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Country Guide: Uzbekistan

October 4, 2010 By Danny

Travel in Uzbekistan is surprisingly easy and relatively comfortable. The country has lots to offer but getting in can be a bit difficult at first. This guide is intended to help you understand the country and plan your own trip.

VISA: This is easily the worst part of travel to Uzbekistan. US Citizens can obtain their visa from the US Embassy but it will take a couple of weeks. Obtaining the visa outside of your home country is possible but you will need a Letter of Invitation (LoI)from an Uzbek Travel Agency; we used Stantours. Rules are similar for most western nationalities but these things change regularly. We picked up our visa, once our LoI from Stantours was ready, in Istanbul and only waited a few hours.

LANGUAGE: Several languages are spoken across the country, most are either Russian or Turkic dialects. If you are a native Turkish speaker you will be OK but Russian is Russian probably your best bet. Armed with only English and Spanish, we made it through the country with a combination of charades and pictionary.

MONEY: Don’t use the banks. There are no ATMs. When we were in Uzbekistan, the bank-rate was 1,600 so’m to one U$D but the market rate was 2,200 so’m to one U$D. By using the black market we were able to increase our spending power by a full third. This was simple and not a problem, most places we slept were happy to change our money (at 2,100 so’m) for us. Do be sure to come in with sufficient currency though, dollars are always best but euros are OK too. The only other places we’ve experienced this were Sudan and Malawi, in both instances the market rates were about 20% higher than the bank rate.

TRANSPORTATION: Easy and simple. As you travel from city to city you will generally have a choice of a shared taxi or a bus. The bus will usually take about 40% longer (and therefore much safer) but will often cost half as much as the taxi as the 4-seat shared taxi. Occasionally you will also have the choice of a martshruka (mini-bus) which falls somewhere between the first two options in both speed and cost. Before going to the taxi stand/bus-stop just ask at your hotel about the prices for each. Taxis leave when they are full, catching a bus is often a matter of luck. There are trains, but not as many.

OVIR REGISTRATION: When you stay in a hotel, they will need to register your passport for you. This is simple, but you must keep the itsy-bitsy-tiny-weenie piece of paper they give you as proof of your registration. Technically you only need show proof of lodging/registration every third night of your stay in Uzbekistan but for our money we’d rather have proof for all of our nights. If you mess up you risk fines/bribes and being deported but as you’d only be found out as you’re leaving the country anyhow….chances are you’ll just be faced with fines…err…..bribes. Our final night was spent couchsurfing in Tashkent and this worried us and sent us to the border early, in the end we were just fine. We were told that you are more likely to have problems at the airport rather than at land borders.

SITES: You will visit Bukhara and Samarkand. If you don’t, you probably should not have bothered going to Uzbekistan. In each place you will be asked to pay for each site individually, usually $1-$3…$4 at the most. You will also need to pay extra to use a camera. Most sites do not offer ISIC student discounts…but will do so if you balk at the price and are willing to take the discount in exchange for not receiving a ticket 😉

SAMARKAND: The Samarkand sites more spread out throughout the city than in Bukhara or Khiva. The Registan is the main site and might be the entire reason you came to Uzbekistan. There are other several sites in the vicinity (Bibi-Khanym Mosque, Guri Amir Mausoleum, etc) but we found the Ulugbek Observatory and Shah-I-Zinda to be a bit more interesting in comparison to the other larger sites. We also recommend a day trip to Shakhrisabz if you are tiring of the tourist circuit. The sites are less maintained and more integrated with modern city life. Easy links from Samarkand to both Tashkent and Bukhara via the taxi/bus stand at the Ulugbek Observatory.

BUKHARA: In Bukhara the sites are all located together and are filled with all kinds of souvenir shops. If you are planning to purchase anything in Uzbekistan this is probably the place to do it. Bus is 8 hours to Urgench/Khiva and 5 to Samarkand en route to Tashkent, taxi is shorter for both trips. A guide for the Ark is cheap and worth it, most other sites are fine on your own.

KHIVA: To get here your will need to travel via Urgench, the nearby transportation hub city. All sites you will want to see, and hotels you’re likely to stay in, are inside the old city. If you are without a guidebook, the tourist office in the center of the city will help you and should be able to provide you with maps and transportation information. The bazaar is just outside the walls and worth a stroll for any small supplies or to change money. No matter what, make sure you walk through the old city at night with the stars out…the dark starry sky with the bright minarets is absolutely stunning.

NUKUS & ARAL SEA: There is a tourist hotel right next to the art museum you likely came to Nukus to see. Be forewarned, the museum is closed for holidays (as happened to us) and Sundays and Mondays. Trips to the Aral Sea can be arranged from Nukus but you are basically paying a lot of money to drive a very long distance to see several rusty ships on shore (used to be in the water) and the new shoreline. We passed the sea on the train from Kazakhstan and it looked like nothing more than a lake without sufficient water. This is the site of the one of the world’s worst ecological disasters, but that doesn’t mean there is much to see and/or do. A shared taxi to/from Kungrad should cost around 10000-12000 so’m ($6) and onward to Urgench/Khiva should be about the same price.

