the first thing to say is that if you have never seen the film 'the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy' you need to watch the 'definition of vogon' on you tube now.The following comments about the customs officials then make sense.
will
So we arrived at the customs building to collect the bike at 9am......it took us a grand total of 5 1/2 hours in the end to liberate the bike and get free! Which we are told is very quick.
During the process we learned that the Kyrgyzstan customs officials (vogons) love; demanding multiple pieces of officious paperwork, endless requests to go to the next room/ hatch and back and forth , numerous upvc mini window hatches (which they also enjoy slamming a lot), the power trip of the rubber stamp, the sound of rubber stamps, decorating our paperwork with rubber stamps, requesting 'extra' payments for speed of processing the release of the bike (with the threat of another $100 a day storage cost). But on the plus side they were very friendly.
We also learned that photocopying one passport before lunch is acceptable but a passport and a log book is just 'too much before lunch'!
All in all, an interesting process that could not have been done without the help of 'james cargo' and 'iron horse nomads'. There is no way that we could have done that without experienced local help! Aparrenrly it took an Australian couple 4 days of relentless upvc hatch shuffling and 4 days of extra storage before they were finally allowed to take their bikes! We were very lucky!
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