Border Crossing: Uzbekistan

Date of Border Crossing 15.7.2006
Point of Entry Farab Border to Turkmenistan
Passport and Visa Passport has to be valid for at least another 6 months and you need a visa to enter Uzbekistan. See Additional Information on how to get a visa for Uzbekistan.
Insurance We did not have a valid insurance for Uzbekistan. Nobody checked or cared.
Drivers License Did not get checked, but I am sure that officially you are required to have one.
Motorcycle papers We did not have to show any papers for the bikes. Carnet is not needed, but you should of course have your motorcycle papers with you.
License plates Own license plates are sufficient.
How it went

Immigration:
As always first you come to the immigration office. There is a doctor there who will have a look at you to make sure you are healthy!
Next you have to fill out 2 copies of the entry card. The only challenge here is, that the cards are not available in English. So unless you can read cyrillic you are in bit of a tight spot. However if you have made it to Uzbekistan, you must have similar forms form Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan somewhere so just check against them.
With the Entry forms you go to the immigration officer who will then check your visa and stamp you passport.

Customs:
Next is the Customs forms. Again these will look familiar, as they are the same all over the Stans. Fill in your passport details, leave everything else blank and fill in your vehicle information on the back of the form at the bottom.
With these forms they will then send you to the Customs Office. The form gets stamped and that is it, welcome to Uzbekistan.

It cost no money and took us less than 30 minutes!

Point of Exit Chernyaevka (between Tashkent Uzbekistan and Shymkent in Kazakhstan)
How it went As with coming in, leaving Uzbekistan was easy. At Immigration we got our passports stamped and then that was it.
Additional Information

Getting a visa for Uzbekistan:
We got our visa for Uzbekistan in Ankara Turkey. The Uzbek embassy is a small affair and kind of hard to find, so here is the GPS Point: N39 52.324 E32 51.839 as well as the address: Sokak No 3, Yildiz-Cankaya, Ankara
We went to the embassy. There we filled out the application form complete with one passport picture. We also had to write a letter in shorthand addressed to the consul, stating who we were, why we wanted to visit Uzbekistan and what we planned on doing there. Then we were told to come back in 5 days.
When we came back we were given the address of a bank in Ankara. There we had to go and pay the visa and the handling fee and get separate receipts for both. The visa was 60 US dollars each and the handling fee was another 15 US dollars each. Back at the embassy with these receipts the Consul came to have a look at us and then the visas were issued.

Changing money:
Farab Border to Turkmenistan:
On the Uzbek side of the border there is plenty of money changers hanging around. They will change Turkmen manat into local currency at a better rate than the money changers on the Turkmen side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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