The Silk Road overland East to West - Visa strategy

When travelling on the Silk Road in Central Asia is is never long before the conversation between travellers turns to visas. For a successful overland trip a visa strategy has to devised before departure. It is not a region which can be travelled through on a whim. With a little planning visas can, however, be picked up along the way. In this post I will describe how we did it, which we managed without requiring the services of a visa support agency. There are obviously thousands of permutations of how to cobble together all the visas needed for such a trip, but I thought I'd simply write about how we did it - as I think the post is long enough as it is!!

First of all here are some general tips on Central Asian visa planning and execution.

• Plan exactly when and where you will get each visa.
• Know how long the visa process takes and then add on more time in case of unexpected embassy closures, like those for public holidays which an embassy will take both for the country the embassy is in and those for the embassy's national holidays.
• Have plenty of passport photos and photocopies of your passport to hand.
• Have a good idea of the dates you will be entering and exiting the country, how long you will need a visa for and an address of where you will be staying (any address is fine).
• Speak the language, take a person who does or, at the very least, take a phrasebook, if applying in person at an embassy.
• Know how much it is meant to cost. Question any price rises.
• Overlap your visas by a couple of days. This means that you are not relying on crossing a border on one particular day. Borders are sometimes closed at weekends or on public holidays.
• Always enquire about an Express Visa Service. Sometimes this doesn't cost any extra.
• Consider getting multiple entry visas for flexibility.
• Use forums, such as the Lonely Planet Thorntree, for up to date info and tips, but beware of tips from people who haven't actually done it!!
• Use Caravanistan's Central Asia visa guide, an up-to-date resource on visas as well as border crossings in the region.
• Finally, apply flattery liberally, even when you are clearly being obstructed.

Here is a summary of how we got all the visas needed to travel overland from Kathmandu to London. We were travelling on British passports from Nepal westwards through, Tibet, China, Central Asia, across the Caspian Sea to the Southern Caucasus, before entering Turkey and the final stretch through Europe to the UK. All the visas we obtained were single entry tourist visas and obtained in person at an embassy unless otherwise stated. DISCLAIMER: This information may already be out of date!!

