Battle at the Border


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Last Updated on August 27, 2016 by Audrey Scott

Have you ever watched the news and witnessed escaping refugees at a border crossing, crushed against iron bars like animals in a cage? You know the scene. Now superimpose two backpack-laden white faces onto that newsreel, throw in a few cries of “Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan” amongst the shrieks of old women and children being squashed in a sea of madness, and you would just begin to understand what we went through at the Uzbek-Kazakh border yesterday.

To our pleasant surprise, exiting Uzbekistan customs and passport control couldn’t have been easier. Then – our real test – the Kazakh side. The combined wisdom of Soviet and Asian queuing techniques conspired to produce large clouds of humanity everywhere, rendering it impossible to determine where things started and where they might end.

The Crowd Gets Anxious

We joined the queue at the rear of an anxious mob – some carrying shoulder bags, many lugging sagging Chinese sacks of vegetables and melons, and others laden with all of their worldly possessions. The gate in front of this herd of hundreds was locked. As people escaped and climbed back to the Uzbek side (for what we’re not certain), the remaining crowd swelled and swayed. Those around us hung onto our backpacks and tried to maneuver where they could, even though there was nowhere to go. In amazement, Audrey asked a Russian-Uzbek woman who seemed to look comfortable in this setting. “Is this normal? Is it like this every day?” The woman smiled, and nodded “Yes. Don’t worry, a few more pushes and we’ll make it to the front.”

As the full force of Uzbek-Kazakh rush hour hit, what little space existed disappeared and the real crush began. What air remained became almost too hot to breathe. We could feel our lungs taking on the pressure and slowly collapsing under the weight of bodies around us. In one of our most physically challenging travel moments yet, fainting was a distinct possibility. Injury was certain.

We were worried. The scene was something like a mosh pit, minus the order, joy and human decency. This was humanity and human misery at its worst: everyone tries to get in and ahead and no one realizes that the system crushes everyone under its own weight. This is the worst Russified post-Soviet Central Asian madness and behavior that we could imagine.

We looked around into the eyes of the herd and we could see normal people transformed into mutants consumed by anger, their faces twisting in smiles of fatigue. And there was no reason for this madness – no war, no shortages, no violence. What was going on here? Pretty simple: this is what happens when poor organization and perfect corruption conspire to bring human misery where it simply doesn’t belong. If this represents the combined wisdom of the Uzbek and Kazakh governments, life can only get worse before it gets better.

Getting Separated in the Crowd

In an effort to stay together, we locked arms. But the shifting human mass stripped us of our ability to move on our own and we eventually separated and drifted into the crowd. More people arriving from behind meant increased pressure, sandwiching the crowd more tightly forward towards the locked gate.

Dan struggled to move beyond an old man with an overflowing sack of watermelons and a group of Kazakh women built like linebackers. Women around us yelled, “Kazakhstan. It’s our Kazakhstan. I’m Kazakh, let me in. Kazakhstan is for us.” Angry Uzbek women replied that they were just as entitled to enter. Fortunately, no serious fights broke out, but everyone’s animal instincts were turned on full blast.

Audrey Makes It Through the Kazakh Border

After three hours in this angry steam bath of humanity, Audrey made it to the front gate and caught the eye of a Kazakh border guard. Just moments earlier, he had allowed a group of Kazakh citizens to pass due to their conveniently money-stuffed passports. Armed with her American passport and a look of helplessness, she implored him to let her through. As he opened the gate he smiled ironically, “Welcome to Kazakhstan.” The teeming masses tried to follow. The guard barked at them hinting that his gun was handy and tried to slam the gate. He perched himself against a metal fence and tried to close it against the weight of the mob with the force of his legs.

The Final Challenge: To Get Dan Out

The final challenge: to find and extract Dan. The guard was not up for this challenge. Dan was still several rows back in the angry crowd. Audrey tried with another guard, assuming the role of a distraught woman in search of her husband. Dan raised his hand to indicate where he was. The guard yelled and motioned to let him through. No one moved. Even if they could, would they? As a trickle escaped through the front gate, the crowd rocked back and forth in waves. Undeterred, the guard gave his best effort and reached in. In what little energy remained, Dan surged forward. His bags twisted in the crowd and he nearly went horizontal in an unintended crowd surf. He handed his passport to Audrey over the gate and reached to the outstretched hands of the guard, who helped to pull him – scratching and scraping just like the others – over and through the mob.

Final Step: The Passport Stamp

We were both covered in sweat, dehydrated and exhausted, but we still had one more hurdle to cross – getting our passports and immigration cards stamped by the Kazakh police. The corruption factory had apparently spawned another group of lowlife entrepreneurial women who collected money-loaded passports and handed them to the front of this queue, thereby expediting them to the colluding border guard at the window. Families huddled behind, unraveling wads of money (usually between $1-$3) to tuck into each passport. Having come this far without paying a bribe, we stuck to our principles and waited it out. When we arrived at the window, we were shown to a more civilized “foreigner’s line.”

