Hojayli - Konye-Urgench border crossing (UZ - TM)

[Zigaturk]

Hey guys we just came out of Turkmenistan today. As I said before we had Konye-Urgech written as an exit point, but because the border is closed we exited from Dashogus. We had no problems at all on both sides. We were in Uzbekistan in 20 minutes total.

[pocoloco76]

Hi there!
Are there some news about the Turkmen border at Konye-Urgench? Is it still closed?
Thanx in advance!

[suricat]

It is still closed and shows no sign of opening soon. We have been there about three weeks ago and had to go back to Dashogus.

[bigbeka]

It seems that they have opened border Konye-Urgench/Kojayli after a planned reconstruction. Here is a full article about it, they reference "UzbekTourism" as the source of the info, so should be quite reliable. My Source: https://www.gazeta.uz/2016/04/29/kpp/ Reference Source: http://uzbektourism.uz/ru/subektam-turi ... khodzhejli

Hope it helps to the travellers, as I was planning a trip around Central Asia. Having the above mentioned border open, is a very convenient.

[steven]

Thank you, bigbeka!

[aleckii]

Entered Nukus from the Konye-Urgench border on 13th September. Saw lots of tourists on a big paid tour, mostly from Europe. We were held up for 2 hours at the Turkmenistan border for no explanation. The border guard just started to scroll on his computer reading some pdf files in front of us. I spoke Russian and so did the guard, but they refused to give any sort of explanation. Thankfully our tour guide was there the whole time to make sure we crossed the border. Even he was confused as to what was happening. At the end of the 2 hours, the guards came out from a room and stamped our passport, and allowed us to pass without any clarification. It was all quite weird.

Between the Turkmen and Uzbek side there is about 5-6km or neutral zone. There's a marshrutka who will take you across for a random amount of money, 7usd for 3 persons.

Uzbek side was ok. Took quite awhile as they went through my medications, pulled out every single dollar though. This border looks really quiet. We didn't see a single car passing through in the 3hours that we were there. Found a man on the other side of Uzbek border, who was waiting for his relatives. He brought us to Nukus right to our hotel for 10usd.

[bergie]

We crossed from Bukhara to Turkmenistan and Ashgabat to Iran in mid September. Arriving at the border near Bukhara our taxi wasn't allowed to drive up to the gate by the police. Instead a marshrutka was there to take us. This seemed like a business opportunity more than a security measure. At the Uzbekistan checkpoint we had to fill in another Immigration form like the one we had filled in on entry. The lone woman officer was very bossy but was only interested in in what books and medicine we had! No interest in our registration slips from hotels, what money we had or anything, just those things. Flicked through the books, checked the medicines although she had no idea what they were. Once this was done she was very friendly and chatty. Once our passports were stamped (this person did check my wife's registration slips) we were faced with the long hot walk, about 1.5km. There was a minibus full of workers there but they wouldn't give us a lift. At the end of the walk there was a Turkmen checkpoint, and the guard there made the minibus, which had caught up to us, take us the 500m to the Turkmen immigration point. There we were thankfully met by our tour guide who organized visas for us and had English copies of the customs form. Once through it was another hot 1.5km walk to where vehicles were allowed to pick up people. Our guide said this was a recent thing. So if you are older people, like us, be prepared to do some walking!
Leaving Turkmenistan from Ashgabat was less pleasant. Firstly we found that the Bajgiran border was closed by the Turkmenistan government. This meant a 100km drive to the Artyk/Lotfabad crossing. The Turkmen post people were quite suspicious and rude. They laughed at and refused my wife's request to use the toilet! They checked our bags but this was more out of curiosity. One annoying little soldier checked my visa and thought there was a problem (even though I was leaving) even though he had seen it stamped by the passport guy and had been told by 2 others there was no problem. He also wouldn't let my wife use the toilet. So be prepared if you have problems holding your bladder! A bus service runs to the Iran border post, where things were slow but more easy going. At no time were our bags inspected. A new building is being constructed so there are just sheds and shipping containers at present. It's a 3 hour plus drive from here to Mashad.

[Jaysun]

Their is no longer a "no-man's land" area between check points, so nice easy taxi (shared cost 3M) to the Turkmenistan boarder. About a 500m walk to customs, then 200m walk to the Uzbekistan boarder and taxis were waiting outside (10 USD) to Nukus. Very easy and happy guards.

[Uncle_Iroh]

Crossed the border in Konye Urgench - Hojeyli (Nukus) on October 5th.

Our tour guide was allowed to enter by the police (soldier?) manning the gates to help facilitate our exit. There were just a couple of other people besides us so we were able to exit the TM side relatively fast, approximately less than an hour.

The UZ side is similarly deserted, it was only the two of us there and nobody was crossing to TM. The entire process, including filling out the customs document (where they had each person list the amount of USD we were carrying into the country; one was kept by the guard and one I kept for departure from the country) and luggage check, was finished in around 30 minutes.

There was an old Lada taxi parked outside of the gates but the driver was nowhere to be found. Waited for around 30-45 minutes for a taxi to pass by, who agreed to take us to Nukus for USD 10 per person. He refused to take us to Khiva.

[babel]

Crossed this border from UZ to TM (Nukus to Konye-Urgench) recently on a sunday. It took 20 min. on the uzbek side, one hour on the turkmen side, so almost one and a half hour all together for border-crossing. After entering Turkmenistan, there is a walk of some 500 meters to a gate where vehicles that don't cross the border have to wait. Border guards were friendly, some of them had surprisingly good english-knowledge. Our tour-guide was anounced when we arrived at the border and came there to help with procedures - which would have gone smooth even without help, I guess. There was a fee of 14 (2 * 7) US-$ for entering, payable in cash only. Turkmen officials searched our luggage and asked if we had drugs or weapons, checked medicines. Diarrhea-medicine was no problem, they already knew the packages. Overall it was unproblematic, even if a little bit bureaucratic.