May 7, 2014
Welcome to Turkmenistan: What do you have in your bags sir?
It was the seventh of May and it was time for me to leave Iran. With the 'Desert-Dash' across Turkmenistan ahead I was keen to press on and get to the border as early as possible, but that was made more difficult by yet another car stopping and the occupant, a man named Reza, getting out to speak with me. During the long conversation I dropped as many hints as I could that I was in a hurry, but Reza just kept on talking, until eventually I had to say "I'm sorry, I really have to go," and cycled off. Enough with the friendliness already Iran.
I need not have worried, as I was told at the border post that I was too early and to come back in half an hour. I used that time to spend the last of my Iranian rials, keeping a mere 2000 as a memento, and obtaining some Manats from one of the money changers, before being invited for breakfast with some Turkish truck drivers. "Turkmenistan bad," they told me, "Uzbekistan good. Turkmenistan very bad." Reassuring.
Getting into the Iranian customs building was my next challenge, as the entrance involved going up a small flight of stairs and I therefore had to remove all of my bags, carry them up, and reassemble the bike at the top. Inside a single man on customs had a rummage through a couple of my bags, found nothing of interest, and waved me on to passport control. The man here had a quick check of my passport and gave me my exit stamp. Then he did a strange thing. Instead of handing me back my passport, he walked off with it and handed it to a man in army fatigues, whereupon it disappeared into another room beyond a closed door. 'Oh dear,' I thought, 'I suppose this is where they do the background check.' Slight panic gripped me. 'They're going to find out about that time I went on Facebook. I know it. Why was I so stupid? And watching satellite TV in Mashhad. What was I thinking?' The man returned. "I only logged in for a second..." He stopped me and said "Goodbye forever." I assumed that this was the moment he was going to pull out a sword and behead me, but instead he handed me my passport and disappeared back through his door. It appeared I was free to go!
If I'm completely honest Iran had been the one country that, at least beforehand, had really concerned me on my journey. The strict Islamic laws, the restrictions on people's individual freedoms, not to mention the absence of any personal diplomatic help, had made it a place that I was very wary about and, despite the overwhelmingly positive experience that I'd had, I must admit to a feeling of relief at having made it out alive. Fantastic! Back to the free world! What a feeling! Now, where exactly was I? Turkmenistan. Let's see. Turkmenistan. Apparantly comes with the tagline 'the North Korea of Central Asia.' Oh sh!t.
The North Korea of Central Asia?! What had I got myself into here? A former self-appointed 'President for life' whose ego even extended to writing his own religious text for his citizens, whose sudden death in 2009 only led to another similar dictator taking charge, a terrible human rights record, not to mention a complete lack of freedom of the press (I probably shouldn't be writing this) were all reasons for the catchy slogan. The most immediate effect for myself, however, was the paranoid visa restrictions which meant that I had only been permitted five days in order to cycle the 500 kilometres to Uzbekistan. Not a particularly difficult task until one considers that those 500 kilometres involve crossing a hot desert into a headwind. If there's one thing worse than a headwind, it's a desert headwind. But we'll come to that.
Before I could do any arduous slog across hot deserts I had to get into the country, a challenge in itself. I was directed through the border area by several young army recruits and into the necessary building, where I was first greeted by a man dressed as a doctor who upon hearing my name declared me fit and well. That was the easy part. I was next ushered into a slightly bigger room which was dominated by a huge and expensive-looking x-ray machine in its centre. It was made to look expensive by everything else, such as the cold stone floor that was being scrubbed with a wet rag by a picture-book 'washer-woman' in a colourful headscarf. The walls were bare, the furniture sparse, the border officials mostly very young and dressed in khaki shirts and silly hats. My passport was taken by one of these, it was passed around, looked at by many interested eyes, it disappeared out of a door, it reappeared, it spent some time on a desk, it disappeared again. I waited patiently and watched as the other people made their way through. It took a long time, even for the Turkmen citizens. Everyone's bags had to go through the x-ray machine and were then being searched with a fine tooth comb by a guard on the other side. He was even folding out the clothes, checking nothing was hiding in any socks, a process which seemed to me to render the expensive x-ray machine as something of an unnecessary investment.
A woman came out of the door at the back holding my passport. She was a little older than the young guards and was wearing blue, so I guessed she was more important. She asked me where I was planning on going, my route across Turkmenistan, and I told her "Tejen, Mary, Turkmenabat."
She replied, "Do you have a map? We need to see it on a map."
I thought that if they needed to see it on a map then they should probably have a map in their border room, but I didn't say that, I went and got my map, which was in fact a single page print-out from google. I showed it to her and repeated "Tejen, Mary, Turkmenabat," pointing to the one and only road between those three towns and my only possible choice of route across the country. She seemed satisfied and disappeared with my passport again.