Country	Cost	How long for? Number of entries? When does the visa time start?	Obtained where?	Length of visa process
Nepal	$100	3 month Multiple entry as standard	On arrival at Kathmandu airport	On the spot
	Remember to have a passport photo hand in your hand luggage.
Tibet	$37	14 day	Kathmandu agent as part of Tibet tour	On the spot
	See Arrange a Arranging a Tibet tour in Kathmandu – the good, the bad and the ugly for more info.
China	Travelled in mainland China on Tibet Permit. See above.
Kyrgyzstan	£60.00	1 month (visa starts on specified entry date)	London by post	1 week
	Applying for a visa through the Kyrgyz embassy in London was a very simple process. Fill out the online form here and then send your passport and relevant documents to the embassy.
Kyrgyzstan extension	1065 Som	1 month Multiple entry (visa starts when previous runs out)	Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan	1 day (submit in morning collect in afternoon of same day)
	At the OVIR office we were required to copy by hand a Letter of Invitation, in Russian, which we submitted with an application form and passport photo.
Kazakhstan	Travelled on our Kyrgyz tourist visas. Note you must has a double or multiple entry Kyrgyz visa to be able to re-enter Kyrgyzstan. For more information see A couchsurfing minibreak in Almaty.
Tajikistan	£100 (+£50 for GBAO permit)	2 months Double entry with GBAO permit (visa starts on specified entry date)	London by post	1 week
	We followed the instructions on the Embassy website here. Together with an application form, our passports, photocopy and photo a travel itinerary was required. We simply wrote a letter with where we planned to be when and this appeared adequate.
Tajikistan Visa registration	135 Somani	Visa registration for a double entry 2 month visa	Khorog, Tajikistan	On the spot
	We read that if you have anything more than a 1 month single entry tourist visa you are required to register. We went to the OVIR office and were directed to the neighbouring bank to pay. Returning to the OVIR
Afghanistan	£70.00	1 month (visa starts on entry which can be any time within the stated 6 month period)	London in person	5 days
	The details for applying at the London embassy can be found here. Along with the usual documents the website states that utility bills are required to verify your current address in the UK. When we presented these the embassy said that they now no longer require them instead we needed a letter from our place of study or employer. After a day of frantic phones calls we got the letters and then the application went very smoothly. Hindsight I would have got a visa in Khorog, Tajikistan which takes 1 day.
Uzbekistan	$62	1 month (visa starts on specified entry date)	Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan	7 days
	To get a visa you must phone (in Russian) the embassy the day beforehand and get your name put on a list. Fill out and print off an application form here. The following day take the form, a photo and a copy of your passport to the embassy at 10 am and join the queue. A week later you need to get your name put a list the day before again. Return at 10 am with your passport and the visa is put in your visa then and there. We had a slight problem in that the official wasn't keen to give us a visa more than 3 months before our entry date (it was 3 months and 6 days before our planned entry). Luckily we managed to talk him into doing it for us. Note that a tourist visa (denoted as T on the visa) only allows for the holder to stay in hotels registered to take foreigners. For each stay you are given a registration slips which needs to be retained. We only got asked to show them once, on the Tashkent metro, when we were staying with friends and didn't have any, but we managed to get around this problem, and continue staying with our friends.
Turkmenistan	$85	5 day TRANSIT (visa has specified dates and entry point)	Applied for in Dushanbe, Tajikistan Collected in Tashkent, Uzbekistan	7 days Express service
	See Turkmen Visas – a riddle wrapped in an enigma for the long version of this.
Azerbaijan	$101 (I think we might of got scammed on this)	5 day TRANSIT (visa specified a months period for travel)	Dushanbe, Tajikistan	On the spot
Georgia	No Visa	3 months
Abkhazia	$10	1 month (specified	Online application. Pick up in Sukhumi, Abkhazia
	For details see How to obtain a visa for Abkhazia when in Georgia
Armenia	$10 or 3000AMD	21 days	Georgia/Armenia border crossing by rail
	Note that at the current exchange rates it is cheaper to pay in AMD (have the correct change if paying in $)
Nagorno Karabakh	$10	14 days	Yerevan, Armenia	On the spot
	For more information see How to obtain a Nagorno Karabakh visa. Remember to register the visa on entry and exit of Nagorno Karabakh.
Turkey	$20	90 days Multiple entry (standard visa)	Sarpi border crossing between Georgia and Turkey	On the spot
	Can pay in US dollars, Euros or UK pounds but not Turkish Lira.
Total Cost	$928

Although we didn't need to use a visa support agency this is an option to consider. If you need a visa in a hurry or are not near the required embassy a visa support agency can help. It could be cheaper to pay for some else to organise your visa, than paying for food and accommodation in a place you don't want to be whilst waiting for a visa to be processed, and it will almost certainly be less hassle. I heard excellent reports from travellers who used Stantours and did contact them myself at one point to make some enquires when I was weighing up our options. They responded to my email very quickly and seemed very knowledgeable.

Voyage across the Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on earth accounting for 40-44% of the world's  waters which can be classified as lakes. To cross from Turkmenistan it is necessary to get a passenger place on a cargo ship. There was the usual incomprehensible queueing system involving lists of names. But it wasn't busy so we didn't have any problems getting a place. The half a dozen or so passengers boarded the ship as the crew supervised the rail cargo being loaded via tracks on the gangway into the hold. We sailed out of Turkmenbashi on a sea as still as a mill pond and the rest of the overnight journey was just as smooth, which was fortunate given the modus operandi the crew had chosen for our voyage. Luckily we didn't discover this until we docked in Baku, Azerbaijan. If we had before going to bed we would probably have found it difficult to sleep that night.

As we slid out of the harbour, past the docks, dusty town and desert, we were shown to our cabin. The cabin cost an extra $10 on top of the $90 we had paid each for the ticket and it was exceptionally dilapidated. The holes in the wall had long ago stopped being patched up and the en suite bathroom was not anywhere near functioning. A draw in the cupboards was labelled 'life jackets'. Investigating this we found it to be empty. Taking a walk on deck the life boats didn't seem any more serviceable than our bathroom. Despite all of this I didn't have a bad nights sleep.

