Oybek - Buston (UZ-TAJ) border crossing

[steven]

Please read and post reports on the Oybek - Buston border crossing between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan below.

We summarize all info on the Tajikistan border crossings and Uzbekistan border crossings pages.

[SQRR]

Crossed into Uzbekistan from Buston last Friday at 5pm.
I had no trouble at all and went smoothly but it was time consuming even there were barely any other crossers.
My German friend crossed the same border a week before and had an argue with the Tajik guards about the immigration card. He got off without paying anything. In my case, they asked for it, I gave them a straight answer in Russian that I do not have one and do not need one when I stay 30 days or less. He did not ask or mention it again.
Give them a confident answer, including this fact and they will not bother you again.

Some of you may remember my border cross post from Sary Tash into Tajikistan and the scams.
(http://caravanistan.com/forum/viewtopic ... 4301#p4301)
When leaving they asked me for one document and that is the one which I knew is official: the vehicle declaration.
I also showed them the other papers to find out what it's all about those things. They never seen it and had no clue what to do with it.
That should be proof enough that they were scams.

I spent nearly 90mins at the Uzbekistan border but that was mainly because they had in that time 3 black outs and the computer did not work properly to register my car.
They checked twice my phone for porn or naked girls but did not bother about my notebook, hard disc or camera.
Neither did they check my car properly, they were more interested in sitting into the Defender to get some Land Rover feeling
Yes, my German friend had the same experience with the Uzbeks but they did not even check his phone.

happy travels

[Alma]

I did this one by foot a few months ago - as with all the Uzbek border crossings, they check ALL the pictures on your phone (they actually didn't see my camera when they went through my luggage). Before you cross, delete all pictures that could be perceived as pornographic. Avoid bringing a laptop, they will search it for compromising material.

Also, I had to half undress (I'm a girl) in a closed room in front of some local women crossing the border, and a female Uzbek border police. This was less than pleasant and very degrading, but not harmful in any way. It was at midnight, and took some time, but not as much of a hassle than feared.

Entering Tajikistan, remember to get an immigration card to fill out- they forgot it in my case, which gave me some hassle in the other end when I had to fly out of Tajikistan..

[rook]

It seems that my Uzbek visa ends the 22 of April while my Tajik visa starts on the 23. I was planning on using the Oybek border to travel between Tashkent to Dushanbe, but I'm thinking these dates might be a little problematic.

Does anyone know whether this border crossing is open late or if it is possible to spend the night in the area between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan? Or would it be better to just play it safe and fly out to Dushanbe?

[Crazydre]

To my knowledge the Uzbeks are a lot stricter than the Tajiks. Try to visit the nearest Uzbek OVIR to explain the issue and try to get a one-day Extension. Although new regulations have made it (even!) more difficult to extend visas in Uzbekistan (some sources say outright impossible, but as far as I know this is a slight exaggeration), if you explain the situation and Show both of your visas, you just might get it.

Otherwise, make sure to leave UZ before the border Closes on the 22 (I sadly don't know when it does)

On the Tajik side, try to see if they can let you in earlier, possibly for a fee (aka bribe, as border corruption is common there). Otherwise I cannot imagine it should an issue to sleep in the no-mans land

[rook]

Update: The Oybek border is indeed open 24/7. I wasn't sure if it was, so I to the border early and sat near the Tajik checkpoint until 8, when they took pity on me and let me through.

[mpkz]

I crossed the other way, Uzbekistan to Tajikistan.

Though I would post an update on this border crossing even though it is incredibly straightforward. The problem seems to be based on other people’s trip reports that people are getting ripped off left and right by taxi drivers on both sides of the border. I’m not saying I didn’t get ripped off, but I managed to get from my hostel in Tashkent to Khujand for $7 comfortably (and I’m 194cm tall), and I know how it could have been cheaper. And hopefully this will add some detail for people who are having trouble imagining how the crossing is. But all in all it’s an easy crossing by Central Asian standards. Unlike the above reports (I was exiting Uzbekistan), the guy didn't check my phone for pornographic material. He asked me whether I had any. I said no. Which was a lie because I had a tinder screenshot saved quite prominently that might have got me into trouble in some countries. Note to self: Hide that before Irkeshtam.

