Embassy report: Turkmen visa in Aktau

[steven]

Please report your experiences with the Turkmen consulate in Aktau below.

We summarize on the Turkmen visa page.

[steven]

Recent report from my inbox:

The location of the Aktau consulate moved recently so the location on maps.me is incorrect (as of June 2018). It is now located at Microraion Shygys 1, house 285; approx (43.678752, 51.187729) and their website is https://aktau.tmconsulate.gov.tm/ru. It's open for visa applications from 9am-1pm on week days.

We applied in Baku with intent to pick up our visas in Aktau, planned route Kazakhstan - Turkmenistan - Uzbekistan. The ambassador in Aktau spoke great English and was super helpful. His first question was, “Why didn’t you just email me the application documents? That would have been easier!” He called Ashgabat and updated us on the status of our application daily, and soon told us that we would receive the 7-day visa (!!!!!) and should wait 2-3 more days to know if we can pick it up on the border or at the consulate. 2 days later, the border randomly closed for 10-20 days so even though we got the visa, we never got to Turkmenistan. The ambassador sent me some news articles about the border closure, and judging by his total lack of surprise, I’d guess it happens pretty often.

[Crazydre]

The email address posted on the website is no longer in use. Instead it appears to be [email protected]

[ajtyndall]

Applied for Turkmenistan visas in Aktau yesterday. Key points:

- Kazakh-Turkmen border is still closed
- Consulate location above is accurate: Building 285, Shygys-1 Mikroraion
- Tried to email appplication in advance (as suggested above) but this doesn’t seem to be an option
- 2 very helpful staff. 1 speaks English. Consul General came out later speaking excellent English and making jokes. He said he’d mark our applications “urgent”.
- Whole process took no more than 45 mins - most of this was chatting to the Consul General. We turned up at 11am and there were very few other people there, no queuing.
- We could keep our phones with us in the consulate and they photocopied everything they needed. We only needed our passports, two passport photos and knowledge of our desired route through Turkmenistan. They do the rest!
- We’ve been told that the transit visa is only 5 days. $85 for UK passport (“Because of your queen!”) and $55 for Dutch passport. This will be paid at the border.
- $10 application fee has to be paid at a branch of Alfa Bank a couple of kilometres south. Consulate gives you a slip, go to bank, pay, get a reciept and return this to the consulate.
- Initially the bank said we needed a Kazakh ID number in order to pay and that we would have to go to the Tax Office to get one! But eventually we just gave the cash to one of the employees and he paid on our behalf. We paid in tenge.

It sounds like, if approved, we will get a letter of invitation that we can exchange for a visa at the border. This will not be date specific but it will specify a route. Will update again once we get the result - if we’re lucky it could be tomorrow, but more likely some time next week.

*** UPDATE ***

Nine days after we applied, we woke up to a WhatsApp message saying that our invitations were ready. We returned to the consulate at 10:30 and no-one else was there. The invitation was for 5 days and it was NOT DATE SPECIFIC. Instead, we had to confirm at this point which day we wanted the visa to start. We chose for it to start in 3 days so that we have time to get to the border crossing in Uzbekistan. Whilst we went back to Alfa Bank to pay the fee, the visas were prepared. Back at the consulate it took another 10 minutes for the visas to be printed, stuck in our passports and stamped! The whole thing took little more than an hour.