In the morning we packed up the bags and took a walk on deck to watch our docking in Azerbaijan. Walking to the rear of the ship we noticed that the hold doors were open. It appeared that we had sailed with the doors open throughout the night because the crew hadn't quite managed to fit one of the containers into the hold, instead it hang over the end of the boat, preventing the doors from being shut.

Bye Bye Turkmenistan

Last views of Central Asia

Turkmenistan - Did chickens or eggs come first?

Turkmenistan is one of the most autocratic and isolationist countries in the world, second only to North Korea, and therefore not easy to travel in. However, it is key to many overlanders as it connects Asia with Iran and the Southern Caucasus. Other routes would involve travelling through Afghanistan and/or Pakistan. Our Turkmen visas gave us 5 days to cross the country through the desert to the Caspian Sea where we would try to get a place on a cargo ship to Azerbaijan. We had to enter at the specified border crossing on a specified date and then the race was on to get the boat out within 5 days. This was travelling at its most stressful.

The border crossing at Konye Urgench turned out to be one of the more straight forward ones we had experienced, especially considering it was meant to be a restricted area. Although at one point a thermometer was thrust under our armpit and the reading carefully noted. On taking a taxi into the town we headed to the market. People wore traditional clothing here more than anywhere else in Central Asia. The women wore bright red or green dresses with embroidered collars and had their hair in long plaited pigtails. Everyone seemed friendly enough and no police bothered us.

We negotiated places in a shared taxi and jumped in with a father and son heading to Ashgabat for a wedding. The drive took us past cotton fields where the harvest was in full swing. Unlike in Uzbekistan, where the cotton was harvested by teams of people picking the cotton by hand, here the process seemed to be completely mechanised with large, new-looking combine harvester type vehicles. When the irrigation channels ran out the landscape abruptly turned into desert and camels roamed serenely by. Our fellow passengers kept the conversation going with a constant stream of questions. Did we grow cotton in England? Did we have camels? How much is a litre of petrol? How much?!?

After a lull the old man, entirely seriously, piped up with, "in England do people think the chicken or the egg came first?"

This threw James for a moment, before he could reply with, "well we are not sure".

"No, we are not sure yet either," he said.

Our intention was to get the taxi to drop us off at the Darvaza gas craters. This man-made phenomenon  was caused when the natural gas was accidentally set alight, creating a fiery spectacle akin to the gates of Hell. After the taxi driver had asked a few people at the roadside for directions we stopped at a ramshackle hut and asked about staying the night and visiting the craters, as well as getting a lift to Ashgabat the following day. Everyone there was drunk. They quoted us an outrageous price. We got back into the taxi and headed down the road to the next hut to see if we could find a better price. The drunks pursued us in a land cruiser. At the second hut the men were also drunk but less aggressive, quoting us a more reasonable price, however, once the men from the first hut protested, he withdrew his offer. Everyone was drunk, there wasn't a woman in sight and, now finely tuned, travel alarm bells were ringing. The taxi driver was now asking for more money than our initial agreement. We decided that the best thing to do was to miss out the gas craters and reluctantly get back in the taxi to continue on to Ashgabat.

We arrived into Ashgabat late. Wandering around the empty streets of this bizarre white marble city we tried to find a reasonably priced hotel room. In the end we gave up and paid $60 for a shabby Soviet era room - the most we had paid on our trip so far. That evening we scoured the streets for some food. We ended up in an area with some ex-pat bars, the first of which was full of prostitutes, the second, in which we ate, was empty. Walking back to the hotel we popped into a corner shop to buy some bread and jam for breakfast. The shopkeeper followed James around the shop as if he was about to steal something, then short changed us when we paid.

The following day we were determined explore the city. The streets were eerily quiet. Roads were lined with government buildings which had names such as the Ministry of Fairness and each of these white marble monuments had a soldier on duty outside. If we strayed too close to the building the soldier would come running over, blowing his whistle and order us to move away. There was nothing visible to mark the point at which one was too close, so as we walked down the street we were followed by a succession of frantically waving soldiers. Other misdemeanours that we found made the soldiers twitchy included getting our cameras out to take photos. We had read that the police didn't like tourists taking pictures of the Presidential Palace but only so much of a wave of a camera in its vicinity would send a soldier scurrying over. Walking through the deserted parks we tried to find the Arch of Neutrality, on top of which the famous gold statue of Turkmenbashi rotated to always face the sun, but as rumoured, it had been removed and just an empty concrete pit remained. The ridiculous statue which depicts the baby Turkmenbashi on a gold globe between the horns of a bull, sited above the Earthquake Museum (which was closed), does still happily exist.

