Caravanistan

Hi there:)

An update regarding the application for a transit visa in Almaty.I went to the consulate on 24th October, with a Japanese passport.

To get straight to the point, I gave up to apply for the visa in Almaty for different reasons.Here are why and some information you should be aware of.

First of all, I was not allowed to issue transit visa based on what I wrote on the application form. I wrote that I am planning to stay in a hotel in Ashgabat for the place of stay. However, a consul told me it will be a tourism if I stay in Ashgabat, and therefore I shouldn’t do that. This implies that you have to write on the form that your plan is to stay in a region near border town. I am not sure if it’s a right move to do it when you wanna visit Ashgabat.
Secondly, you cannot receive the visa at a Turkmenistan border or anywhere else, but have to pick it up in Almaty. It takes 10 working days. However it only takes 4 working days for “Urgent”.
Last but not least, the consul is so rigid that you won’t make it in one shot. For example, I wrote “Tokyo” for the place of birth. However, according to him, I should have written “Tokyo City” and therefore I need to revise it and reprint the application form. There are so many of these minor things he requested to revise. It was damn annoying.

Good luck:)

Australian Passports
Applied for Transit Visa early September 2019
Requested UZB-IRAN (Khiva - Ashgabat)
Thought I'd write an update as our experience was similar to Rikki's but it worked out in the end. As you may know the form you need to print out is VERY annoying as the file format can only be opened in Adobe reader on a COMPUTER. This means finding a print shop that uses that software otherwise it'll come out jumbled. Worse though is the fact that everything has to be typed on the form in Adobe, it can't be hand written in because you need to generate a QR code at the bottom. The consul is very slow, there was both a man and woman working each time we went, neither of them say much. After all the hassle of printing a form off we went and waited for an hour or two, there was only one group of 3 Kazakhs in front of us. We finally made it to the little window and handed everything to him and he went through it all very very carefully. He told us that we needed to correct almost half the document including writing our surname again in the "Former Surname" box. For place of stay we just wrote Ashgabat and he was happy with that so maybe it's best not to mention a hotel. We came back with the revised documents waited for ages, had to rewrite our itinerary letter in black pen, got a slip to pay at a bank which is a few kms..cost 5usd each and it was finally done! We asked if we could pick up in Bishkek and he said no worries and pointed to a date 10 days away even though we'd wrote urgent, not a big deal for us. We never got an email so I tried ringing 10 days later but my lack of Russian just pissed the guy off. I emailed the Tashkent embassy and they replied the same day saying that we were approved and that we could pick up in Bishkek. In bishkek we had to pay at the bank, wait till the afternoon, fill out another form and then finally got our visas (designated entry and exit points). Hooray....