Category: Preparation

Today, administration! Yay! /s

Main item: visas. Other items: Carnet de Passage en Douane, international driver’s license, travel insurance and car insurance.

1) Visas

A quick overview of the countries we will be passing, and the need for a visa. For those who require visas, also a quick note on our experience:

• Belgium: no, ofcourse not 🙂
• Germany: no
• Austria: no
• Hungary: no
• Serbia: no
• FYROM (Macedonia): no
• Greece: no
• Turkey: yes, but it’s a simple E-visa, which you can also get at the border
• Georgia: no
• Armenia: no
• Iran: yes. There should be an E-visa now, but we still applied the old fashioned way: we paid an Iranian travel agency to apply for an RN number for us, which we then used to apply at the embassy in Brussels. All in all, pretty straightforward. You need 2-3 weeks, depending on whether you pay extra at the embassy.
• Turkmenistan: yes. Two options: tourist visa or transit visa. Tourist will cost you an arm and a leg, as you have to book a tour with a local travel agency (100€-200€ per day) before you get the visa. So we applied for the transit visa at the embassy in Brussels. Application was three weeks ago, still no news (see the other 8th March post…).
• Uzbekistan: yes, really simple procedure: fill out online form, inform embassy (give them barcode) so they can prepare, go and get visa one week later.
• Tajikistan: yes, but it’s a simple E-visa
• Kyrgyzstan: no
• Kazakhstan: no
• Russia: yes. This is a complicated one. We haven’t applied yet, as you can apply at most 3 months in advance. However, as a Belgian citizen, we can only apply in our home country. But by the time we can apply, we’ll be on the road…
  Solution: we’ll apply for a transit visa. Two actually: one from Kazakhstan to Mongolia, one from Mongolia to Europe. Lots of visafun still awaits!
• Mongolia: yes. Also have to apply for this one on the road (cf max 3 months in advance), so no feedback yet.
• Russia again
• Finland? Estonia? Sweden? Denmark? We’re not sure about the route back through Europe yet, but from here on, no more visa needed!

2) Carnet de Passage en Douane

Before this trip, we had never even heard of this document. Simply put, this is a passport for your car. To prevent you from selling your car in a certain country (without paying proper import taxes), you get a stamp in a booklet when you enter and exit the country.

The booklet is provided by certain car clubs in each country, members of FIA. What happens is that these car clubs are garantueeing that you’ll comply with the rules of the Carnet. That also means you have to put a couple of thousand €’s (depending on vehicle) in a pledge bank account, which you’ll only get back after your trip…

For our trip, we need this document for Iran. There’s quite a few countries in Africa and Asia where you would need the Carnet, should you go there by car.

3) International driver’s license

In Belgium, you can get this easily at your town hall. Depending on the town, you get your driver’s license immediately or at most after a week. 20€ where we live.

4) Travel insurance

As we’re leaving for almost six months, we need a special travel insurance. Most products only supply insurance for trips for 1 up to 3 months, but there are a few that do the trick.

Fun fact: we are insured worldwide. Our car however, only has travel insurance up to Istanbul. This means if the car breaks down before Istanbul: insurance. If it breaks down after: tough luck. This also means if the car breaks down completely in, say, Turkmenistan, we have to pay for our return plane tickets ourselves. If we were to have an accident and get hurt physically: insurance pays.

5) Car insurance

Our regular car insurance (the “green card”) will only get us as far as the territory of Turkey. After that we’ll need to get border insurance each time we cross the border of a new country. Depending on whether insurance is obligated in the country, of course. Still to find out!

 

That gives you a broad overview of the administration that is involved with our trip.
We’re also hoping we didn’t forget anything…

We applied for our Turkmenistan transit visa a couple of weeks ago, with the confirmation it would be ready in three weeks (which would be today, the 8th). When we called today, however, the embassy told us it’ll be ready on Monday the 12th at the earliest, possibly even Thursday the 15th. Bummer!

Luckily, we’re not really bound to any dates. All our other visas leave plenty of room for shuffling country entries around.

Truth be told, it could turn out even worse. It’s not even sure we’re getting our Turkmen visa (they can always be refused, apparently). In case of a refusal, we have a plan B though: travelling through Afghanistan!

Or not.

Real plan B: going back from Iran to Azerbaijan and taking a ferry accross the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is visa free, and gives us a quick route to our real destination, Uzbekistan. In case you’re not following anymore, no worries, I’ve provided a handy map below:

(Plan C = Afghanistan = big no-no)

We’ll let you know when we’ll actually leave!

