As usual she is planning a decade ahead in travel....this is a frustration blog on planning for a cycle expedition 2 years away...she is frustrated because she has been working on it for months and months already.
I don't even know what I will be doing next weekend :0
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Been trying to work out the visa paperwork for a bunch of Central Asian Stan visas, as part of my planned Pamir Highway cycling
Expedition next year. It is frigging easier to cycle up Ak Baital Pass at 4644meters ten times, than it is to get these damned visas.
Almost kicked Almaty out of my itinerary, atleast it would save me the bother of getting a Kazakh visa as well.... now I know why
The Mongols burnt and killed their way through Central Asia..... read on.
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Genghiz and The Great Game
I have a theory why Genghiz Khan and Timurlane left a trail of death and destruction in Central Asia.... it is not like
they were bloodthirsty barbarians, they were extremely civilised people.
One day Genghiz decided he wanted to go to Constantinople with his entourage, he had heard so much about the famed Silk Route
and the wonderful towns like Damascus and Constantinople which lay beyond.... And like all civilised people, he and his entourage
applied for transit visas to Kazakh / Kyrgyz / Tajik / Uzbek / Turkmenistan. They stumbled upon an obstacle which even
surpassed the Great Wall of China, the famed VISA SUPPORT AND LOI (Letter of Invitation). For the uninitiated in the Great Game,
a local travel agent in say Kazakhstan has to submit a LOI with all passport and trip details to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in Kazakhstan, and the Kazakh MEA will approve
your LOI and telex their acceptance DIRECTLY to the Kazakh embassy in Mongolia, where you eventually apply for the visa after the Kazakh MEA
has notified the Kazakh embassy. Repeat this process for each Stan.
Genghiz Khan had travelled about quite a bit, but had never heard of this LOI, so he employed the best travel agants in the world.
They in turn shopped online, floated a global tender and invited bids from every self-respecting travel agent in the world for visa support.
The sophisticated western agents with slick websites, glitzy brochures and 24 x 7 customer sales agents quoted 200 gold coins per head per country for the LOI,
But the shady Central Asian guys quoted 30 gold coins, and the sophisticated Central Asian agencies wanted 100 gold coins. The Mongols
were a worried lot, each fellow needed five visas just for the Stans, and at 200 gold coins per country per head for visa support ( actual visa fees extra), that was more gold
than had ever been mined on Planet Earth. Due negotiations were held, and finally a reputed Central Asian agency was given 45 gold coins per head per country , 100% advance
payment and told LOI will be issued in two weeks poor Genghiz even decided to limit the number of concubines in his entourage, the horrendous
expense on Visa Support pained him.
Now the Central Asian travel agent came with stellar references, he claimed to have arranged Marco Polo’s visa support two centuries ago, and even waved Marco Polo’s
tripadvisor review. The travel agent saw so much money he decided to splurge on the finest Russian whores and vodka money could buy, and had a jolly good time for a fortnight, By which
time he had no money left to pay the MEA fees, and so the Mongols did not get the Visa Support and all their gold was gone with the wind. The Mongols eventually
crucified the travel agent, and quartered his family, but that did not solve their problem of obtaining the LOI for five Stans.
By now, visa support had become a Mongol obsession, and Ulan Bataar University even offered a doctoral course to scholars on Horizons Unlimited and Caravanistan
forums. They could recite every post ever written by any lunatic traveller on these forums, and exams were held on the finest / the most difficult / the most challenging itineraries through
Central Asia, and they were so fiercely debated and trolled on Facebook and Twitter, it was not funny. One whole season passed, not a single Visa Support Letter in hand,
winter set in, travel plans abandoned and the Mongols threw themselves at it, hoping to get everything right before next summer.
Then some rookie traveller figured out Tajikistan was handing out e-visas. All of Mongolia erupted in Nadaam like celebrations, and Genghiz dragged the CEO’s of Visa and
Mastercard at sword point and commanded them to issue a credit card to all his entourage so they could pay online and obtain the elusive Tajik e-visa. The CEO’s went bald
overnight, WTF is the exchange rate from Mongol Togrog to Kazakh Tenge, to Tajik som to.... but they had to fix something or risk the ire of Genghiz ka sword slicing them like carpachio in red wine...
anyway the Visa and Mastercards did great business, and the Mongols soon got their e-visas. But like with all credit cards, they could not read the Terms & Conditions for forty five pages
in Font Size 5, and they ticked the square boz next to I have read, understood and agree to all T & C....and did the same on the e-visa application.
In an exceptional display of equestrian skills, the Mongols and their horses jumped over the Great Wall, raced overnight across China to the Qolma Pass border crossing with Tajik,
and waved their e-visas triumphantly. The dozen drunk Tajik soldiers laughed HAHAHAHAHA with so much contempt at the vast Mongol entourage, HOHOHOHO they laughed clutching
their sides and vodka bottles, ROFL another bunch of morons smitten by technology, idiots, please read page 33 Para 4 Line 3 Font size 6, it says e-visa acceptable only for arrivals in
Dushanbe International Airports, not for overlanding Mongols, you don’t even have carnet for your horses, so please FO now and slammed the border gates shut in their
face. The sad Mongols went back, and half of their Made in China cheap horses died enroute, and the Chinese enslaved the stragglers..... Genghiz Khan tied the poor rookie traveller’s legs to two horses, one went east and one went west, as a reward for his e-visa counsel.
