Hello guys and girls,

i am writing you from schangaösen in kazakhstan. I tried to get into turkmenistan on my motobike yesterday, but it appears that the kazakh-turkmen border was closed 3 months ago. This is valid for every individual traffic. Commercial lorries can get through, but not your average tourist with a valid transit visa. Keep in mind, that i had to give the turkmen-embassy a detailed plan of my planned tour through their country while applying for the visa some 1,5 months ago. So they either dont know about this or dont bother to say to you. Both seems possible. The turkmen border guards werde friendly but resolute. There was absolutly no way in. I even suggested loading my bike on one of the lorries, but they didnt seem to like the idea. Kazakh border guards were extremely friendly and helpful as usual. The even bought me some food and water in their shop and sent me on my way back. Locals in schangaösen claim that the border might be open again at 01.10.2018 but until then my transit visa will be expired. And noone knows whether this info will come true. Because i dont have a visa for usbekistan (turkmen border guards sent me there) i will have to go around the border by sea. We will see how that works out...

Greetings from kazakhstan!

Edit: i couldnt find any info about this on the forum. Thats whay i opened up a new thread. If this is already known and i was just to dumb to find it, feel free to delete this!

Sorry to hear about that.

The Caravanistan website and forum is the best place on the web for information on Central Asian border crossings:

https://caravanistan.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5468

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EurasiaOverland a memoir of one quarter of a million kilometres by road through all of the Former USSR, Western and Southern Asia.