What we had to check before leaving:

• Vaccinations
• General health check up
• Teeth
• Travel pharmacy

1) Vaccinations

We’ve done some travelling before, so most of our vaccinations were still ok. The following are required for the regions we’re travelling: polio, tetanus, hepatitis A & B, diphteria, rabies, tick-borne encephalitis (apparently you need this east of Germany already!), thypoid fever.
Tom had to get the last three, Wafa only the last two. Rabies consists of 3 shots over the course of about a month, tick-borne encephalitis means 2 shots, thypoid fever just one.

Honorary mention here goes to malaria: no vaccination available of course. There’s only a low malaria risk in 2 countries we’re passing: Iran and Tajikistan. Iran only in the southeastern region of Balochistan, which we’re already avoiding due to risk of banditism. In Tajikistan it’s only the south which has a mild malaria risk. We’ve been told DEET and mosquito nets should suffice for our trip over the Pamir Highway.

2) General health check up

This is pretty self explanatory and normally, this shouldn’t be an issue. However, Tom has had some worries…
In the past couple of months, he experienced hematuria a few times (I’ll let you google that for yourself). Luckily, a nephrologist was quickly available. The real source of this symptom is still not a 100% clear, but it’s probably a case of Henoch Schonlein, which basically is a recurring inflammation of blood vessels. This may or may not lead to kidney damage in the long run. Nothing to prevent it, just has to be monitored. Great to find out 4 weeks before leaving!

(Drawing blood for additional testing.)

Next to that, he also came down with the flue last week. For the first time in 20 years. Right before leaving. Again, great timing! At least he won’t get it on the road?

3) Teeth

Special mention for Wafa’s teeth here. She blames the pH in her mouth, but fact is they’re just… bad. Always holes. Already had her first root canal therapy a few years back.
And of course, as our luck has it, it seems that there’s another one on the way. During a last dentist appointment on the 1st of March the dentist will try to fix the bad molar up as much as possible, hopefully avoiding another root canal. Again, just one week before we leave…

4) Travel pharmacy

We’re taking the usual with us (Motilium, Immodium, a general antibiotic, antihistamine…). Important to take into account though: in some countries you need to be careful which medications you take with you. Georgia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, to name but a few, are quite strict on which drugs you can bring into the country. No opiods (Dafalgan Codeïne?), benzos… You also need a prescription (in English) for all prescription drugs you bring with you. Best also to provide a complete list of drugs you have with you.

Nobody said travelling the silk road would be easy!

A few people have been asking us about our preparations for the trip. So for the next couple of weeks, we’ll be detailing our prep in a number of themed posts (car, administration, health, budget…)

Today: The Car!

When we first set about looking for our mode of transportation, we quickly realised our own car would be ideal for the trip we had in mind. It gives you the most freedom, is reasonable in cost (compared to flying everywhere) and even gives you a roof over your head if the need would ever arise. The idea is to buy a car now, then resell it once we come back, further lowering our transportation cost.

A few of the criteria that were important to us while choosing a car:
– Large enough to sleep in (well, Wafa anyway),
– 4×4,
– Dependable (= Japanese),
– Easy to find extra parts.

In the end, we ended up scouting second-hand websites for RAV4’s (Toyota), Grand Vitaras (Suzuki) and others.

After a couple of weeks, we found our match! A 2001 Suzuki Grand Vitara, with 141000 km on the counter. Meet Suzy:

(Also take your time to admire that beautiful asscrack.)

To prepare the car for the trip, we’ve already done a number of things:

• Built a wooden platform in the back of the car: on top of this, we’ll put our mattress.
• Car maintenance: so far we’ve changed the oil, oil filter and the fuel filter. Still to go: brake pads. Note: we didn’t do this ourselves, so many thanks to Tom’s brother, Pieter!
• Changed the car radio (to include AUX, USB, Bluetooth…)

We’re also taking a few things with us on the road:

• extra oil, light bulbs, air filter, spare tire, a jack, starter cables, traction rope, duct tape, cable ties (‘colson strips’), tools…

We’ll make sure to post another picture of Suzy once she’s fully loaded!

PS: Suzy was not my first choice. I was thinking of something more intimidating and awe-inspiring. But hey, that’s living with a woman: you win some, you lose… always?