your camera equipment or other electronics upon entering it is subject to confiscation. This is not just theory – but practice. Our laptop was almost confiscated on the border because we entered “computer” instead of “laptop computer”. In addition, make sure the money you write down is correct. Upon leaving the country they will likely ask you to count all of your money in front of them and they will search your bags for more. If you miscounted your money or forgot to write it in, the excess will be confiscated. This did happen to me and a number of others upon exiting (nothing was confiscated though as my numbers were correct).
For those taking cameras to Uzbekistan, it is illegal to take photos that display Uzbekistan in an ill light. They did ask me to show them the photos I took when exiting but for some reason they only wanted to see my son’s G11. Regardless I had prepared for this by replacing the main cards in my cameras with photos I knew would not be an issue.
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