We had our earliest start yet, 6am as we headed to the border. We stopped in Konye Urgench which is a pilgrimage town and the large madrases (universities) and what was once the tallest minaret in central Asia survived the passing through of Genghis Khan. It was a bit of an odd tourist attraction as unless you bought a tour ticket you couldn't even walk close to the buildings let alone take a photo of the outside. It was really expensive to I was pretty happy sitting by the truck with an ice cream!
We followed a taxi to the border as the GPS didn't show the roads, Pete hadn't been to it and neither had our local guide. We made it though and were stamped with ease out of Turkmenistan. Getting though to Uzbekistan wasn't so easy though. We annoyed the border officials by making our lunch when we thought that they had stopped for theirs....turns out they hadn't and then the customs checks started. We had entry stamps in our passports so immigration would let us in but customs insisted on checking bags. An absolute nightmare when everything takes so long to pack. At first they were just interested in prescription medication so we were all ready to get out our malaria tablets and such like and the queue was moving quickly until Kaye was found with random medication that she had picked up from India including a single Valium tablet. This single tablet was to cause a lot of extra sitting around at the border as it is illegal in Uzbekistan if not prescribed. With Kaye facing prison I had dug out my tablets and handed them over but the official having seem what Kaye had, decided he wanted me to empty my whole bag. I wasn't too impressed having just repacked it in Ashgabat. I was quickly passed on and left the office with a bag full of all my stuff to repack on no mans land concrete. Kaye was made to destroy her tablet and we left after 4.5 hours of getting to the border and now needing to find a random side of the road bushcamp. A long day for all!
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