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Kyrgyzstan was an amazing place and quite a refreshing change from Kazakhstan. We immediately encountered change from the minute we crossed the border in the middle of a blizzard to the friendly locals who helped us out in Osh. Kyrgyzstan offered up dramatic mountain scenery and friendly faces. Kyrgyzstan was also where we met up with the expedition members of Trabant Trek. We had been exchanging information about overland travel with the Trabank guys for several months and Kyrgyzstan happen to be where our paths ultimately crossed… the Trabant guys were headed east on their way to Cambodian in old, Russian plastic cars and we were headed west towards Europe.

Man, they were everywhere. I have never seen so many cops in my entire life, most of whom seemed to be doing nothing of real significance aside from creating problems instead of solving them. Where pray tell might I be talking about? Well, I am talking about Russia and the former Soviet republics. You would think that with the number of police they have milling about in the cities and hiding behind buildings and bushes in the countryside in these countries that crime would be virtually nonexistent. Unfortunately, many of the cops are not there to protect and serve but instead are there to profit and make things unpleasant. You know something is not right when a traffic cop is driving a Benz to work from his mansion on the hill. 

I can’t say we weren’t prepared for a few encounters with cops on the take, but I definitely was not expecting to see as many as I did. Fortunately for us, we managed to make it through the minefield of questionable cops relatively unscathed. Overall, you can not really predict what types of cops you are going to encounter. Travel blogs are full of verbiage about "police on the prowl" and getting fleeced for simply having a pulse. Unfortunately very few sites offer any real information on what to expect and how much, probably because everyone has a different experience when driving through these areas.

The Uzbek cops were just waiting to see who showed up at the flash Toyotas parked in Samarkand

If there is one rule to abide by: play dumb and ask a lot of questions. Cops on the take don’t like to do a lot of paperwork, so the more documents you shove in their face and the more receipts you ask for, the more likely they are to get annoyed with you and move onto the next sucker. Simply saying no and goodbye repeatedly in the local language was enough of a Jedi mind trick to avoid some unanticipated ATM withdrawals. If anything, hold out for as long as possible… the more you waste their time, the more retirement fund contributors drive by. Who knows, maybe if enough people hold out, they will be forced into doing some actual police work. In places like Yosemite and Yellowstone, they have signs that read, "Don’t feed the bears." If the bears learn that people will feed them, the more they will want to interact with them… the more people feed the corrupt cops, the more they will want to interact with them.

"If you want to give me a ‘ticket,’ you’ll have to fill out a lot of paperwork."

In sum, the shadiest cops we encountered were in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Fortunately, the dumbest cops we encountered were also in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, so we were able to wiggle our way out of virtually all shakedown attempts. By the time the cops tried to levy a bogus charge in order to leave Azerbaijan, we had become veterans of the game and they didn’t know what hit them. Uzbekistan took the cake for the number of checkpoints as we encountered an average of about four per day during the week and a half we were there. We did have some good experiences of note… the cops in Almaty, Kazakhstan were genuinely interested in helping us when we got robbed and in Uzbekistan, even though they have more cops that actual citizens, the police we encountered were all very friendly, especially when greeted with an "assalam alaikum" handshake.

We started keeping track of the number of times we got pulled over and the number of checkpoints we had to clear, but after the ink went dry in the pen, realized we would get writers cramp trying to document all of our encounters. In the end, we spent a little over a month in Russia and former Soviet republics. In that time, we got pulled or waved over approximately a dozen times, completely ignored at least four more, drove through about 25 checkpoints and managed to get through it all for only a little over $40, most of which came from my speeding ticket in the last 10 kilometers of Azerbaijan. The speeding ticket technically should not count since the guy did have a radar gun, although it probably hasn’t been recalibrated in quite a while. 

Believe it or not, time seems to fly by pretty quickly on the World by Road. Even though we were hiking through the sweltering heat and humidity of the jungles of Endau Rompin Malaysia over five months ago, it basically seems like yesterday. The scenery did not change much and the temperature essentially remained the same throughout most of SE Asia and coupled with having to wait to get into China, it felt like we were in a time warp. When we reached higher elevations outside of Kunming, it was the first time in quite a while that we actually could and needed to wear long pants and shirts. According to the calendar in Mongolia, it was fall, but a lack of trees throughout most of the country still did not provide any visual indication of what time of year it was. Moving northwest into Russia, the leaves on the trees were starting to change, but the sub zero temperatures we experienced nearly every night in Mongolia gave way to milder ones as we lost elevation. In Kazakhstan, the vibrant orange, yellow and red leaves suddenly reminded us that we were getting late into fall, but it was still shorts and t-shirt weather there, so it still felt like we were in a bit of a time warp.

It really did not start to hit us that winter was approaching until crossing into Kyrgyzstan, and hit us it did… literally. About 10 kilometers from the Kyrgyz border, it started to snow and it was obvious that the rain we had experienced in Kazakhstan the previous night had been a full-fledged blizzard just across the border. It was difficult to follow the road in spots and for some people, even more difficult to stay on it. At the border, not much was going on and a few of the guards seemed more concerned about the snowman they were constructing than what was in our trucks. Clearing customs in Kyrgyzstan was a snap, but I was worried they were not going to let us in because of the amount of snow on the road ahead of us. In fact, there were at least two or three cars that had gone off the road at the border itself. Luckily for us, and some other stranded motorists, we had our Toyotas. Whether we used manpower or horsepower, we helped quite a few people who had gotten stuck in the snow. We actually managed to get stuck once ourselves… trying in vain to assist a car that had skidded down an embankment. Fortunately, with the aid of some helpful Kyrgyz locals and border guards with assault rifles still slung over their shoulders, we were not stuck for long. Once we got back on the road, I reminisced about getting stuck in the mud in Cambodia and how it did not seem that long ago. In the grand scheme of things, I guess driving down that Cambodian road was not that long ago. However, once I looked out the window, the hot, steamy jungles of Cambodia could not have been any farther away. 