As we explored the city on foot we were suddenly aware of the sound of thousands of voices all chanting together. Following the noise we came across a military parade on the parade square outside the Presidental Palace. We were not allowed to get too close and could not, of course, take any photos but the police did allow us to watch from a distance. Thousands of soldiers marched in perfect time, platoons and companies of men and women in military uniform. The most spectacular sight, however, was of the Akhal-Teke horses a Turkmen breed of horse. Rarely seen out of Turkmenistan, Akhal-Teke horses were brown, bay and grey but with the most incredible golden sheen, like nothing I'd ever seen before. Their riders were no horsemen, sitting on the animals like sacks of potatoes and flapping at their sides which sent them skittering across the parade square.

Leaving the parade square we were left wondering why a supposedly neutral country needs such a big army. As continued our walk towards Turkmenbashi's World of Fairy Tales we past rows of military trucks which prompted us to be trailed by a not particularly conspicuous army officer. The World of Fairy Tales is a large attraction in the middle of the city. To clear the space for it to be built hundreds of people were evicted from their homes. The day we visited it was closed, apparently it only opened on Tuesdays between 3-5 pm. The guard let us peek through the entrance, revealing a scruffy fairground.

International opinion is that Turkmens are fairly content with the political situation, they get free gas and an allocation of petrol free, supposedly appeasing them into tolerating the dictatorship. The system of free utilities leads to incredible waste. For example, whilst gas is free matches are not and this results in people lighting stoves and leaving them on to conserve matches. With respect to a contented society, we found this not to be true on several occasions. In Ashgabat a taxi driver spontaneously launched into a tirade of criticism about the government. On a second occasion, a driver in a 4 by 4 stopped to give us a lift so that he could tell us his thoughts about the government. "This is no better than Saddam or Gaddaffi," he said, "you must write about how bad it is in Turkmenistan when you get home."

Having seen the sights of Ashgabat we didn't feel like staying another night in an over-priced hotel so headed to the train station to try to buy a sleeper ticket west to Turkmenbashi on the Caspian Sea. The first three cashiers at the station all told us the train was full and the best we could hope for was a seated ticket for our 11 hour journey. Having resigned ourselves to not getting a bed, the forth cashier we spoke to decided that there were in fact sleeper tickets available and we snapped them up.

Turkmenbashi is a tiny town on the edge of Caspian. Hot and dusty it had little to offer the tourist apart from pleasant sea views, crystal clear waters and over-priced hotel rooms. Luckily the notoriously irregular ferry was leaving that evening, so after a day wandering around the town we boarded the ferry and continued west.

Turkmen desert

How to transport a sheep Turkmen style

Someone is watching you James!

Typical Ashgabat municipal building

Park in Ashgabat - note the absence of any people

Ashgabat - marble city, gold statues, empty streets

Me with some women in traditional dress

Turkmen visas - a riddle wrapped in an enigma

You will never get a transit visa if you specify exiting via the Caspian Sea - ferry is too unreliable.

Turkmenistan is closed for all of October.

Konye Urgench is a restricted area, you can't enter Turkmenistan there.

These were just some of the things we were told in the months leading up to applying for our Turkmen visa. There were so many myths and contradictions about the visa process that we didn't know what to believe, and by the time we were stood outside the Turkmen embassy, with our passport photos at the ready, we had pretty much written off our overland dream.

However, the reality is that many travellers require a Turkmen visa, as it is a key crossing point on a overland trip, due to other alternative itineraries having to include crossing Afghanistan. We therefore knew it was possible. This post is about how we did it, to try to dispell a further myths. Having said that, it certainly isn't an exact science and, as always, is subject to constant change.

