Eastward travel to Almaty in Kazakhstan by rail requires a road border crossing an hour or so from Tashkent and another three hours by road on the other side to the nearest city with a station, Chimkent. With no regular transport link crossing the border, Sundowners had arranged for my hotel driver to drop me about hundred metres from the border, as close as general traffic could get, and have someone meet me on the Kazakh side.
A few hundred metres of walking in the rapidly strengthening sun were required to, between and from the border control buildings, which would be fine under normal circumstances, but that morning my stomach had taken a turn for the worse and all my limited energy became focused on keeping the lid on it.
Adding to my suffering at the Uzbek departure point were a confused throng of an eclectic mix of people, ranging from locals with a basket or two of unsettled chickens to some Brits taking part in the Mongol Rally, chasing a short supply of pens to be able to fill out departure cards. The uncomfortable queuing was an exercise in mind over matter. Only in hindsight did I realise that, despite the strong warnings regarding accountability, no one checked the accommodation registration and currency exchange receipts which had dogged my decision making and flexibility.
As with arrival in Uzbekistan, crossing into Kazakhstan I had to declare the value of Rubles and Dollars I was carrying. The baggage scanning machine was a border guard and a table. He looked at my passport and arrival card, looked at me, looked at my rucksack on the table, checked no one else was looking and said “$10”, clearly giving me the choice of an uncomfortable and drawn out inspection of my bag, or easy passage. In other circumstances I would have called his bluff, but my stomach cramps were controlling my brain and it was worth $10 to pass through the border swiftly and cleanly without anything passing out of me swiftly and not so cleanly. Fortunately for me, I only had $35 on me and $10 of that was in $1 bills. The guard didn't much like the look of those, I think people here suspect $1 bills are fakes, and he was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of taking more than half of my Dollars with the $20 note, so he swiped the $5 and dismissed me to his colleague for passport stamping.
The drive from the border to Chimkent coincided with my realisation that nearly all Central Asian vehicles had a cracked windscreen.
After an unpleasant roadside snack of the local sour and salty milk and dry salty milk balls, that my driver was convinced would help my stomach, I was extremely grateful that, particularly as I was ill, I did to not need to squat over this pit toilet.
The few broken wooden slats masquerading as a floor would have made an Indiana Jones rope bridge seem stable.
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