Like all perfectly corrupt systems, there is an alternative to the experience above. Apparently, for around $8 (perhaps more for non-Kazakhs), middlemen touts have an arrangement with Kazakh border guards to allow people to enter through another gate, thereby fast-forwarding them to the front of the passport queue. We had considered this, but decided on principle not to contribute to the corruption; we subjected ourselves to the madness instead. By the time we’d figured this out, extracting ourselves was not an option anyhow. And in truth, we needed a really good story after enjoying so many uneventful days drinking lattes in Tashkent.

Reflections and Gratitude

Next time, would we pay to avoid the crowd? Having woken up with our share of cuts and bruises, it’s hard to say. For those of you who have ever paid a bribe (either directly or through a company that acts as a bribe-paying middleman or fixer), you are aware how systems that embrace endemic corruption have a way of wearing down your principles.

Cuts, bruises, and reflection aside, we were very fortunate to be carrying American passports.

Otherwise, we might still be at the border.

About Daniel Noll
Travel and life evangelist. Writer, speaker, storyteller and consultant. Connecting people to experiences that will change their lives. Originally from the U.S. Daniel has lived abroad since 2001 and most recently has been on the road since 2006. When he's not writing for the blog you can keep up with his adventures on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And you can learn more about him on the About Page and on LinkedIn.

21 thoughts on “Battle at the Border”

  1. Definitely a birthday I won’t forget! The day before my birthday was at the border and brothel…and on the night of my birthday we were on an overnight bus between Shymkent and Almaty!

    Luckily, we celebrated early in Tashkent at a nice Italian place : )

    Reply
  2. Dave,
    Very good question…one that we compared notes on the night it happened.

    Stink factor was surprisingly low. Let’s just say that it didn’t begin to rival the stench that seems to cloud Prague’s public transportation in the depths of summer. And there was no shortage of sweat-drenched bodies and clothing.

    We wondered why. Less beer consumption? Less smoking? Less consumption of garlic soup? More deodorant?
    Dan

    Reply
  3. awesome story. I think i am going to cancel my upcoming overland trip to K-Stan now though.

    I agree with your comments at the end about “endemic corruption have a way of wearing down your principles.” after 4 years of what i do, trying the legal route to no avail, i have learned that it is just easier to pay them off, it is perhaps the only way in many instances. Glad you guys made it through, and have a killer story to tell as a consequence.

    i am a little confused though, was everyone in the crowd speaking English?

    Reply
  4. After living in the land of smiles for so many years, a trip to K-Stan would be a bit of a shock ; )

    Endemic corruption does wear everyone down, even those people with the best intentions. I heard stories in Kyrgyzstan of people who REALLY wanted to prove that you could do things without paying someone off succumb in the end because they just needed it (ID card, permit, etc.) and couldn’t wait any longer. We managed to get through this situation without paying anyone off, but we paid for it physically and emotionally.

    Everyone in the crowd was yelling in Russian, the lingua franca of that region.

    Reply
  5. Great, hopefully we will not meet any other backpack-laden white faces in our region. We are quiet happy without them. Please keep your stories for your silly and ignorant friends, whom you are trying to impress by your “courage”.

    Reply
  6. Whoo-ee! What an experience! And as usual, you describe it with grace and perspective; employing honourable morals every step of the way. Bravo!

    Reply
  7. We wondered why. Less beer consumption? Less smoking? Less consumption of garlic soup? More deodorant?

    perhaps because people shower three times a day…)

    Reply
  8. @Jahangir: I sincerely hope that the situation at this border has improved since our experience in 2007.

    We’ve been traveling like this for almost five years, and this situation is probably the most frightened we’ve been for our well-being. What we’ve written is exactly as it happened (in fact, we’ve probably under-told the actual situation). We crossed the border, we took notes in the taxi on the way to Shymkent and we posted the story the next day. So there wasn’t much lag time between our experience and the time we published the story.

    As for recommending us to your enemies or not, that decision is yours to make.

    Reply
  9. Has anyone there ever had or grown hami melons? Anyone know what i’m talking bout. I’d like to get seeds for those if anyone knows where i could find some.

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  10. @Dave: Hmm, we were swimming in a sea of melons on the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Not sure where you can get hami melon seeds…maybe better sourced out of Xinjiang Province in China.

    Reply
  11. I don’t know. This sounds a lot like passport control in Miami after a bunch of flights that ended up arriving at the same time 🙂 Minus the bribes of course.
    Love reading through all your posts. So many more to go!

    Reply
    • Ha! We went through that passport control in Miami late last year when we were on our way to Haiti. It does seem to have gotten a bit better once they added machines in for US Citizens and residents. JFK is pretty tough passport control, too.

      Glad you’re enjoying reading through our posts!

      Reply

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