The first thing you need to do is get to Kuyluk (Kuluk, Kulyuk, Koylok, Qo’lok, I’ve seen so many spellings) Bazaar in Tashkent. It is in the south of the city. I took a taxi there from Mirobod Bazaar for 8000 som. It could have been cheaper. Travel time was about 15 minutes, so I started at about 11:30 and go to the bazaar at 11:45, plus/minus 5 minutes.

From the bazaar to Oybek you have two choices: You can take a taxi (including shared taxis) or a bus. I took the bus so I can’t comment much on the shared taxi option. A previous trip report indicated that there was one bus, leaving at 10:20AM. I don’t think this is true, I think buses run (fairly infrequently, but they run) all through the day. Mine left at 12:30.

The bus is fairly easy to find in the bazaar area (more accurately, the marshrutka areas outside the bazaar) – it is the only big orange bus around. It’s a fairly modern looking Chinese bus. The area it left from was north-east of the actual bazaar, right along Fargona Yoli (Ferghana Road??). The cost is 5500 som. Taxis leave from somewhere else, and I don’t know the cost. I would recommend you change all your money to USD here, there are moneychangers milling around near the marshrutkas who are willing to trade som to usd (rate is decent as well, I was offered 6400 som per usd when the buying rate was 6100/6200 som per usd). I was stupid and decided not to change money here. There are moneychangers at the border, more on those soon.

The bus ride takes maybe 1.5 hours, I arrived at the border at around 2pm. The conductor tells you when you get to Oybek, don’t worry. The border post is pretty deserted. Me and a few Uzbeks. There are basically no shops or anything near the border, a few taxis and a couple of money changers lounging under a tree. The town of Chanaq is about 1km away. If you are arriving in Uzbekistan and want to take the bus to Tashkent, just wait on the road near the checkpoint (or ask a soldier), but I don’t know if the bus stops there or how often it stops. Anyway, the moneychangers will not change to USD but will change to Tajik Somoni. This was a problem for me because I had not put any Somoni on my currency declaration, but I decided to risk it anyway because I had about $20 worth of Som (128,000 som at the time). The first offer the money changers gave me was 140 Somoni, I asked for 150 and then threatened to change money in Bu’ston in Tajikistan when one of them gave me 150 (which is almost fair, I didn’t lose much on that…) only to be shouted at by the others. I hid the 150 in a back pocket and proceeded through customs.

Customs was quite thorough in the sense of “open every bag” but they didn’t check my wallet or my pocket. One guy spoke English and was quite keen to talk to me, which probably also helped me avoid a lot of the pointless checks (such as having my back pocket checked for Tajik money or my phone for Tinder screenshots). They also had a “body search” (not an actual body search like reported above) with a metal detector wand but it was pretty clear they were just doing it because of formalities. So I kept my Somoni and got through the Uzbek border without any problems.

Then you walk a few hundred meters, show your Uzbek stamp to the Uzbek border guard and you are in Tajikistan. In Tajikistan, the first thing you need to do is go to the little hut in the middle of the road (if there are any people crossing, they line up outside the windows, you do this AFTER you fill in the form) and fill in a migration form. Then you line up and get stamped into the country. I had no problems with an eVisa, other than the guy processing it had to ask his colleague for help. He asked for my route within the country for some reason and logged it into the form, I have no idea why or whether I need to follow that route, but since it’s my route, at least to start with, I don’t foresee any problems. No problem getting the migration card back from the guy either as others have reported at other borders.

Next you walk again, past a lot of buildings such as veterinary inspection to a big modern looking building for customs. Go into the room on the left with an x-ray machine. I didn’t have my bags scanned though the guy before me (Uzbek I think) had them scanned and opened. The guy just asked me whether I’m alone, what I’m doing and how much money I have and wrote something into a book. No problems.

