The border crossing itself was very easy. Firstly we had to declare our goods and money at the Tajik customs. There was a custom officer who spoke German so this task was very easy. At the customs they did notice that we had a private tourist visa (instead of a tourist visa) and advised to put our OVIR registration (that we had kept separately) into our passports. Afterwards we went to their colleagues - the border guards. They did check the OVIR registration and we were happy that we had registered in Khorog. One of the officers took us, our passports and OVIR registration to a Russian tourist group. He wanted us to explain to them that they would need an OVIR registration too. Apparently they had a private tourist visa like us, but had not registered. We were happy that we had the registration and thus no problems! Then the same procedure again on the Uzbek side. Nobody counted our money and checked our bags as we had heard from French group, Tristan and his two friends, in Dushanbe. It probably depends on the officers' mood when to check people or not. Finally we were in Uzbekistan! Yippieh!
>From now it was just another 40 km to Samarkand. As we came to lower altitude the last days, the temperature climbed again. Before reaching Samarkand our bicycle computer showed 45°C. On the way people were greeting us friendly all the time like in Tajikistan, but for the first time we met some nasty kids as well, throwing stones at us. On our way we met Harry from Austria who was on his way to Japan on his bicycle. We have the same winter plans, i.e. Southeast Asia. Maybe we will meet him again down there.
Entering Samarkand, it did not look much different from Dushanbe: dirty roads, dusty, a lot of traffic. But then we came around a corner and were suddenly standing in front of Registan. This was really impressive! The city looked completely different in this part. A big green park with water fountains, clean and huge roads, modern supermarkets and tourist shops.
The hostel (B&B Badihor) in which we ended up staying had been recommended to us by other cyclists in Dushanbe and indeed we met many more here. It was nice to sit around in the courtyard and exchanging some cycling experiences. We felt really like 'beginners' because the others had been on the road for so much longer, had cycled so many more kilometers. But their stories were a big motivation, making us looking forward even more to what is to come in the next weeks and months!
