I have mentioned in previous posts that central asia is the world’s epicenter of bureacrazy regarding visas. These countries used to be part of the Soviet union, but while the Soviet union is long gone, its bureacratic legacy remains unchanged. I think the ”stan-countries” actually are happy to recieve visitors who spend their money in their countries, but that they at the same time have difficulties to shrug off the Soviet bureacratic tradition. Visas are expensive and applications are processed slowly. Where and when the application will be quickest, simplest and cheapest is the given topic of conversation among travelers going into the area.

If the central asian states want us to come, but can’t get rid of their soviet heritage, China is very much the opposite. China doesn’t care about foreign money and is not too happy having western visitors in its troubled western regions. China also prefer travelers to apply for visa in their home country which causes problems to us since the visa’s validity would have run out by the time we arrive to the chinese border.

Applying for chinese visas in central asia has become much more difficult the last few years and all travelers have different ways to get the precious chinese visas. Our solution was to apply for an extra passport and leave it at home. When it was time to apply we had to present bookings for flights and hotels and in order not to create any suspicions we made it look like we were going to the normal tourist destinations in the eastern part of the country.

Our chinese visas were granted a few days ago and this was a great relief to us. My mother has now sent the passports with DHL courier service to Baku where we will continue by applying for visas to Uzbekistan and Kazakstan. The Uzbek visa is a bit of a hassle though since it will be valid only for 30 days set in the visa and not for 30 days during a for example two month period.

The ferry across the Caspian Sea remains very unreliable and we expect to have to wait for a week until we can board it. When we have landed on Kazakh soil we will have 8 days of ride through the dessert before reaching the border of Uzbekistan. Since Uzbekistan is 2000 km long we want to enter on day one of our visas validity and all this will require a very careful analysis before we set the date we would like to enter the country.