Some time after that, I can't say exactly how long but it was enough time for everyone else to have made it through and had their bags thoroughly searched and left, my passport returned and I was invited to pay my $12 entry fee and recieve my stamp. Then there was only the challenge of feeding my bags through the machine and then having them searched. The young man doing the searching eyed me anxiously. The challenge was much more his than mine. Thoroughly search these bags? It takes a brave man! Still, he went at it with gusto, flicking through the pictures on my camera, poking in all the fingers of my gloves, sniffing my toothpaste. The first bag he stuck to his task with admirable resolve. Lord alone knows what he was looking for. To be honest I don't think even he knew. I had the feeling that if he pulled out a revolver he would have just shaken it and checked there was nothing hiding inside. And if he'd found a bag of marijuana hiding inside he probably would have felt it, sniffed it, and then tossed it onto the pile of items that I had to repack.
His resolve was broken by my front left pannier, the one with all my tools and things. It had been my intention to give it a good clean out the night before, but I'd been too distracted looking at cute fluffy animals, and in any case I had given it a good clean out before entering Iran. Surely it couldn't have got that messy in a month? I realised I was wrong as I began pulling items out for inspection. Something had spilled, my handsoap maybe, or perhaps insect repellent, and things were coming out sticky. This was merging with general dirt and filth. The guys face seemed a little put-out but he kept going, popping open my puncture-repair kit and sending patches flying everywhere. But his determination was waning, I was breaking him with every dirty, sticky tool I brought onto his previously clean desk. Finally he gave in. "Enough!" he declared, a look of disgust on his face. I had won! The last couple of bags got nothing more than a poke. He never found the condoms.
I was into Turkmenistan and the five-day 'Desert-Dash' as Dino and Suzy had christened it was very much on. The faffing about at the border meant it was now more of a four-and-a-half day 'Desert-Dash' and I needed to press on. I wasn't in so much of a hurry to forget to get my country photo in though, and when an old man guarding a railway crossing waved to me I saw my opportunity. Above his post was a Turkmen flag flying temptingly in the wind and I stopped and asked him to take a photo of me with it. He was a dear old man and looked very confused, a look which only increased in magnitude as I got out some black tape and started attaching a '31' to the front of my chest. "Am I doing it right?" I asked, "Is the 3 the right way around? I've been known to get this wrong before!"
I managed to make him understand that I wanted a photo and I posed beneath the flag. He took a picture of me, but without getting the flag in shot. "No, with the flag!" I said and made him try again. He took a picture of the flag. "No, me AND the flag!" He was very confused. I gave him a biscuit. I took a picture of him with the flag. That was no good, he didn't have a 31 on his chest. And he wasn't me. Finally I decided it would be a lot easier to ask the ground to take the picture, so I set the camera up on that instead, which had the benefit that both myself and the old man could be in the photo. It came out perfect!
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The beginning of the dash was further slowed by a couple of police checkpoints. At the first of these I was stopped by a young officer who asked me a couple of questions about where I was from and where I was going. He was on his own, inexperienced, yet he was bold enough to ask me for "dollars?" That was all he said. "Dollars?" It seemed he was asking for a bribe, and yet he had completely failed to come up with any kind of story or reason for me to give him anything. I looked at him. 'I'm sorry buddy, but you've got to try harder than that!' I thought, 'You haven't even got a gun, just that silly baton.' "I'm sorry, I don't have any dollars" I said. He looked terribly glum, sighed, and waved me on. I got the feeling this happened to him a lot.
The second checkpoint was manned by several young men in army uniforms, just fresh-faced boys really. This time my passport disappeared inside a booth but thankfully it reemerged a short while later and I could continue. To be fair it was quite nice to have something to break up the monotony of the desert, which was already proving to be quite mentally draining after only a few hours. Other things that kept me sane were seeing a herd of camels crossing the road and parallel train tracks, particularly enjoyable because they actually used the proper crossing place to get across the rails, and spotting a big lizard thing that looked like a cross between a snake and a tiger and was one of he coolest things I've ever seen.
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The people were nice, when I saw them, which was rarely. After a month of looking at burkas in Iran, my fantasies of suddenly seeing hordes of beautiful women with free-flowing hair and tight-fitting jeans were shattered. All afternoon all I saw was desert and boys in army uniforms. In the evening I saw a few more people though. A rickety three-wheeled trailer with three boys on it pulled up and one of them jumped out and asked to take a photo with me. They looked like, and surely were, poor farmer folk from the deserts of Turkmenistan so I said "Yes of course, but do you have a camera?" At which point one of them pulled out an I-phone. Ah, times they are a-changing.
Today's ride: 91 km (57 miles)
Total: 18,690 km (11,606 miles)
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