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This is a report of a solo-trip to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, undertaken during July/August 1994.

Turkmenistan

Pierre.Flener
2004-04-03 19:02:45

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queue of passports, although I'm a little reluctant to leave mine within easy reach of just about anybody. But this turns out unjustified, as the waiting crowd is scrupulously honest and always shows me where my passport is in the queue when I drop by to inspect how fast it is moving. Most people having reservations, it seems that the standby queue is not moving at all. But time doesn't matter here, some people apparently wait since yesterday!

As I wander around, asking questions as to the price of the ticket and about my other alternatives, I collect even more contradictions, and find out that the locals pay $1 (or was it $6?) for the flight, whereas I would have to pay a whopping $67.

After a few hours of waiting, I decide to discard the train option, especially that I have no clue how expensive my then necessary re-entrance into Uzbekistan would be, and even to sacrifice the $67 so as to get the hell out of this nightmare. So I seek out various important looking people of the airport staff and convey to them that I absolutely need to be on the next flight out, no matter how many people are in front of me in the standby queue. They all promise, although my "need" is only based on my wanting to have more time to explore Iran, but nobody delivers, despite my amateurish attempts of bribing them (I have little experience in this field).

Various Turkmens offer to sell me their tickets (which means they would have to enter the day-long standby queue, but I have come to believe that queuing is a national pastime here), even at quite realistic prices, but when I see that entering the waiting hall involves passport checks, I wonder how a ticket for Ali Osman would match with my passport and looks. Again, as an afterthought, I could have tried to bribe my way through that obstacle, but I was in a near state of panic and couldn't think rationally most of the time.
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