Monday, 21 September 2026

 

Start: Osh (KY) 10:00

Arrival: Kokand (UZ) 19:00/18:00 local time in Uzbekistan

 

Total: 185 km

 

 

After a hot night, I awoke feeling not so great. The breakfast room was again rather so-so. Dirty dishes on every table, food didn't look appetizing at all. I took a stale muffin but couldn't get it down. Odd cold salads and sweet stuff on the sideboard. Just smelling the food made me feel sick. "Let's go", Sonia said. Our bathroom stank of sewer, so we brushed our teeth in the bedroom and just ran in to spit the water out. On to new frontiers.

 

 

 

We actually reached the border much sooner than expected. In fact, if there had not been a gate, I'd have mistaken it for a normal market street. As it was, an old woman in a military uniform screamed at me in Russian to back the car up and get in line. She took it upon herself to guide me exactly how and where I should go. Once we were in line, a little girl knocked on my window and held out a painted hand. Gypsies. That was a first one in Central Asia.

 

Directly behind us, a huge overlander pulled into line. Licence plate: Berlin, Germany! We got to talking, and he explained that they had done the Pamir Highway and the dirt road to the Aral Sea. "Unusual car you've chosen to explore Central Asia", he remarked. "Not so unusual, every third Kyrgyz is driving a Civic", I laughed. "We're sticking to paved roads. Plenty adventurous enough for us."

 

The line never moved, the gate remained closed. Sonia got out and changed some Kyrgyz som into Uzbek som. The old woman was still gesticulating and screaming about. Most people ignored her, some gave her money. Odd. She tried to boss the guards around, but they ignored her too. Was she even an official? Every fool and mutterer can buy military fatigues. She waved at me again, screaming: "Your car is too much to the left. Back up." "I think we're fine now", I answered in Russian, rather loud and clear. "Da", she muttered and went on to harass someone else. Wow, I really had not expected this to work. If only the Gypsy girls were as easily deterred.

 

When the gate finally opened, Sonia was once more shooed into the pedestrian tunnel. I moved up to the passport control. "Vehicle import papers", a young border guard demanded. Huh? I rummaged through my papers. Where the.... Sonia had taken them - again! I explained the mishap to the guard. He shrugged. "Ask her when you see her." I strained my eyes. Sonia had long passed the first part of the tunnel. I could not very well run across the border to talk to her. "Call her", the guard suggested. "She has no phone", I explained, cursing her inwardly. Suddenly, the German guy pointed to the far end of the tunnel. Sonia! I waved her over, she pushed her way towards me and we exchanged documents. The guard grinned when I handed him the paper. "I see you found her." Why on earth was she not allowed to stay in the car, if later she could just run back on foot and hand me stuff?

 

Because of the back and forth, I was now at the far end of the line. A Kyrgyz driver began chatting with me. For some reason, he thought I was headed to China. Wrong direction, mate! Sonia later told me the German overlander wanted to eventually cross into China. Maybe they'd thought two European cars behind each other must be travelling together. Meanwhile, the guy from Berlin told me about his route so far. They had crossed from Georgia into Russia and then Kazakhstan, the route we wanted to do on our way back. And he did not speak a single word of Russian! Wow, surviving in a Russian environment, if only for a few days, without any command of even the Cyrillic alphabet - kudos for adventurousness and mental strength!

 

The border checks took forever, not because a lot was checked - it wasn't - but because everything was just chaotic beyond belief. Finally I had to take every single thing out of our car, let their dog sniff around for drugs, and put everything in again. No idea how Sonia managed to find a place for everything. Standing there in 35 degree heat, with no breakfast and a badly upset stomach, all I could do was look alive and not pass out. I threw everything in helter skelter, got behind the wheel and was finally in Uzbekistan, where I found my sister chatting to a Russian overlander who had already been to Luxembourg, to a biker festival. "She consoled me when I was worried sick for you", Sonia complained. "You took forever and I was stuck in this heat and din and market chaos stink."

 

Indeed, the chaos right behind the border crossing was unbelievable. We needed a car insurance and a guy waved us onto a parking lot where every inch was filled up with cars. I was getting claustrophobic. After much screaming at me, I had finally parked the car, squeezed out and headed to a booth saying "avtostravka". We handed our passports and car papers to the guy inside and waited. And waited. At one point, he said the insurance would be 140,000 Uzbek som, payable in cash. So we found a shady guy and changed a tiny bit of money, knowing full well that the rate would be horrible. After about an hour of staring at his screen and pushing our passports about, he started serving other people. We stood there in the sun and stench of shashlik grills, asking repeatedly what took him so long. In the end, he gave us back the papers. "You cannot have insurance in Uzbekistan as Luxembourgers. It's impossible." 90 minutes to finally tell us such barf?

 

Shaking of heat and exhaustion, I climbed behind the wheel. Parked in from all sides. I pushed the horn loudly. Once. Then again, and didn't stop. Not my proudest moment. I never honk. I very rarely lose my calm behind the wheel. But I was running on empty. Miraculously, after a mere 10 seconds, a guy moved his car, Sonia guided me out, I moved in the direction of the exit, a car blocked my path, I just stopped, sat there and screamed, very loudly. Another low point. Sonia waved. "You can do it." No, I'd be scratching a car. Without insurance, to boot. "Just inch forward." And I got past. Five centimeters to each side, but no scratch. A guy screamed at us to pay for the parking, we pushed the equivalent of 1 euro into his hand and finally left the craziness that was the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border behind.

 

At the next town, we stopped, I asked a random young man where one could buy car insurance. He motioned me inside a shop, the guy typed in my data and didn't mind me being a Luxembourger at all. Five minutes and we were all set. I could have kissed him!

 

Now for that hotel in Kokand. 140 kilometers, a breeze. Not on Uzbek roads, though. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan had pleasantly surprised us with much better-than-expected roads. Unfortunately, our streak of luck ran out in the Fergana Valley. Cracked, uneven, potholed, paving just simply missing for a few meters, and on top of that Uzbeks are not hesitant drivers. Veering right into your lane to avoid a pothole or a slow vehicle, erratic stops, backing up right there in the street, spontaneously creating new lanes. Maybe I was just tired and my nerves on a shoe-string, but I was just done with this devil-may-care attitude. And the icing on the cake: speed cameras and intersection-cameras flashing nonstop inside most towns. Either the fines were minuscule, or the government was getting rich on their crazy drivers.

 

 

 

At 6 o'clock we finally reached the hotel. And what a hotel it was! A small boutique hotel, an employee helpfully coming out to take our luggage, polite and friendly staff who knew what they were doing and took pride in their jobs. After ten days in Kyrgyzstan, I couldn't believe such a place even existed.

 

 

I was so exhausted, I couldn't speak, let alone get up and face yet another potentially disastrous restaurant. So Sonia went down and organized us some bread, smetana and a fruitplate. They had everything she asked for, the food was delivered exactly as ordered to the room by a polite young waiter who was delighted to chat a few words with us.

 

I ate most of the delicious fruit, but later in the evening had to throw it up again. My body had just been pushed too far today. I fell onto the bed, unable to find sleep, hot and nervous and sick.