Planning Central Asia Overland

September 23, 2010 By Danny

When we first starting looking at Central Asia and trying to think about our route, we really had no idea where we were going or what we were doing. We started with a map of the region and, made note of several very troublesome features (e.g. Afghanistan) and started to work at it. All through Latin America and Africa we basically traveled in a straight line along the ‘road;’ in Central Asia there are lots of ‘roads’ to choose from and we had to do some serious work and research to figure out which ones were open to us. To those who think we are on a permanent vacation, this should help to prove otherwise.

The first challenge was getting to Central Asia from Turkey and the Caucasus. From that region we looked to the east and came up with three ways of reaching Central Asia.

1.The southern route around the Caspian Sea. Through Iran. The visa process for US citizens wishing to visit Iran is straightforward and clear as mud. Pay lots of money, apply within the US, wait 3 months, maybe get approved (but probably not because we have a website) and then take an organized tour that starts and ends in Tehran. Given that we wanted to travel from one end of the country to the other…this really wasn’t an option at all.

2.The northern route around the Caspian Sea. From Georgia we would have had to trek up through Russia and around the Caspian Sea and back down. Problem is that the Georgian-Russian border is a bit fortified at the moment (there was a war between the two a mere 2 years ago) and foreigners are not allowed to cross. This would have meant backtracking across the Black Sea and back into Europe to enter Russia through Moscow….a bit much if you ask us. Not a great option either.

3.Through the Caspian Sea. Travel from Georgia to Azerbaijan to the port city of Baku. Take the near daily ferry to Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan, or the not so daily ferry to Aktau, Kazakhstan. This was the ‘option’ we thought was the best.

Now that we knew where we were going we started our visa research:

Azerbaijan: Tourist visa $130 and takes 3-5 days to get. Thankfully there exists a $20 5 day transit visa, nice.

Turkmenistan: Tourist visa as much of a PITA as an Iranian visa, not an option. Thankfully there exists a cheap 5 day transit visa, nice.

Kazakhstan: Tourist visa is $60 and has two entries, no problem there.

So we begin a bit more research. We read rumors online that the Turkmenistan government likes to hold the boats at port and disallow disembarkment until transit visas have expired. This is seemingly confirmed by various warnings against said visa on the US Department of State website…the first such warning we’ve seen from them. We rule out the Baku-Turkmenbashi ferry option.

Next up is the ferry from Baku to Aktau, Kazakhstan. This should be a winner, operative word is ‘should.’ Problems. It has no schedule and generally runs only every 2-7 days or so. This means if we enter Azerbaijan to take the ferry we can either pay for the $131 tourist visa or risk overstaying the $20 5-day transit visa. Either way we’ll likely burn time and money while we sit in Baku waiting. At least we finally have an option. Confused yet, not so easy is it?

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The other option we can think up is to fly over this mess. From Georgia and Armenia only one airline, the Kazakhstan airline SCAT, flys to where we’d like to go. Good luck using their website, not much English to help you. From Baku there are a few more options, but again that means getting a visa. To make matters worse, we find at least two airlines that don’t even seem to exist….Central Asian and Georgian International (not to be confused with Georgia Air, Georgia’s actual national carrier). Naturally, none of the air tickets available could only be booked until we found an an authorized travel agent within the Caucasus.

Uzbekistan Airways also flew from Baku to cities within Uzbekistan, and is a ‘modern’ airline by all accounts, but we preferred to travel on land as much as possible and this would have had us skip a fair bit and meant going to Baku, Azerbaijan, in order to catch the flight.

This is the kind of ‘route planning’ we deal with frequently and have gotten quite good at. As we’ve found most of the information we’ve used on the Internet (and especially a few cousins of ours planning their own Silk Road trip) we are happy to help future travelers by sharing our experiences. Our next post will describe the route we actually took, what we learned, and the next steps we made.

iPhone Applications on the Road

August 19, 2010 By Danny

Everyone on the Internet has come up with their list of the most important iPhone applications and travel bloggers are no exception. We have come to completely depend on our iTouch for everything from a quick check of the email when we can find free WiFi to portable storage and use of all of our guidebooks which we have in PDF form. As much as I may dislike the way in which Apple controls its products, these are good projects whose power and portability add dramatically to our ability to log-in and log-off that much quicker.

The applications below are ordered from most important to least, obviously skipping over many (Facebook, Gmail, Tweetdeck,Kayak, etc) that we have and use but really aren’t quite that special. The one thing all of these below applications have in common is that they all work offline.

