2013.08.03 — Saturday – Pulled over 4 times, two in Kazakhstan, two in Uzbekistan. Spent 7hrs searching for a border crossing. 20 hrs on the road in all. We made it to Uzbekistan, where we slept on hotel lobby couches.

Shortly after leaving camp we had our first run-in with the police on the day. They pulled us over for not having our lights on, which was indeed an oversight; we knew the rules. It was 9 AM and we’d just hit the road. Two packs of cigarettes (which we carry for bribes/gifts) were in plain sight, so we lost those and were sent on our way. Made decent progress to Uzbek border from Camp Kazakh IV.  The roads alternated between paved and not-paved at high frequency. However, the main border crossing was closed to car traffic for some reason.  We were pulled over again as we set out in search of an alternative route. This time the officer just asked us where we were going. He then handed the reigns over to his friend who was trying to sell us Uzbek currency. Pretty shady business operation.  We spent the rest of the day scouring the border for an entry point, which we eventually found thanks to a fellow customer at a gas station; he was passing near the one suitable border crossing and let us follow him for 60km. Searching for the border put Jon Hay over the 7,000 mile mark. It took 7hrs to find what we were looking for.

The border itself was very unpleasant. The very first gate operator tried to get us to pay him in exchange for opening the gate — we were constantly harassed for money and gifts. The Kazakh side of the process was very loose and unofficial, in stark contrast to the Kazakh-Russia border we crossed a few days earlier. The customs building into which we were directed was in disrepair. We navigated a path illuminated by flickering lights, stepping over hoses and ducking under coords as we passed border agents watching TV and listening to music. The surplus of unused furniture was stacked in the hallways. We were led into an office and offered a seat on a couch which was must have been purchased second hand from a frat house. We had to do a little paperwork, but spent most of the time pretending not to understand that they were asking for money. One agent snatched Ian’s phone from his shirt pocket and took his time looking through all of the pictures, asking for the occasional explanation in Russian. “Yep, I took that picture” seemed to be a satisfactory response. They rifled through our car a bit. But they were in search of things they wanted as opposed to things we weren’t allowed to take out of the country. The agent conducting the search tried to get us to give him one of our video cameras. It seemed at one point that he was just going to take it. Not much we could have done about that. But we escaped with all of our belongings. In between the borders two truck drivers entering from Uzbekistan got out of their trucks and started to fight; presumably there was dispute in the line order. A couple other truckers got involved, and eventually a border agent entered the scuffle. Issue was not resolved by the time we were passed on to the Uzbeks. The Uzbek side was not much better. Lots of paper work. We had to take everything out of the car and send it through an x-ray machine. They did a poor job communicating to us the border procedure, and we tried to leave before completing all of the steps. Back we went. And when it seemed we’d finally made it through we encountered some cops with a gate who wanted us to give them “souvenirs”. They wanted, in particular, a Manchester United jersey, which we most certainly did not have. They preferred Rooney. After much feigned ignorance they let us pass.

We drove through the night to Samarkand. Ian handed the wheel to Matt when his wits took a nose dive. Signs were few and far between, but we managed to follow the main road the entire way. Passed through a number of police checkpoints. We were pulled over at two of them — the only two with unoccupied police officers. The first of these was a particular hassle for Matt. Ian was ordered to wait in the car. Luckily Matt had no dollars or euros on his person when they led him into their silly little checkpoint hut. They took some Kazakh money from his wallet only to return it later. They were very interest in his ten-pound watch which was/is held together with duct tape. But once again we escaped with all of our belongings. We were in no condition to sniff out an address in a new city, so when we decided we had found the city center of Samarkand, we flagged down a taxi to lead us to said address. Ideal Hotel. And we parked right next to a Swedish rally car, which was the first car we’d seen since the road between Volgograd and Astrakahn. Good group of guys. We had missed our reservation by a few days, but the fine folks at Ideal (mostly children under 12 who learned English in school) were willing to accommodate us. However there were no vacancies when we arrived at 4:30 AM, so they let us sleep in the lobby for a few hours until a room freed up. We stored our bags in the kitchenette. It was all pretty weird, given the layout.