A few of the skills you have to posses in order to achieve something like driving your own car around the world include good research abilities and more importantly patience. Quite a bit of research goes on behind the scenes here at TWBR as we are constantly trying to gather as much information as possible about our current situation, but more importantly, what lies down the road. Now that we have nearly tackled the seemingly insurmountable pile of bureaucratic paperwork and procedures here in China, (it is nearly as much work to get out as it is to get in!) we have been spending some time trying to make the road through Central Asia as smooth as possible, at least in terms of paperwork.
One of the main tasks in ensuring that things go smoothly is ensuring that we have the proper permissions and visas to pass through the "stans" without any problems. Conveniently, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have good diplomatic representation in Beijing. However, before we start to tackle the process of locating and visiting these diplomatic missions, something Lonely Planet won’t help you with in the case of more obscure countries, you first have to know what you need in order to obtain a visa.
The easy to find consular section of the Turkmenistan Embassy
Many of the CIS countries require you to have a letter of invitation either from an "inviting organization" or from an individual you intend to visit while you are there. In most cases this is a formality and the letter can be obtained from a number of different internet based companies, but sometimes, things can get a little tricky. For example, we found a company called Visa to Russia that issues invitation letters for Russia. The plan was to then take the invitation letter to the Russian Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to get our visas issued before we headed north into Siberia. The process was easy enough… we determined that a double entry business visa would be sufficient, so we paid our $90 and in a few weeks, the company sent us an electronic copy of the letter. The problem is, the company informed us that the Russian Embassy might not take an electronic copy, but may instead require us to present the original invitation letter. The company does not contact consulates directly, and when we tried, the e-mails listed on the Russian Embassy website do not work and no one seems to answer the phone. Ultimately we will have to physically go the embassy, see if they will accept the electronic invitation letter and if not, have the company send the original to us in UB via UPS for an additional $75.
Getting visas for the other Central Asia countries also takes a little bit of investigative work. We determined that it is a lot easier and cheaper to obtain transit visas for Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan than it is to obtain a standard tourist visa. The time they allow you to spend in the country on a transit visa is not that long (5-7 days) but since we were planning on cruising through those places quickly anyway, it seemed like the logical option. In order to get a transit visa, however, you need to show proof of onward travel. We thought that presenting the Carnets would be sufficient, but the embassies only seem to accept proof in the form of a visa from the country you will be transiting to. At the Azerbaijan Embassy in Beijing, they informed us that a visa from Georgia would be required to get an Azerbaijan transit visa.
Got to love Soviet era interior design
Armed with that information, we went to the Georgia Embassy the next day only to find out that we, as United States citizens, don’t need visas. We should have determined this before, but sometimes you learn the hard way and end up wasting several hours of your time. We tried to see if the Georgians could give us some sort of written statement that we could take back to the Azerbaijan Embassy but they would only give us a phone number to call if we ran into problems. The phone number proved to be valuable because the next day we returned to the Azerbaijan Embassy and were able to get the process started for our transit visas after they called the Georgia Embassy to confirm we did not need visas there. But again, more work was needed as the Azerbaijan Embassy did not accept cash… they required us to go to the main branch of the Bank of China and deposit the money for the visas directly into their account. This was another long and tedious process that warrants another blog entry in and of itself.
Needless to say, we got our Azerbaijan transit visas in Beijing and this will make our lives a lot easier. We do not need visas for quite some time after we depart Azerbaijan and armed with the Azerbaijan visa, we are now in much better position to get visas for Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan when we arrive in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Ultimately, we spent the better part of three mornings driving around the diplomatic compounds of the CIS countries in Beijing… busy with busywork.