Travel Guides:

PDF Reader: With this application we are able to store our guidebooks on our iTouch and call on their data with a few swipes of the thumb. In South America one big book carried us all the way through the continent but no other region we’ve visited has had that sort of geographical travel guide available to us. Without this application we would literally be carting around 2-4 guidebooks at any given time and they would probably be all outdated.

Encyclopedia: This is probably the best tool of all. The entire Wikipedia database at my fingertips, off line, no connection needed. The nearly 2.5GB file contains only English and no pictures but otherwise it is no different than using Wikipedia itself. We can figure out where we’ve seen that actor before, read the mythologies of the Nazca lines while flying overhead, and study up on quantum mechanics from the train. More information than we know what to do with for only $9, which makes it the most expensive application we have by about $8 but it is worth every cent and even includes a donation to the Wikipedia foundation.

Factbook: No, not Facebook. This is the entire CIA World Factbook available off line and at my fingertips. With this we have an instant idea what the transportation issues are going to be, any transnational border disputes we need to be aware of, and what waterborne diseases we need to be careful about.

Currency: We used a free currency application but finally switched to a paid version when we realized a number of places we’re going to in the next 4 months weren’t listed. These applications download spot exchange rates when you connect and are available off line for you to do conversions when necessary. If we were only traveling to a handful of places we might not need this but sometimes we switch currencies multiple times a week and keeping track of all those rates can be extremely frustrating.

SkyGazer: A map of the stars, which matches easily to what you can actually see above you. It also comes complete with all mythologies and you can fast forward and rewind to any second in the future or history. As we fell asleep in the Kalahari listening to lions we were gazing out our tent at the constellation Leo and while watching the sand in the Sahara I found myself admiring Scorpio. For $3 this is the sort of thing that ‘makes me happy’ but there is a free version called ‘Planets’ that works quite nicely as well.

Tripwolf: This is one of many online apps that provide us with an additional bit of destination information. Many of the most popular destinations have additional ‘paid’ guides but all the free ones contain information that can help us plan what we want to do. We have to online to download a guide but it is fully functional offline. Much of Tripwolf’s information is supplied by Footprint Books.

News Applications: There are a million, most don’t work offline. We’ve found the AP application to be the fastest to load when online and easiest to use offline of all the major news apps. We also like the NY Times application even if it is a bit slower and slightly less customizable.

World Nomads Language Guides: We were in a Kenyan market and were trying to negotiate with local women who spoke only Swahili. With the exchange rate around 80 shillings to the dollar, 10 fingers just weren’t enough for the numbers we needed to express. I suppose I could have opened up the calculator and typed in the number but the Maasai were far more impressed when I stated my price, verbally, at 1,600 shillings, in Swahili.

Cell Phones and SIM Cards

August 12, 2010 By Danny

People back in the States often ask us how we communicate and if we carry a cell phone. When we say yes, many people ask us what plan we’re on or if we have a satellite phone. The truth of the matter is that the way cell phone plans, phones, and companies operate in the US is different than in the rest of the world….and in the rest of the world, thankfully, it is much easier to travel internationally with a cell phone.

We carry a basic cell phone that has a SIM card slot. In the US, this type of phone is used by AT&T and T-Mobile. There is a SIM card and that card basically IS your phone number and your plan. The phones in the US, sold to you by these companies, are ‘locked’ to run exclusively on the network from which you purchased your phone.

All phones however, begin their lives ‘unlocked’ and it is a very simply matter to take your AT&T phone and unlock it. We did this at the start of our trip with a guy on the street in Guatemala after we learned that the Spanish word for the process (they have LOTS of used US phones in Guatemala) is ‘Flashar.’ It was easy, he pushed a few buttons on his special machine, and it was done. Not going to Guatemala soon? Here is how you do it online:

Go to the search engine of your choice. Search for something like ‘unlock my cell-phone’ and follow the on-screen instructions. Depending on what site you find you should pay somewhere around $5-$10 for this one time service. It is easy, and takes about 24 hours for the whole thing to work itself out. We recently did this when we took a newer cell phone with us to Turkey.

Once in another country it is merely a matter of purchasing a SIM card and popping it in the slot. We traveled through Europe (and then the US as well) with a German SIM card. This card worked everywhere we went and was actually cheaper to use in the US than had we purchased a new card from T-Mobile in the US proper. The German card cost ten Euro but came with that much in calling credit. The only annoying thing was that no one could call us. We now have a Turkish number on a Turkish SIM card which cost a bit more than the German one but we managed to purchase 1,000 SMS messages for about $7.

