Checklists

Before leaving on a 2 month journey towards Mongolia, it’s good to have a list of things that need to be done before you turn your back on your home and head towards the unknown. Here’s an excerpt from mine:

• Visas, Passport, and Letters of Invitation
  Yesterday a courier delivered a huge envelope containing my passport, which contains visas for Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, and China. And today I got a PDF with the letter of invitation for Turkmenistan in my inbox. The visa for Azerbaijan we will have to get on the way in Tbilisi (Georgia).

• The Car
  With Volvo as our sponsor, our ambulance will have superpowers and bring us to Mongolia without trouble. We have 7 spare tyres, tools, two repair manuals, and large amounts of duct tape. We also have various required and optional but recommended paperwork such as the Carnet de Passages, the International Motor Insurance Card, registration certificates, and even parking permits.

• Camping Equipment
  It’s quite unlikely that we’ll find hotels everywhere, therefore we also bring a tent, mattresses, sleeping bags, a petrol cooker, a water filter to make drinking water, chairs and a table. Not to forget Fredrik’s awesome 12 V DC coffee machine.

• Vaccinations and Pharmaceuticals
  It seems our route goes through areas infested with all kinds of scary diseases, including malaria, dengue fever, polio, tick-borne encephalitis, and typhoid. Last week, I went to the Travel Clinic at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at Zürich University, and got vaccinations for “everything”. They had to append yet another page to my vaccination certificate. There are no vaccinations for malaria and dengue fever, though. For the former, we have medication to treat it, for the latter we can only hope that the insect repellent is strong enough. We also have a big box containing everything ranging from cough syrup to antibiotics.

• Insurance
  I double checked that my Rega membership is still valid. For a mere 30 CHF per year, this awesome organization will come and fly you out of any remote place in the world should you become sick or injured. We also have a SPOT connect, which has an S.O.S button that will send our cries for help over satellite should we get into trouble.

• Mail, Bills, Plants, and Pets
  I have no pets, and my plants already died during my last trip. This reduces the problem to finding somebody to take care of my mail, scan the bills, and email them to me so I can pay them via internet banking (thanks, Dave!). Getting my mail re-routed for two months turned out to be simple, but also ridiculously expensive. It set me back almost the equivalent of 100 USD.

• Camera
  I got my camera and lenses serviced at Nikon (and, boy, did they have a lot to fix), and I also got myself a MacBook Air to have decent image processing capabilities en route. I rehearsed uploading pictures over crappy internet connections during the last weeks. With little success, but I’m getting better at it every time. You can look forward to lots of great pictures!

• Copies
  I made several photocopies of all important documents (passport, visas, letters of invitation, insurance, etc.). We’re still working on getting Russian translations for the most important documents. I also uploaded scans of all these documents to various places so I could print them should I loose both the original and the photocopy.

• Announce your Leave
  It’s surprising how many people still haven’t noticed what I’m up to. I frequently hear sentences like “You’re leaving for how long? To Mongolia? You mean, all the way?”. There were quite a few ad-hoc goodbye parties (“come on everyone, last chance to drink beer with Rico”). One of the most joyful moments was enabling the e-mail autoreply at work, stating that I’m out-of-office for two months.

There’s obviously a lot more than this, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted out on the way.

The Adventurists Department of Passing on Unusual Government Complications

About a week ago me and the chaps received a telegram from The Adventurists Department of Passing on Unusual Government Complications.

They had the pleasure of informing us of a small bureaucratic mishap. You see, originally we had decided to go from Azerbaijan, across the Caspian sea and then through Turkmenistan. Despite knowing that Turkmenistan is one of least friendly destinations in all of central Asia, a region noted in many a travelogue as an ideal holiday destination.

We were aware of this, but after procuring our trusted HMS Dreadnought and stacking up on pith helmets, it was decided that no obstacle was too large. That was of course before we were introduced to Azerbaijani–Turkmenistan border relations. To diagnose them as chilly is about the same as referring to the cold war as a bit of ruckus. To put it in other terms, they don’t appear to be on speaking terms. This it seems, also extends to their rules and regulations for crossing their respective borders.

Originally, we were told that the best we could get was a welcome, now please get the f!%#-out visa, otherwise known as a 5-day transit pass to lay people. This was to be given at the border, when we entered Turkmenbashi (yes, the previous president named one of the largest towns in Turkmenistan after himself — it’s that kind of country). Now, however, we have been informed by our good chums over at the Department of Passing on Unusual Government Complications, that Azerbaijan have changed their immigration laws. You now need a valid visa before you are allowed to get on the ferry to Turkmenbashi. Well, thank you very much. But as Churchill was so fond of saying, KBO. Unfazed by this minor setback, we have been informed of a number of possible solutions, one of them involves driving through Iran. (So for the first time in a few decades Iran might be part of a solution, who would have thought …) Another possible solution is the Turkmenistan embassy in Baku, noted for their service mindedness and for being open on Mondays and Fridays only. This is going to be great!