Now Genghiz was really despairing, his Caravanistan and HU forum scholars were flogged every night for a solution, but poor sods found tons of info and facebook selfies about Marco Polo and the rest of his
Western brethren overlanding eastbound on the Silk Route, and a pannier load of updates by every demented Central European cyclist who pedalled solo up the Pamir Highway, but they
had no info about Mongols overlanding westbound on the Silk Route. The cyclists amazed them, why would any frigging fool not take a horse up a mountain pass, and insist on using his own measly horse
power to climb uphill? The visa rules for Mongols overlanding were more murky than squid’s ink. Finally unable to bear the horse whip and cat o’tails every night, an elderly scholar told Genghis his best chance
for visas was to apply in the Delhi embassies, which had a fame for compassion to second world visa seekers.
So the Mongol Minister of External Affairs duly set off with his Caravanistan - sixteen caravans of visa paperwork for five countries for the whole entourage. They bagged quite a few visas, and made brilliant
discoveries like a Kazakh five day transit visa doesn’t need visa support. They figured that if they flogged their best horses for five days and nights non-stop like in a Mongol Derby, they just could get from Barnaul in Russia ro to Bishkek in Kyrgyz, bounding across Kazakhstan before the five day transit visa expired.
But the damned Kyrgyz embassy screwed them royally this time.... first they were told to go to Ratnakar Bank Limited in Baba Kharak Singh Marg, New Delhi and pay the visa fees into “The Account of the Embassy of the Kyrgyzstan Republic to the Republic of India” and bring the receipt back. (I am not kidding about the Ratnakar bank, pls see the Kyrgyz embassy Delhi website) They struggled for three days because they could not find this world class Ratnakar bank, NOBODY in India had heard of this bank either, so how can you blame the poor Mongols? The Ratnakar Bank sported the fancy initials of RBL in the consular website, so some people directed them to RBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland in Kasturba Gandhi Marg, then somebody sent them to the RBI in Parliament Street, (and RBI didn’t even know RBL existed), all to no avail. Eventually after a three day door to door search on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, the Mongols found the Ratnakar bank. They held a sword to the manager’s throat, and told him the staff couldn’t go home until all visa fee receipts were ready. Now the poor Ratnakar Bank had a poor clerk who had gotten the job on SC / ST or a VIP quota, and couldn’t spell Kyrgyzstan right, don’t blame his SC / ST for that, even many FC friends of mine, some of them very literate and well travelled, can’t spell Kyrgyzstan right, and think it is a part of Russia. So the Mongols got 4982 demand drafts in three categories, single entry tourist, double entry tourist, single transit for visa fees of USD 50, 70 and 30. But the Kyrgyz embassy got very angry about the spelling mistake in the demand drafts, and showered MC BC abuses at the Mongols and kicked them out for not spelling Kyrgyzstan right. The Mongols went with their swords and horsewhips back to Ratnakar Bank, and got 4982 drafts reissued. And yes, the clerk and manager were both waterboarded in the Yamuna river, but they didn’t drown, the polluted water killed both instantly.
The Mongols including Genghiz camped in Rashtrapati Bhavan grounds (the horses had enough grass), because the embassy had said it might call them for a personal interview if it wanted to. Finally the papers were verified, and the Consul bellowed at Genghiz – where the hell is the confirmed return air ticket on Kyrgyzstan Airlines ???? The Mongols got really really upset now, WTF and HTF does a Mongol on his horse travel in an aeroplane, his sword can’t even be checked in, and they massacred everybody in the Kyrgyz embassy. A couple of diehard Mongols still tried to get their return air tickets on Kyrgyzstan Airlines, by now they were ready to sell wives daughters and concubines in exchange for a visa stamp, and got royally scammed by the Connaught Place and Paharganj travel agents who sold them bogus tickets at inflated prices. Hahaha they sniggered, don’t these fools know Kyrgyzstan Airlines has been defunct for four decades now (consular website not updated, that is all)..... anyway with the embassy staff all massacred, there was nobody left to issue their last visa, the much needed Kyrgyz visa, because China and Tajik had by now closed Qolma Pass border crossing to third country nationals.... hahaha, so how can the Mongols cross from China to Tajik, except via Irkeshtam pass into Kyrgyzstan?
The Mongols went back completely defeated in the Great Game, of obtaining all five Stan visas, which is a greater feat than Winning the Grand Slam.... Genghiz Khan roared, he was becoming like Prince Charles waiting for the throne, he told his entourage ab bas bahut ho gayaa, bring the horses and swords, and off they went galloping across the steppes. They razed all border posts and embassies to the ground, and threw immigration officials, border guards and consuls in the bonfire. Like the embassies occupying prime real estate in Peddar Road and Chanakyapuri, the embassies in Samarkand, Bukhara, etc were all located in the royal quarters ( so the king could get express visas), and as bad luck would have it, when the embassies burned, so did the magnificent palaces, the great libraries, and amazing monuments. Not the Mongols’ fault really, they were just trying to rid the world of these pesky, rude, hare-brained embassies... it was just unfortunate collateral damage that everything else burned too.
Historians say the Mongols killed innocent civilians mercilessly, not really, that was not the intention at all, when they saw “Visa Support provided” boards in every second door in Central Asia, (half the Stans’ GDP is from scamming gullible and / or desperate overseas travellers’ hard earned money in return for elusive visa support) They remembered all their gold coins now, and all those years of waiting for their visas, and their long suffering, the Tajik soldiers’ drunken contempt of their e-visas, their search for RBL / RBS / RBI on a hot summer day in Delhi..... and they went berserk, and pulled everybody out of those “Visa Support Provided” doors and skewered them. And over a half of the local adult population died in their wake.....
Can’t blame the Mongols, really....
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I am definitely enjoying your website. You definitely have some great insight and great stories.Індыя-турыстычная-віза
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