We have had local phone numbers in these two countries as well as Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala & Honduras. We don’t use the phone much but when couchsurfing or trying to make any level of advanced plans it is a huge help. At its most basic level, when we find a taxi driver we like we can grab his number and use him again….something that has worked out in our favor on more than one occasion. When American’s travel overseas it is sometimes a nerve-wracking decision on how to call around and call home with the way our plans are structured, but if you just unlock your phone, or even an old one, things can become a lot easier.

Malaria: Our Decision

August 4, 2010 By Jillian

If you think something small can’t make a difference in life, think of a mosquito. One sleepless night, ruined picnic or one sore arm, a single mosquito can be the cause of so many of life’s displeasure’s. Unfortunately for travelers and many in the developing world, it is a little more serious. Mosquitoes carry two serious vector borne diseases: dengue and malaria. While there’s no vaccine or cure for dengue, there are chemical prophylaxis to help prevent malaria.

We’ve gotten a lot of questions over the last 16 months about malaria medications and we’ve asked plenty ourselves. Here’s how we came to our decision.

To drug or not to drug, that is the question.

The ever growing global discussion on vaccines, use of pharmaceuticals and immunizations is alive and well in the world of travel. We met several long-term backpackers in South America who took no prophylaxis against malaria. On the other hand, we didn’t meet a single traveler in Africa not using a chemical prophylaxis. To put that in perspective consider this: approximately 90% of deaths due to malaria occur in Sub-Saharan Africa.

We began researching our options and speaking with our doctors regarding the different drugs. We wanted to take a chemical prophylaxis for a few reasons: 1) we didn’t want to get malaria, 2) we believe that the potential side effects of the drugs are less damaging than the disease itself and 3) we did not want to contribute to the spread of malaria across regions. Spreading Malaria is no joke, if we were to be infected with a particular strand in one region we risk spreading that strand to another region when we travel there. In some countries malaria accounts for over half of hospital admissions and public health spending. We try to be responsible in our travels and for us we didn’t want to take the chance that we could carry a new strand to a previously unaffected region.

We based our decision on where we would be, the potential side-effects and the convenience of the drugs. We knew we didn’t want to carry a daily drug with us, the storage space aside, its never good to show up at a land border carting around boxes of pills. Also, we wanted to take a drug that’s effective in nearly every region on our itinerary. I wish I could say my regular doctor was helpful in leading the discussion about the options, but she unfortunately was not. Although Danny’s doctor was more willing to educate himself on the possible side-effects and have an informative discussion with him, I think the situation I faced is probably more normal. If your regular doctors is unfamiliar speak with someone at a travel clinic who can guide you through the options.

Besides taking a chemical prophylaxis, we also bought an insecticide treated mosquito net. Although most places we slept in had mosquito nets, it was good to have our own for the few places that didn’t.

The Options

There are several chemical prophylaxis options on the market. You should discuss with your doctor which one is best considering your time frame, travel locations, risk of transmission and medical history. No matter your choice you should always take precautions against mosquito bites, especially dusk to dawn when transmission occurs.

Chloroquine

COST: inexpensive

FREQUENCY: weekly

AREAS: Central America

OUR EXPERIENCE: 5 months in Central America, no problems.

Doxycycline

COST: inexpensive

FREQUENCY: daily

AREAS: South America, Asia and Africa

OUR EXPERIENCE: None. Doxycycline was impractical for us, it upsets Danny’s stomach and we didn’t want to carry 365 or more doxycycline pills each. We’ve met several travelers taking this and the most commonly side effect seems to be sun-sensitivity. An added benefit of Doxycycline is that because it is an antibiotic, it also helps when you come across a questionable meal or two. If we had trouble with Lariam this would have probably been our backup.

Lariam (Generic: Mefloquine)

COST: expensive

FREQUENCY: weekly

AREAS: South America, Asia and Africa

OUR EXPERIENCE: Lariam is probably the most controversial anti-malarial on the market. We took Lariam for several consecutive months in South America, Africa and Asia and have experienced no negative side effects. For us this was the most practical choice: weekly, effective and not as outrageously expensive as Malarone.

Malarone

COST: very expensive

FREQUENCY: Daily

AREAS: South America, Asia and Africa

OUR EXPERIENCE: None. We’ve met other short-term travelers taking it. Most frequent complaint we hear is the cost. For us this drug was impractical because of cost and frequency; too many pills to carry and too expensive at that.

Immunity?

Several promising vaccines are under development around the world, however none has yet been proven to develop immunity to the disease. You cannot build up immunity to malaria by drinking the local water. Seriously. People with sickle-cell disease or carriers of the trait have a substantial protection against malaria. Because the disease causes a deformation of the red blood cell, the malaria causing parasite attached to the red blood cell is destroyed before it has a chance to reproduce.

Country Guide: Uzbekistan

Planning Central Asia Overland

iPhone Applications on the Road

Travel Guides:

Cell Phones and SIM Cards

Malaria: Our Decision

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