Next up, walk a few hundred meters and you are in Tajikistan. If you need a toilet, it is before exiting the customs area on your left, but it is ABSOLUTELY FILTHY so I would recommend using the toilet in Uzbekistan. Once again, the area outside the border is pretty much deserted. A few taxis hang out there. I was first quoted some number, over 100 Somoni (probably many hundred, I only understood the word for hundred) to Khujand. No way. Some locals also took me away from that driver and I suspected I might be able to share a ride with them. Eventually I negotiated a ride for 5 Somoni in a shared taxi to Bu’ston. We started driving and the driver then started negotiating with me for a price to go to Khujand. He first asked for $10, then $5 and then 40 Somoni (so $5) to bring me to my hotel in Khujand. Not wanting to go through the trouble of changing taxi/bus three times, I said yes to the 40 Somoni offer. Immediately the driver pulled over another shared taxi and exchanged passengers. I have no idea what the others paid to get to the bus station in Khujand, but it was probably a fraction of what I paid. Whatever, sitting in the front seat of a shared taxi is as comfortable as having the taxi to yourself so I thought 40 Somoni wasn’t terrible.

I got to Panshanbe bazaar at about 4pm, and found my hostel (Hostel 21 on Shark – 80 Somoni per night, compared to 30 Somoni at Hotel Shark nearby, but at least I have a shower and a nice toilet).
All in all, quite painless and $7 door-to-door in comfort really isn’t bad for Central Asia.

[irishmcbride]

Crossed at this border a couple of weeks ago, no problems at all.

After a nice taxi ride from Khujand, we pitched up, no issues getting through the Tajiki side, stamped out pretty quickly and only really had a cursory glance through our bags.

Onto the Uzbek side, passports stamped after the usual thorough examination, then once we'd filled out our customs forms we were waved to the front of the queue. A couple of the guards spoke pretty fair English, and were thrilled with a chance to test it, quizzing us on everything from where we'd been to how much we earned! I think this was out of natural curiosity rather than anything official though. One of them insisted on questioning me about what I knew about Timur. Not a lot, it turned out; he didn't seem impressed at my knowledge of UZbek history.

They wanted to look at our medicines (one of them kept an Alka Seltzer because he'd never seen it before) and our books, and had a brief glance at the contents of our bags. The chattier of the two used going through my friends camera photos as an excuse to keep talking to us, but then received what seemed to be a bollocking from his superior, and so we got waved out of the office.

Outside, we managed to negotiate a taxi driver down to $10 for a taxi to Tashkent for 4 of us, although we had to slip him another $5 to take us into the centre when he pulled up at the side of the road pretty much a the very edge of the city!

Pretty simple border crossing all told, took maybe an hour in total.

[steven]

Wanted to add to mpkz's report: he crossed "comfortably" for 7$, but this still included a lot of changes of transport and several marshrutkas. If you are alone, a good way to do it on a budget. But it can be more comfortable still. We crossed for 20$ in 3,5 hours from Khujand to Tashkent door-to-door, taking 2 taxis. We were 2 people, so it came down to 10$ each, but with an extra person or 2, this is cheaper than taking marshrutkas like mpkz, and very comfortable.

Minibus 33 goes to Khujand bus station. From Khujand bus station, we found a taxi driver for 80 somoni who brought us straight to the border. He does the route often, his name is Mohammad, you can call in Russian to +992 92 717 2679. After the border, we found a taxi driver to take us all the way to Art Hostel in Tashkent for 10$ for the car. So that is the real price.

[jokelele]

Hi all,

I just crossed with a friend a month ago. Trip from Khujand in taxi for 100 TAJ. In the tajik border, we didnt have the inmigrantion cards but no problem at all. We had an e-visa and everything was fine. Only weird thing, they took our passports around 15min -dont know why- and we couldnt see the guys inside after the window. But we crossed after that. In uzbekh border, no problem at all, as usual, and we took a taxi from the same border to Samarkand for 50USD. Quick trip. We leave Khujand at 8.00am in the morning, and we were in Samarkand at 3pm. Quite cool.

Best,

J.