To begin with there were a few things that all Centrel Asian overlanders agreed upon. Firstly, that there were two sorts of Turkmen visa, a transit visa (usually 5 days) and a tourist visa (longer than 5 days). The requirment for a tourist visa is that you are on an organised tour with a Turkmen accredited guide - read minder. The consequence of this is that it is expensive. Most people travel on a transit visa and although this only allows a short amount of time in the country, there isn't the expense or restrictions of a tour and, as we found out, there's not much to see in Turkmenistan anyway, so 5 days is plenty! Secondly, everyone also agrees that you require the visa of the country you are exiting to, for most people this is Iran but for us is was Azerbaijan, before you can obtain a Turkmen visa.

Now this is my advice for getting a Turkmen visa once in Central Asia -

1. If you are in Dushanbe, Tajikistan apply for a Turkmen visa here as they are very helpful. There was only a small queue outside the embassy at 9 am when we got there (no need to go earlier).
2. AVOID the Turkmen embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan at all costs.  
3. You require 1 x passport photo, 1 x photocopy of your passport, 1 x photocopy of your exit country visa. You also need to know the exact dates you wish to travel in Turkmenistan and the border crossings where you will be entering and exiting Turkmenistan. 
4. You can apply for a Turkmen visa in Dushanbe and pick it up in Tashkent, this is what we did.
5. We applied for an express visa service in Dushanbe which meant that the visa would be ready for collection in 7 days time.

Our application for a Turkmen visa in Dushanbe was possible due to discovering that there was infact a Azerbaijani Embassy in the city, despite it not being mentioned in any guidebooks. We managed to get this visa on the spot, although the embassy official ignored the dates that we requested and we had to get him to change them (tipex was his solution). In Dushanbe we applied for the 7 day express visa service in the Turkmen Embassy. Once we had got to Tashkent we found out that the embassy there was only allowing a 21 day standard visa service, another reason to AVOID Turkmen related visa stuff in Tashkent. Back in Dushanbe the first official told us that we would not be able to cross into Turkmenistan via the Konye Urgench border crossing but we asked again and the second official allowed it - so always worth asking twice. They didn't bat an eyelid at our request to exit Turkmenistan via Turkmenbashi (i.e. by ferry across the Caspian Sea), disproving the idea that they would be concerned about the ferry being delayed. You only pay for the visa on collection and I believe that it is also possible to change the visa start date when submitting your passport after visa approval but you might want to double check this.

The procedure for applying or picking up your visa at the Turkmen Embassy in Tashkent.

1. Get to the embassy by at least 6 am and put your name on the list (a piece of paper at the security gate). We got there at 6 am and were 17th & 18th on the list.
2. DO NOT leave the embassy gate because at an undetermined time (it was around 9 am for us) some embassy staff will read out the names on the list and you will be asked to show that you are present with your passport (a French woman managed to just show photocopies of hers and a friends as the friend was at the Iranian Embassy trying to get visas there). From this a second list is made. If you do not get on the second list you do not get into the embassy.
3. It was at around 10.30 am when we were called into the embassy to find out if we had been approved for a visa.
4. For those PICKING UP visas your passport is taken off you in the morning (so make sure you have a photocopy in case the police check you during the day) and then you have to return to the embassy to collect your passport and, hopefully, visa at around 4.30 pm.

What actually happened when we gave in our passports that mornıng was that the embassy officials were not aware of our application. In Russian we explained that we had applied in Dushanbe. After they had made a few phone calls it got sorted out, however we needed to refill out all the forms, including more passport photos which we didn't have with us. The embassy staff allowed us to bring photos when we returned to pick up the visa. A Danish motorcyclist, Morten, who was with us was refused a visa - no reason given. Apart from poor Morten's visa outcome, we actually found the Turkmen embassies to be a lot more flexible than we imagined. A french couple we met outside the Embassy in Tashkent had applied for their Turkmen visas (3 weeks earlier) without their ongoing visa as they were having difficulty obtaining their Iranian visa. The Turkmen embassy had allowed them to apply on the understanding that they would have to show the Iranian visa on collection of their Turkmen visa. Again proving that it is always worth asking. Once we found out that we had been approved we left our passports at the Embassy and returned at 4 pm where we waited an hour before being called into the embassy to collect our passport with visa. Then a couple of beers to celebrate!!!