It was our final day in Turkmenistan. We woke early & hit the road, literally. With Minty still in one piece & a day in lieu on our visa’s we decided we had better start heading towards Farap. We had been fairly lucky so far with border crossings & we didn’t want to leave anything to chance. If anything happened to Minty on the final road we would only have a day to get us & her out of the country. We also knew the border wasn’t 24 hours so with 300km to go we headed east again.
Before reaching Farap we stopped at the town of Turkmenbat to buy some more provisions. Somehow we ended up in the Turkmenistan’s equivalent of a trading estate & found a shop. I went into the shop whilst John waited outside. What was meant to be a quick stop ended up being about half an hour. The family who ran the shop were as inquisitive & friendly as everyone else we had met. Their daughter was learning English & wanted an opportunity to practice. I spoke to them for a while about our adventures in Turkmenistan & where we had come from & where our journey was taking us. In return they spoke about themselves & Turkmenistan. The more they spoke the more I loved Turkmenistan. I was eventually allowed to leave loaded with water, flatbread, crisps & the staple of all rallier’s diet – the choco pie. Just as I was about to walk out of the shop the daughter called me back & gave me a traditional Turkmenistan scarf. I felt privileged to be given something so traditional to their culture.
We left after saying our goodbyes & set off for the border crossing.
During the final kilometers of the journey we came across our first checkpoint. We were pulled over & I was told to go to a hut in the middle of the road. The official in the hut examined our paperwork & I was then told to pay him $5. Officials in Turkmenistan can be corrupt & I’m still not sure what it was for but I was given a receipt. I was then told to go to the hut next door with a bit of paper he had given me which I duly did. Next I was told to pay another $12 as a bridge fee. I couldn’t see a bridge but I wasn’t about to argue so handed over the money & I was given our documents back. We were back on the road again & we found the bridge.
The bridge we had just paid to cross was a series of pontoons joined together across a river. Next to it you could see a new bridge being built but for now the pontoons were the only means of crossing this wide river. Luckily for us when we were crossing there were only cars. Other ralliers had to cross with trucks. It was daunting as you could see there were gaps between each pontoon & I had visions of them coming apart & us sinking into the river. After what seemed an age we successfully reached the other side.
We knew we weren’t far from the border with Uzbekistan & we needed to empty the jerry can of petrol into Minty. Petrol is banned in Uzbekistan so our last opportunity to fill Minty up with 95 petrol was in Turkmenistan. With Minty full of fuel & the jerry can empty we headed down the road & met a junction with a river & bridge in front of us and a turning to our left.
My navigation skills through Turkmenistan hadn’t been too bad but visually I wasn’t sure which was the right road to take. The road straight on was new & what you would think a border road would look like. The road to our left was narrow & looked more like a lane. The map was showing the road on our left crossing the border so we took this. Driving along with cotton fields on our left & a huge river on our right being dredged it somehow still felt wrong. We were looking out for traffic with number plates from Ubekistan but we didn’t see anything. A couple of kilometers later we were directed down a narrower lane & in front of us were some large gates & a long queue of trucks! The one advantage of driving a car across borders is you can jump the queue if there are only trucks there. Bonus.
A military guy opened the gate for us after inspecting our passports & ushered us towards a big building sitting in what looked like a massive car park. We parked in front of the building & headed inside with no clue what we should be doing.
We found out it was lunchtime & the office was closed. We sat inside the building for a while enjoying the air-con but then decided to sit outside again. The office soon opened & between filling in mountains of paperwork again & producing the paperwork I was given when we entered at Turkmenbashi & the contents of Minty being searched we were soon stamped out of the country. We later found out if we had carried straight on we would have headed towards Afghanistan.
11 Countries down, 6 to go.
