Today was the third and final day of our tour of Turkmenistan.

We started the day in the capital city of Ashgabat but by the end of the day we’d be in Bukhara across the border in Uzbekistan.

As you can tell from the title, it was a very long day…

Driving to the border

The Farap border between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan is where our tour ends and it’s a whopping 640km away from Ashgabat.

We were given the option of what time to leave this morning and we all kind of wanted to leave later since we had a pretty long day yesterday.

My only caveat was that I wanted to cross the border in daylight hours because Bukhara was another 100km away and would take anywhere from an hour or two to get there.

I just didn’t want to arrive at the hostel late at night trying to get all setup and unpacked in a dark dorm room.

Our tour guide confirmed we’d be doing a 6pm crossing which meant we’d be arriving in Bukhara sometime around 7 and 8pm which, while kinda late, was still a decent time to checkin and not bother anyone.

Oh, silly little me, had I not learned anything about my tour’s horrible sense of timing?

We didn’t actually get to the border until 8:30 and the sun had long gone down.

How our timing was off by 2 1/2 hours, I have no idea, but it’s kind of par for the course for this tour.

Anyway the road itself, other than a small stretch, was pretty well smooth it was just the shear distance of driving that took forever.

With pitstops in Mary and Merv for a bit, we were still crammed in that 7 seater van for 11 hours which is way, way, way, past my comfort level.

Speaking of pitstops…

Pit stops in Mary and Merv

At midday we reached the small town of Mary where we stopped for lunch.

Again the restaurant was pretty fancy and this one was decorated with all sorts of cool memorabilia including a bird cage with a couple live budgies in it and a big stuffed bear casually sitting in a seat in the lobby.

A plate of beef and mash and another berry lemonade later and we were back on the road.

Our next pit stop was the ancient city of Merv about an hour away.

It’s home to a handful of ancient ruins including those from a large fortress from centuries ago.

This was supposed to be the highlight of this leg of the trip and, honestly, again, it was kind of meh.

Was it worth a ridiculously long drive through the desert to stop here?

No, no it wasn’t.

There were other options to get to the border including an overnight train leaving last night or a flight this morning but I had specifically opted for this choice to see the ruins.

Yeah, that was a mistake.

Take the train or the plane.

Trust me on this one.

Crossing the border

Anyway, like I said, we arrived at the Farap border around 8:30 at night.

But, of course, it wasn’t like we could just walk across the border and enter Uzbekistan.

The process of crossing the border took about an hour and included 8 passport checks and 3 shuttle bus rides between buildings.

Those shuttle bus rides are mandatory and they also demand a $1USD fee which isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things but can easily become a nuisance if you don’t have small bills which was the case for us.

After being on the road for so many hours and a much later crossing than we were promised, some of our tempers were a bit flared and this little bit of nuisance was enough to send some people over the line.

I tempered myself and do what I always do in these situations – laugh at the absurdity of it all and make a mental note that “it’ll tell a good story down the road”.

Finally, at just after 9:30 we had crossed through into Uzbekistan.

A late night checkin

Of course our journey wasn’t quite over for the day as we still had to get to Bukhara which was another 100km away.

Despite being back in Uzbekistan, we were still out of network for any of our esims to work which meant none of had no data on our phone.

And that meant we couldn’t use our Yandex apps on our phones to get a taxi into Bukhara.

Oh lord, we were at the mercy of the taxi touts hovering around us outside the border gate.

I had previously read that a taxi on Yandex went for about 120k ($14) for the entire car but, naturally, the price we were being quoted by the drivers was 600k ($67).

Others in the group were trying to haggle the price but I quickly recognized that we were at their mercy and we’d just have to bite the bullet and hop in one of their cars.

Honestly, it wasn’t like $22 per person was an outrageous price for a 100km drive so I was kind of okay with it.

I also just wanted to get to our damn hostel.

And then, finally, at 11pm we got to our new home for the next couple of days.

My fear of trying to figure out things in the dark dorm room were realized and, to top it off, I was given an upper bunk which made all the beds shake as I climbed into it.

At midnight we took a trip to one of the few places open late night which was a burger joint across town.

It had been almost 10 hours since we last ate and we were starving so there we were sitting in a burger joint after midnight eating a burger, fries, and a milkshake.

Ah, an awesome welcome back to Uzbekistan.