The remote Kyrgyz border outside of Kegen

The snow was no problem for the Thundra

Don’t blame the Toyota… it was user error

Soon though, everyone was all smiles

I have to admit, our time spent in Kazakhstan was less than to be desired. A series of events, albeit isolated, left a pretty bad taste in our collective TWBR mouths and we were extremely ready to leave. I do not want to take our experiences in Almaty, Kazakhstan and use them to generalize the entire country because I am sure our experiences were isolated… at least I hope so. The fact of the matter is, when you do have bad experiences they tend to stick with you for a while. So as to prevent our misfortunes from permanently burning a negative image of the country in our minds, we packed up what was left of our stuff and headed south into Kyrgyzstan.

Let the healing begin

What a difference a few hundred kilometers can make. In fact, just getting out of the hustle and bustle of Almaty aided in the mental healing process that needed to begin sooner rather than later. Once we were back out in the Kazakh countryside, we experienced much more hospitality. In Almaty, we were charged $7 for a dirty towel (which is what I thought typically happens when you use one), but in the countryside, a farmer worked around our tents even though we were camping in his field, apparently in an effort not to disturb us.

Even the local labor force came out to welcome us

Crossing the border into Kyrgyzstan further aided in restoring our faith in humanity. People were actually smiling and waved as we passed through their village or town. Instead of dodging oncoming traffic, speeding for no apparent reason, locals on horseback were racing along side the Tundra shouting out a welcoming "hello!"  In Kazakhstan, we were refused a room at the cheapest hotel in Almaty because we must have looked "undesirable" even though our money was still green, but the family who ran the guesthouse in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan wanted us to join them at their table for dinner and in Bishkek, the owners of the guesthouse went out of their way to help us find out more information about getting visas for Uzbekistan.

The healing process continues for us here in Uzbekistan. The people here are extremely friendly and genuinely curious about where we are from. Small children, parents and grandparents alike all wave and greet you with a warm hello. In fact, I think we received more waves and heard more hellos in the first hour of being in Uzbekistan than we have on the entire trip… all this in a country that we were supposed to be weary of. The food here is amazing and I am actually beginning to feel better about wandering out of view of our trucks. Unfortunately, all of the car alarms here in Toshkent sound exactly like the ones on the Thundra and Little Pepe, so I still wake up at night and run out into the street in my boxer shorts to see if everything is o.k. when I hear one go off.

The local Uzbek welcome wagon met us at the border

Ultimately, if you are in a bad situation, the best thing you can do is try to get out of it and for us, that meant moving on quicker than we had planned. In our experience on The World by Road, sometimes moving on means moving on into more unpredictability and uncertainty. We were hoping that in this case, moving on would be positive and as far as we can tell, it has been just that. At a time when all of us had lost a lot of our faith in humanity, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were just what the doctor ordered.

Hello everyone. In-between trying to figure out visas for the rest of the Central Asia countries we are attempting to cross, still taking account for what exactly got stolen from us in Almaty and meeting some new friends, I thought I would give everyone a quick update. We are currently in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and we like it here a lot. It is a nice change from Kazakhstan and after some of our experiences there, it was great to get out.

TWBR and Sergi in Karakol, KG

The border crossing into Kyrgyzstan was one of the most uneventful crossings we have had to date, but the fresh foot of snow on the ground made for an action packed couple of hours as we helped to pull cars out of ditches and snow banks upon arrival into Stan number two. We spent a few nights in Karakol, a town on the SE corner of the second largest freshwater lake in the world and enjoyed the company of Sergi and his family at Yak Tours Guesthouse.

After leaving Karokol, we slowly made our way to Bishkek, stopping along the way to help some people in a small village put out a fire that had started in their hay barn. Unfortunately we were unable to prevent the near total loss of their winter stores due to the intensity of the fire and lack of easily accessible water or a fire brigade. It was a humbling experience for everyone involved.

Bouey working hard, but in the end it was too little too late

In Bishkek, we met up with the guys and gal from Trabant Trek. Three Americans, two guys from Spain and the UK and a girl from Hungary are driving three very small, unpredictable Russian cars all the way to Cambodia. We started talking with the guys from Trabant Trek back when we were in Malaysia to exchange ideas about how to get across China, so meeting up in Kyrgyzstan was pretty cool.

Anyway, we are off to get our visas for Uzbekistan right now and then try figure out a way across the Caspian Sea without ending up on a rusting, partially sinking Russian freighter or being held captive by its inebriated crew. Internet is fairly cheap here in the Stans, but the kicker is they charge you by the MB for data transfer… our negotiating skills, as well as our Russian are getting better, so maybe we can avoid the transfer fees and get some more photos and blogs up for everyone out there following us.  Oh yeah, the TWBR crew is now four strong… Steve and myself, our friend Karie from back home in Denver and Tash from the red center of Australia who joined up with us when we said we were fleeing Almaty.

2 Toyotas = 3 Trabants