Caravanistan

I did that yesterday, August 20th 2018.
Yes, there is a bus which goes directly from Tashkent to Khujand. It leaves from the Sobir Rahimov bus station, but do not look for a metro station of the same name, there is none. The metro station is Olmazor, completely in the southwest of Tashkent. (ref. Lonely planet june 2018, page 215 has a plan of the Tashkent metro). The price is 50000 som so C$8.35. there is only one bus a day and it leaves at 18:00 (do not get there at the last minute. Yesterday it left the station at 17:52). It is a Tajik company called Asiangroup and it is a very new and comfortable bus. Do not pay attention to the taxi drivers in front of the station who will tell you that there is no bus and offer their services to the border, or even to the driver of a bus for Samarkand who will tell you that you have to go through Samarkand to enter Tajikistan. There is a closed metal gate for vehicles, but on the left side it is open for pedestrians. Go about 50 meters and turn right and you will be right in front of the ticket office. I think the wicket for Khujand is the second one, but it is written above it. Just give your money and your passport and tell the employee which day you want to go. To exit Uzbekistan, we were asked to get off the bus with our baggage, but to my knowledge no baggage was checked. It took 2 minutes at the passport control to stamp the passport then back in the bus to the Tajik side where it is the same procedure there, except we did not even have to take our baggage off the bus. The Tajik officer even said bonjour when he saw my French passport. Exiting Uzbekistan and entering Tajikistan for a whole busload took in all 50 minutes. Painless. No forms, no currency or prescription questions, no hotel slips to show and no camera or laptop pictures viewed. We arrived in Khujand at 22:00. The whole trip in 4 hours. The bus station is is the middle of nowhere in Khujand, but there are plenty of taxis. Something I had never seen before happened. There was a problem with my guesthouse which did not answer the phone as the taxi driver did not know where it was. We decided to go there, and the guesthouse finally called to say that there was a problem in the family and could not honor the reservation, but made arrangements for another place. I only had Uzbek soms (useless there) and dollars. When everything was sorted out, I wanted to give the taxi driver $10, but he would not take it and took only $3. Tajikistan is the 50th country I travelled to and I have never seen that before. I cannot guarantee it will happen to you, but that give you an idea of how nice the people of Central Asia are.

Just arrived at my hostel after taking this bus today. Went pretty much exactly as @jeanjacques said.

Booked my ticket the day before by going to the station next to Olmazar (shown as Автовокзал "Ташкент" on OSM). They write your name down on a list of passengers and give you a receipt with the date of your journey on it and a seat number. (The buses to Bishkek, Almaty and Shymkent also seem to go from here)

Today I just went to the station an hour before and looked around. The bus is hiding behind the corner until about 17:45, then it comes to the main area to let the passengers on. Left about 17:55 for me, but it dropped by the the food stall in the station for a minute or two to let people pick up stuff. On the way out of Tashkent it also stopped by a watermelon stall on the side of the road and quite a few people bought some.

Border crossing was fine. Fairly professional, took about an hour and ten minutes to pass through.

The bus drops you off at the North station, shown as Рохи Абрешим Автостанция on OSM. Loads of taxi drivers there. Had a local sort out getting my taxi. They didn't seem too keen on getting dollars though. Brought up Russian rubles but I didn't have any.

Cost me $4, but I was driven to someone the driver knew to exchange which sketched me out. Rate was 1USD to 10TJS, which I think is better than the official rate. Thought they were trying to get 100 dollars or something like that out of me, but worked out in the end. (I heard 100, thinking they wanted 100 dollars, when that was the amount of TJS being given to me for my $10)

Overall pleasant journey. Was offered a place to stay by the guy sitting next to me on the bus and all the locals were helpful in getting me to my hostel.

jeanjacques wrote:When everything was sorted out, I wanted to give the taxi driver $10, but he would not take it and took only $3. Tajikistan is the 50th country I travelled to and I have never seen that before. I cannot guarantee it will happen to you, but that give you an idea of how nice the people of Central Asia are.

I think you found the only honest taxi driver in Tajikistan!

Thanks for the information! I went to get the ticket yesterday for the bus today. I spend almost one hour looking for the ticket office, but found it after all;
If you get out of the metro, cross the road, walk all the way to the end of the parking to the right, there are stairs to a tunnel, go in and at some point you go left. At the end of the tunnel you take the stairs on your left. Then you follow the green wall on your right and at the end you will find the gate you can read about above. Great service at the ticketoffice, I don’t think it is necessary to buy the ticket in advance; I wass there around 4pm, the bus leaves at 6pm, and for yesterday the list with names wasn’t halfful..

I travelled by bus from Tashkent to Khujand on 11 May 2019 and documented the trip in my blog with maps and pictures of how to buy your ticket and where to catch the bus.
https://chrisdesmond.org/2019/05/14/taj ... -may-2019/
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Did this trip earlier and was exactky as described above although I was able to my ticket from the main ticket offices in the terminal!

I did it today from khujand to tashkent and it was absolutely no fun. At the border, 3 buses arrived at one time, which means a long wait. I crossed many many borders, this was one of the less pretty one.

The bus leaves at 8 o clock in khujand. At the tajik border there was a long line of people from the other buses waiting in the sun for entering the building. First there was discipline and the guards let every 5 minutes or so about 20 people in the building. But then some ladies tried to push and overtake others and it ended, that from now everybody tried to be next. So when the door opened it was a fight to get in, as everybody tried to get in next. It was absolutely chaos. I had to push too, otherwise i saw no chance to get in. While men showed some discipline and fairness, many women were really cheeky and routhless. Boarder guards first tried to organise the chaos, but had no authority, nobody wss listening to them.

Once inside the building the game goes on, not so chaotic, but still with little discipline.

On the usbekistan side the problem was, that all people had to take their baggage with them. So the lines where full of people and bags, so the building was very full, but thing worked here much better and people did not push anymore. It looks more chaotic then it was.

The guide of asianexpress tried to do his best to keep the group together.

Finally passing the border took more then 2 hours in the heat and it was no pleasure.

Maybe i arrived at a wrong time or had bad luck. So if you start in khujand, prepare you with water, a hat, sunny cream and a good mood and serenity.

Fair warning: Do not count on this bus being available every day. We went yesterday to get tickets for the bus today, and were told there was no bus today. The bus is totally dependent on whether it gets filled in Khujand and makes the journey back. Talking to the local people, it seems to be very variable in terms of when it is available and running. There weren’t even any ticket booths up when we went to the station on a Friday. We instead are taking a shared taxi from Quyliq bazar to the border (30,000 som/person. Can get from 25k/pax for lower quality car). We are then taking a shared taxi to Khujand (25 somoni/person)