I thought crossing from Turkmenistan to Uzbekistan overland deserved a posting of its very own.
After showing my passport to several uniformed people, my passport was finally stamped. I thought phew, I'm done here (at the border) and I can cross into Uzbekistan. Um, no. I then had to show my stamped passport to a few more individuals and then I got to go into the customs "house." After filling out a form I did not even remotely understand, I had to declare what I had. Wait, I'm confused, I'm leaving, what in the world am I declaring? I declared my camera (sony), phones (american and gsm), clothes, music player (apple). They wanted brand names for everything. Really, I'm still confused. Wouldn't you have asked for this information on the way in? My guide wrote me out the answer to each question in Turkmen. It read something like this. "My name is Dina S. I'm American. I have no carpets, no drugs, no firearms, no illegal goods. I am a tourist." This helped.
So I opened up each bag I had. And one by one they looked through them. They were puzzled by my chargers. I showed them my two phones and my camera "very nice." I offered them cigarettes from America (bought expressly for this purpose), and they declined. But what took the cake is when the opened up my daypack and found Rukhnama. All the sudden their attitude changed and they became so helpful (not that they were bad before, just annoying). "You've read Rukhnama, yes?" I replied, "yes, I've started to." Of course I then went on to extol the virtues of both Turkmenbashi and his seminal work. They quizzed me a bit and smiled. I think I made their day. And they made my day, because they stopped thoroughly searching my bags. How many Americans cross this border? And how many of them carry an English copy of Rukhnama? With many new friends made I moved on to the next building where I was to get another stamp and have yet another conversation about Rukhnama. After telling every guard that I enjoyed the book, the country, and Turkmenbashi (that could probably be a new slogan, I should copyright it), I finally gathered all my bags and walked to the no-man's land between the two countries. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had three phones.
How come no-man's land is always so long? Couldn't cartographers have used thinner pencils? I guess in this case one has to wonder why there are borders at all. The Central Asian Republics can thank Stalin for their boundaries, some of which make no sense (namely, how Uzbekistan ended up with the Tajik heartland of Samarkand and Bukhara). As I lugged my stuff across the road I was just hoping that the Uzbek side wouldn't be closed. The first stop on the Uzbek side had two guards, one older and one younger. The younger guard started asking me lots of questions and I answered. I got a stamp and was told to move on to customs. So far so good.
I walked into the customs house and the new guard didn't seem so friendly. He basically barked at me to sit down. I opened up my bags and gave him a pack of Camels. He helped me as I started filling out a customs form (now this made sense) again showing him my two phones (the satellite remained hidden), camera, computer, etc. Everything went smoothly. Then in return for the Camels he wrote down the exchange rate and told me how to get to Nukus and not get ripped off by the cab drivers. Did I mention how he didn't search my bags and thus didn't find the sat phone?. Note to self, cigarettes don't hold much sway in Turkmenistan but are gold in Uzbekistan. A constructivist approach to borders: If you create them, differences will appear.
I thanked the border guard and moved on to find a taxi. Taxis in this part of the world are very small wooden-floored diesel-smelling Soviet-made cars. No markings necessary. My driver was nice enough but didn't know his way around so we made a few stops to get directions to where I was going. The whole time I was on the lookout for the Amu Darya river. I wasn't sure which side of the border the river fell so I kept on asking my guide in Turkmenistan "is that the Amu Darya?" They were all irrigation canals. All flowing with water. Every river I saw I asked my taxi driver "Amu Darya?" "Nyet." They too were irrigation canals. Then up ahead I saw a big bridge. My driver pointed and said " Amu Darya!" I could see the wide banks of this famous river but as I got closer I noticed that there was barely any water in the river! All the water is flowing in these irrigation canals and none in the river, no wonder there's a huge ecological crisis in this region!
My first impression of Uzbekistan is that it's more populated than Turkmenistan. The border region is empty on one side and filled on the other side. Turkmenistan in general is probably the least population-dense place I've ever been to. It's a huge country with probably 4.5 to 5 million people living there (although their census data says 6 it's widely considered to be an overestimation). I am now in Nukus, the regional capital of Karakalpakistan, home to ethnic Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, and Kazakhs. It's also home to the Aral Sea. The shrinking Aral Sea. Thanks to water diversion. The Karakalpaks were traditionally a nomadic fishing people who thrived off of the Amu Darya and Aral. But thanks to forced collectivization and water resource depletion (not to mention that this region was also home to chemical weapons development during the Soviet times), this is the sickest region of Uzbekistan and its economy is falling apart.
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