The next morning we came down to breakfast and found another 6 teams catching up. One of them told us that there had been a casualty on the Mongol rally and that one of their friends had tried to reach them during the night to confirm whether they were OK.
They said that although they didn’t know much, they had been told that it had been a car accident in Iran and that one of the team mates had died, while the other two were in stable condition in hospital.
Naturally, we were quite shocked and upset. This was the first time anyone had ever died on the rally and it was quite likely that we knew the team involved, as there weren’t so many teams going the southern route. Since I had been in touch with a lot of other teams since before the rally, I sent out a mass text message asking anyone for any further detail they could provide.
Meanwhile, we met Bob and Olov at the outside pool and discussed our plan for the way forward. Opposite to most of the other teams, who were planning to stay for another night until Monday to get money out of the bank, we decided to carry on into Turkmenistan today, hoping to make it most of the way to the border, in order to cross before the 3.30pm deadline into Uzbekistan the next day.
Driving out of Ashgabat, we soon realised that the roads were only perfect leading from the border into Ashgabat but no further, and so after driving at 50km/h for 6.5 hours straight on the worst roads of the rally thus far, we had barely made it 150 miles to Mary.
At this time I had also received confirmation of the team that had crashed and we were very sad when we realised that not only we knew the team, but we had planned to convoy with them on the Pamirs. We sent our condolences to our injured friends and hoped that the surviving two would get better soon.
At this point, the terrain had changed from urban uber-chique to sandy desert with high dunes and camels. We pulled off the road into a dune and decided to set up camp for the night, continuing to the border and out of Turkmenistan the following day.
In the morning, we woke up to workers working beside our camp. Peering out, we saw that they had not spotted us behind the dune, but after we got up and started moving around to pack up, they soon did. 15 minutes later, they had called ‘Bob and their uncle’ over to watch the ‘tourists’ pull their camp together.
Eventually, two worked up the courage to walk over the see what we were doing up close and after taking a couple of pictures on their mobile phones they walked back to the group of now around 60 people to report. When we were done pulling our camp together, we were cheered on by all of these men, all now standing in neat rows about 4 people deep.
Back on the road, we soon drove deeper into the desert, hot wind sweeping our cars heavily to one side of the road, carrying hot sand as it went in small twisters. We met fewer and fewer people and signs of life gradually disappeared until finally at around 1.30pm we saw signs for the Turkmenistan border.
Rolling up to it, we were prepared for the worst, but in fact it was a smooth and relatively fast crossing that cost us $30 in toll for a highway and bridge we had supposedly used, but which we couldn’t remember crossing.
After our checks and successful document completion, we hoped to get through the Uzbekistan side just as quickly and as painlessly, but this border was unlike any other we’d been to before.
Firstly, we couldn’t find it. On leaving the Turkmenistan side, we drove into more desert and dunes just as barren as the ones before the border post. There were no signs and after 40 minutes of driving, we started wondering, if we’d missed the correct turn off. Three queries for direction later, we finally found our way, but it seems that neither Turkmenistan nor Uzbekistan want you to find it.
About an hour and 25 minutes after crossing the Turkmenistan border, we arrived at a run down shack with an iron gate and were asked to park our cars in front of it.
Walking towards the shack, we had to walk through a box filled with lime and covered with a wet sheet that featured foot and shoe prints of all shapes, sizes and depths – this was their disinfectant box, that everybody wishing to get into Uzbekistan had to step into at least once.
The shack turned out to be a walkthrough building where perfect chaos reigned. Truckers, farmers with cows, sheep and various other cattle, citizens of both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan all pressed in on both sides, trying to get in or out of the border. The 4 officials that were working seemed unperturbed by the cacaphony that ruled on our side of their glass windows and just continued writing in their ledgers at near snail’s pace.
When we got in, we were first checked by a doctor, who was delighted that I spoke Russian and while telling me about the time he spent in Bulgaria 25 years ago, he processed us quickly by writing our details into his register in front of all the other people that were trying to push in, took each of our temperatures and then continued to pop in at each next step of the border crossing process to make sure we were alright.
The next step was to register with customs, a signle official beleagured by everyone it seemed, who registered human, cattle and cars alike. He truly had the patience of a saint, but when a local woman tried to jump the queue, he jumped up and shouted at her, shaking his finger very sternly upon which she immediately went back to the very end of the queue. She then selbstverstaendlich jumped the queue again not 2 minutes later, this time getting away with it.
As the final step and at the final window along this coridor of moving and pushing masses, we were given an immigration form to complete, which we would see again and again both on entry and exit from the various countries ending in ‘stan’, asking for all of our details, as well as any cash and the belongings we were importing, finally registering our cars and passports one more time in our now trusted means of a hand-written register.
After this, we drove through a deep ditch filled with lime and water to disinfect our cars and then were asked to stop at the narcotics building, another border function, which we would get accustomed to at each following entry and exit border. Here we saw with worry that a car that had driven through earlier was searched very thoroughly, taking each item out and opening and emptying each out onto the ground. Since the car was nowhere near as full as ours or BobOlov’s, we didn’t look forward to these checks on our cars.
However, at entering the narcotics building, and once they established that I speak Russian, the guards here again registered our documents very speedily, and enthusiastically sent us on our way without any major checks, bar from checking our camera’s photos for any ‘incriminating’ shots and quickly looking under Nick’s seat. BobOlov were through even faster and so after just over 3 hours, we drove off and towards Bukhara, which we had heard was a great little town in the middle of the desert.
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