Low cost Uzbekistan, here you will find all the information to obtain a visa and organize yourself in a practical and autonomous way for a trip to Uzbekistan.
This year the choice of the spring trip went around the globe and given the different needs of three female travelers and the geographical distance, one in Shanghai and two in Turin, the rotating finger stopped here: Uzbekistan!
If I tell you Tamerlane, Vecchioni and Samarkand? Well, that's it Samarkand there, historically important for the best known Silk Road.
I do not hide the fact that in these months of preparation for the trip, most of the times I have been asked, "where is this .. stan ???“, The more timid ones have limited themselves to rolling their eyes in search of some geographical reference, totally in a panic, the more brazen instead have rightly retorted with a“ .. but what are three women going to do alone in Uzbekistan? ".
First, we are in Central Asia and this country is nestled there, among all the stans that come to mind: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. The choice of date is not accidental, in fact the 21 March is celebrated throughout Central Asia and beyond, the nawruz on the occasion of the spring equinox. A real celebration of life!
This festival is very important and includes a whole series of traditional rituals, songs and dances throughout the country, which I will tell you about when I return! Let's focus now on more practical details for those who want to walk part of the Silk Road without relying on an agency for the duration of the tour.
Documents
First fundamental thing: the documents. You will obviously need the passport with the usual six months of validity and the visa which you will have to request at the Uzbek Embassy. Arm yourself with patience, the embassy never replied to our emails and we only managed to contact them once on the phone.
In that case they confirmed that in order to obtain the visa we could not, as independent travelers, send the various documents required (photos, passport and online form) but we had only two choices: go directly to Rome to bring the documentation personally or entrust us to one of the agencies that deal with visas and consular practices. We have chosen the second one and also for this phase, if you still want yours to be a low cost trip, a lot of patience is required, because there are many agencies and their costs are too. On the embassy website you will find recommended agencies, we have contacted them all as well as external agencies.
Conclusion: for two visas, with a stay in the country of 12 days they asked us from 130 to 170 euros per practice. So, don't stop at the first quote but persevere!. The visa cost us 136 euros each, to be requested at least 15 days first to rest assured.
The only reason I recommend this agency is the saving, not for efficiency, not for the way of interacting with the customer nor for the assistance, so go further, because your goal is to save and go. You will have to fill in the online form on the Uzbek government website and you will be the one to call the courier for collection. Very important thing: as always happens, when you travel to a country that requires a visa, the agency or whoever for you expressly tells you to do not buy the flight until you have obtained the visa, what to say? Everyone chooses how to behave, traveling low cost I usually take care of the flight 4/5 months before and they have always issued me visas.
Once the boring bureaucratic part has been solved, we just have to deal with theitinerario. Our trip will have a total duration of 11 days, I will tell you about the tour in the next post but I anticipate the hotels, I have already booked them all through booking.
We have foreseen transfers every 3 days about touching the main cities and we chose to leave 3 days free in the middle of the trip, to decide what to do following the inspiration of the moment!
For those who in the meantime are thinking of Uzbekistan as their next trip, I highly recommend theUzbek agency who took care of booking our internal transfers instead. I'm talking about the taxi with driver who will pick us up at the airport in Tashkent (the capital) and take us directly to Samarkand (110 dollars in three, for 4 hours of transfer) and the train that instead we will take from Samarkand to Bukhara (75 dollars, 3 tickets for a 3 hour second class trip).
The agency in question is Advantour: efficient, quick to answer and very well prepared, but above all they are not insistent. They made only one discreet attempt to try to get us to book the whole trip with them in a standard way (internal flights, excursions, hotels and guides) but they gladly accepted our request only for the taxi and train tickets, which will be delivered directly to the driver upon arrival! We will pay for everything in dollars and cash, neither the hotels nor the agency have asked us to prepay. The good news is that, for those who do not want to organize and think, Advantour does everything, even the infamous visa but only when booking a package that is all inclusive!
Last recommendation: they told us strictly to bring the dollars, since they are there very few ATMs in the country and they are often short of money. I'll check and let you know.
I start thinking about the suitcase and what I will write to you when I return! You dream of Samarkand.