This sort of problem is exactly the reason why we decided on the Mongol Rally and if you are too worried about getting stuck for days on end in no-mans land or some random prison in Central Asia, don’t come, this is not the race for you, maybe you should consider a beach holiday in Spain?

Ahh, the joys of Central Asia. :)

Visa to Mongolia!

I just got a message from London that my application for a visa to Mongolia has been granted. Being the last one in the team to get this visa granted, this now means that all paperwork that is absolutely essential for our journey is done. There are still more visas and other paperwork that needs to be done, but nothing of that could derail the entire journey if it fails. This is how you spell relief!

Progress!

A few minutes ago, I got a text message telling me that my Mongolian visa got issued. This means I have my Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, and Mongolian visa, as well as Turkmen and Russian invites. I still need to get my visa for Azerbaijan and China, and, depending on how our plans in China turn out, for Kazakhstan and Russia.

I also got approval for two months of unpaid leave (a while ago, actually).

The last weeks were filled with rather unspectacular activities. We spent our time filling in visa forms, negotiating, and researching. We experienced a few setbacks: as we registered our ambulance with the organizers, we realized that by the rules, it is too old. And, after sending pictures as proof of it's good condition, the organizers asserted that it's not only too old, but also too rusty. We still think it's the best ambulance we can get, and even though we found another one that is in accordance with the rules, we believe our ambulance is superior and we will try very hard to make it work. Because none of us has the necessary skills, we set out to find a trustworthy mechanic. This mechanic needs to have the right adventurous attitude and the willingness to solve unusual problems. Finding this mechanic turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, but after some rather disheartening conversations ("I don't think we can do that"), we found Franz Lötscher from http://www.loetscher-ott.ch. He also thinks we're insane, but he will help us with our ambulance.


And then there is China. Driving through China is complicated (we expected that). We have a few offers from Chinese agencies to get the required permits, but right now we're stuck waiting for the other pieces of the puzzle to fall into place: we need to know our exact route including dates, and provide proof of hotel bookings and return flights. Right now, we still don't know whether we will be able to use the Altai border crossing, and we're still negotiating trying to avoid fixed dates.

Visa

On the way to Mongolia we will cross a dozen countries, many of which have very strict and sometimes rather complicated regulations that govern how foreigners can enter and move around. Coming with your own car doesn't simplify things either.

Once we leave Europe, every country on our path requires us to have a visa in order to enter. Without the proper visa, we'd simply be turned away at the border in most cases. Most visas have restrictions: they are valid only for a certain amount of days, allow only a limited number of re-entries (usually one), have fixed entry and exit dates (that you sometimes cannot choose freely), or fixed border crossings (never change your plans).

Some visas are valid for as few as 5 days. Combined with fixed entry and exit dates, this requires very accurate trip planning. Some visas are valid for 90 days, but the 90 days start running at the day the visa is issued, requiring very accurate planning when acquiring the visa. Single entry means that once you leave, you're not allowed to re-enter even if you have days left on your visa. I don't think this will be a problem for our trip, as we're visiting every country only once.

In most cases, visas come in the form of stickers and stamps in your passport. To get these, you have to physically mail your passport together with a complicated application form to the embassy, and wait until it comes back, hopefully with the visa. This can take between 5 days and 6 weeks, depending on the country (and your luck), and they can refuse with no explanation. This also means you cannot do the applications in parallel, and you cannot travel while your passport is "traveling". Some visas can be gotten "on the go" (in the embassy of a neighbouring country, for an extra "express" fee) or directly at the border (also for an extra fee, of course).

Some countries require a Letter Of Invitation ("LOI") together with the visa application. This was probably meant to make sure you are hosted by somebody while you are there, but in fact it's just another source of money for local tourist agencies (who will happily write you such a letter for a certain fee, usually also coupled with booking a hotel). Some countries even require your fingerprints, a detailed itinerary, confirmations of booked hotels, a recommendation letter from your employer (!), and a letter explaining the reason for your travel.

They are also costly. While each single visa is not outrageously expensive (on the order of 50-150$ each), it sums up. We will require between 7 and 10 visas (depending on how our plans work out).

Fortunately, my fellow travellers are Norwegian and Swedish, and I am Swiss, and therefore we don't need visas in Europe, and have similar restrictions outside Europe (this makes planning a bit easier).

We will make use of http://www.thevisamachine.com as much as we can, though they cannot get all required visas and permissions we need (and they cannot speed it up, it still takes months). The rest we'll have to get ourselves or with the help of another travel agency.