Uzbekistan 2023 – A Few Notes
A short trip through central Uzbekistan focused mainly on the Kyzylkum Desert and the road towards Uchkuduk. Mammal observations were honestly very limited, but since there are very few reports from the country, I thought it might still be useful to share a few notes and locations. Main mammals seen Long-eared Hedgehog, Red Fox and Long-clawed Ground Squirrels.
Uzbekistan 2023
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4 Comments
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Anna Bauerová
To be honest – I think we were just incredibly lucky, because a local biologist strongly warned us to take care of this and said she’d help us arrange it if we wanted to go deeper into the desert, but that wasn’t part of our original plan. At the first hotel, they told us right away that they wouldn’t register us. So we figured it didn’t matter, since we’d be spending the night in a hotel in Bukhara. But it turned out that it was anything but an official hotel, and again, they didn’t give us any confirmation. We still didn’t panic, because we hadn’t planned on sleeping outdoors for several days. But the road was worse than we expected and the area was without inhabitants more than we expected, so it took longer and there was no way to sort out the registration. On the other hand, there was absolutely no chance of meeting anyone there. The next hotel was some rustic place in the mountains by a lake, they didn’t even want to see our passports there. Compared to our other trips (e.g. Turkey, Georgia, Malaysia), we didn’t run into any red tape. The only issue was with the two armed guards at the reserve (even though I thought we were pretty far from it), but everything worked out in the end.
On the other hand, the car was fine. They were supposed to be waiting at the airport, but they weren’t, so we had to take a taxi into town. They had that annoying mileage limit of about 150 km, but in the end we managed to work something out and extend the rental for a few more days. According to my partner, the driving there is truly insane worse than in Iran (and that’s saying something).
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JanEbr
Well something must have changed in any case, because we were just all interrogated by customs when leaving about what we did each night of the trip and why we were missing just two slips out of 15 nights. I never drove anywhere in central Asia (only Mongolia, which is so empty that you don’t know how people drive because you don’t meet anyone), so that also looks like a fun idea!
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Anna Bauerová
I guess they really have relaxed the rules – I asked a friend who was in Uzbekistan last year, and they didn’t have to show anything and nobody asked them for anything (not even at the airport).
In Iran, everything moves quickly and is hectic without visible rules, but at the same time, there are no accidents. In Uzbekistan, this is probably combined with a fondness for vodka, so it’s not unusual to see someone speeding on the wrong side of the road. But on that road near Gazli, we’d only seen about two cars in three days.I also remembered that there were some issues at the airport with our backpacks (we had only carry-on bags) and, somewhat illogically, they had an issue with the batteries for our headlamps (even though they’re not supposed to be in checked luggage), with telescopic snake hooks (they let us keep those, just made a lot of jokes around), but finally, they confiscated my miniature folding scissors with a rounded tip.
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JanEbr
Fascinating! We were in Uzbekistan in 2012 and the police gave us hell repeatedly for missing just two registration slips – not only during the departure but also during some random checks on the road. So nobody asked you for those when departing at all? That would indeed be a game-changer for the country, because the old registration situation basically made travel to remote areas impossible. Also you can just rent a car in Uzbekistan without a driver? That we really haven’t thought possible at that time.
If the bureaucracy went less insane since our visit, this would make the country a possibly quite attractive destination.