Wednesday 30 December 2015

Our Rally Route


What happened at the borders?

Going into this adventure we had no idea what to expect at borders. Would we have to pay money? Would they check documents? Would they search the car? Here we'll detail our experiences. Also this may not always be true for everyone, we heard stories of other people crossing the same borders who had completely different experiences to us. NOTE: this is a work in progress, I will add more information and details as and when I have time.

Country Entering
Border
What the law says?
Insurance asked for by border guards?
Money paid at border?
Notes
Serbia
Horgos (E75)
Hungarian-Serbian
3rd party insurance mandatory.
No
No
Crossed solo. Straightforward and easy. No mention of green card. No road tax paid and no tolls paid for use of motorways.
Turkey
Ipsala (E84)
Greece-Turkey
3rd party insurance mandatory. Tolls payable for motorway usage.
No
No
Crossed solo. Straightforward and easy. No mention of green card. No road tax on border. Turkey has toll motorways which are paid automatically using a HGS pass. We didn't get the pass, instead we drove through the toll gates, with alarms going off every time. We were never stopped and we exited Turkey with no mention of all the missed tolls.
Georgia
Sarpi (E70)
Turkey-Georgia
3rd party insurance mandatory.
No
No
Crossed solo. Straightforward and easy. No mention of green card.
Armenia
Gogavan
Georgia-Armenia
3rd party insurance mandatory.
No
Road tax: 10,700 AMD (aprox £15)
Crossed solo. Amounts paid for tax varied across different teams. We heard anything from 15 pounds to 40 pounds. Ours was probably cheaper as we had a random Russian footballer translating and helping us. Cash only, but you can use other currencies (Turkish Lira, Georgian Lari, USD, Euro confirmed).
Iran
Noordoz (M2)
Armenia-Iran

No
Carnet: 600 euro
Seven rally cars crossing together. Carnet payment is by cash, no cash points available. Fixers can sort carnet for varying prices. With hindsight we wouldn't have pre-arranged as there were fixers who would do it for around 250 USD.
Turkmenistan
Bajgiran (Quchan-Bajgiran Road)
Iran-Turkmenistan

No
Road tax: $135
Visa: $97
Seven rally cars crossing together. Long process, cash only, no way to get cash either if you are stuck. Picky about quality of notes. Brits will also have to pay $97 for visa.
Uzbekistan
Farab (M37)
Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan

No
No
Three rally cars crossing together. Agents trying to sell insurance certificate after border. Several teams did not bother and were never asked for proof of insurance
Tajikistan
Tursunzoda (M41) Uzbekistan- Tajikistan

No
Road tax: $20

Four rally cars crossing together. Attempted bribes on exiting the country, with the guard suggesting we didn't have receipts for all manner of things. We ended up bartering down from 100 USD per car to approximately 5 USD for four cars! If we held out for longer it would have been zero.
Kyrgyzstan
(M41)
Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan

No
Road tax: $20

Four rally cars crossing together. Professional (they had computers and passport scanners)  and welcoming border. Reports other teams 'lost' items during car search, but we (and 3 other cars) were absolutely fine.
Kazakhstan
Karkara (A362)
Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan

No
No
Crossed solo. Need to fill out a customs form, makes life easier if you have it later on (for Russia/Mongolia), but can get away without it. Professional and welcoming border, with the customs guard trying to teach us lots of Kazakh words.
Russia
Kazakhstan-Russia
AND
Mongolia-Russia
3rd party insurance mandatory.
No
No
Three rally cars crossing together. Stopped by police 3 times whilst in Russia (all whilst driving back to the UK), no time did they ask for insurance or tax.
Mongolia
Khyagt (A-340)
Russia-Mongolia

No
Car cleaning: X dollar
Crossed with two rally cars. Agents after border peddling tax and insurance, many teams ignored and drove on without any problems. Other teams paid $x for tax, $x for insurance.