In order to acquire a visa for Uzbekistan, one needs to jump through one extra hoop that might not be expected. In addition to applying for a visa at an embassy, a letter of invitation from the government of Uzbekistan tends to be helpful. While technically not necessary, having one has been known to grease the wheels and ease the process.

Several travel agencies can help acquire said letter of invitation. The one that helped us said that ours would be ready either today or tomorrow. During breakfast, I received an e-mail notifying us that our letter of invitation was ready and that the travel agent would receive a copy in a few hours. Hooray!

Breakfast

Cindy and I originally planned to visit a museum in the afternoon, but decided it was best to get the visa application process out of the way as quickly as possible. We scrapped the museum idea and instead decided to walk around gawking at stuff until our letter of invitation appeared in my inbox.

In the northwest of Almaty is a lovely park that commemorates Kazakhstan’s fallen. In the middle of the park is an Orthodox Church surrounded by pigeons (above). At the mouth of the park is an enormous statue of Kazakh soldiers bursting out of the USSR.

Park commemorating fallen Kazakhs

Central Mosque near park

Right before lunch, I received the letter of invitation and completed visa application in my inbox. Cindy and I celebrated over a Gerogian lunch (delicious, by the way) and hustled to the hostel to gather our materials—passports, passport photos, passport copies, marriage certificate. I asked the hostel to print our visa application and letter of invitation. No problem. Then I asked them to call a taxi to take us to the Uzbekistan Embassy. Slight problem. They didn’t know where it is.

Easy, they said, they’ll just call the taxi company. Taxi drivers know where everything is. Everything, that is, except the Uzbekistan Embassy, because they didn’t know where it is either and asked for an address. There was a phone number listed in the Almaty guidebook. No one answered. Google Maps showed every embassy except the Uzbekistan Embassy. At this point, three hostel staff were on their phones calling everyone they knew to locate the embassy.

Around this time, the little cartoon angel appeared over my left shoulder and asked, “Dude, do you really want to visit a country with an MIA embassy?” Before I could answer, the little cartoon devil then appeared over my right shoulder and beat up the little cartoon angel that appeared over my left shoulder.

One of the hostel staff said she had an answer. Armed with an address, she called the taxi company and passed it along. Our driver took us out of the commercial area and into a nondescript looking residential area. My confidence wavered. Rounding a corner, we saw a squat little house surrounded by a mob of people waving passports. Yeah, this was it. I laughed. Our driver laughed, though he was definitely laughing at us and not with us.

Luckily, the mob of people were all Uzbek citizens who needed something different from what we did. We were ushered to the visa application office. The first thing we saw/heard was an upset American begging for his visa to be processed by Friday. Haha, foolish person without a letter of invitation. I love it when someone else is in a worse situation than I am.

I proudly strode up to the embassy official and thrust my materials at him, letter of invitation first. He grunted and closed the door. An hour and a half later, Cindy and I were instructed to pay for our visa. We were to leave the embassy, head to a nearby bank, make a deposit, and return with the receipt. We did, and I proudly thrust the receipt at the embassy official. He grunted and closed the door. Half an hour later, we had our visas.

Indian dinner celebration

Cindy celebrates by eating