The Life of Brian (Part Two of Two)

As you’ll recall from Part One, rather than attempt to take Brian into Uzbekistan, we packed him on his merry way to Atyrau, a small city in the far western part of Kazakhstan that we would be driving through on our way to Russia. It cost us $150 and was worth every cent just for the piece of mind.

So, with Brian safely on the hands of DHL, we rocked up early to the Tajikistan/Uzbekistan border the next morning without a care in the world. As we left the Tajikistan side and approached the Uzbekistan side of the border the gun toting guards became more frequent and the barbed wire sharper. And when I saw the huge van that X-rays cars I knew we had done the right thing posting Brian. Honestly, if we had had Brian in the car, I would have had a nervous breakdown. As I kept saying to Captain – Uzbekistan is: fundamentally a police state; in a period of political turmoil with the recent death of its long standing President and is a country with one of the worst human rights record in the world ……. what the hell were we even thinking considering smuggling a drone in?

We drove up ready for customs clearance and to have the car checked. It wasn’t so much that we were feeling smug, but we were definitely relieved and I was also kind of hoping they would search Totty so as to justify my paranoia! As I mentioned, in all previous border crossings (apart from Russia when the car was x-rayed) officers have only ever given a very quick cursory glance in the two big drawers and up the front. To be honest they’re more interested in how we’ve decked out the car then anything else.

We were finally invited through the gates and beckoned to drive up behind another car that was in the process of being searched. Now this is where it gets crazy – at this very moment any thoughts we might have had that they simply would have ‘not seen’ Brian were monumentally annihilated. For when I say they were searching the car in front, what I mean to say is that it was the car equivalent of a strip-and-bend-over-and-part-your-cheeks search.

To bullet point said search:

• Front bumper taken off
• All seats, front and rear, were unbolted from the chassis and passed though an X-ray scanner
• Spare wheel scanned
• All luggage removed and scanned
• Carpet lifted up from the now seatless car to be x-rayed and the bare chassis inspected by four men on all fours
• Roof lining poked and prodded
• All internal door panels removed
• Plastic melded lining in the boot unbolted
• Engine inspected
• Underside of car throughly searched
• Sniffer dog unleashed

We sat with mouths agape.

When they searched our car it wasn’t nearly as thorough but, suffice to say, they would have  found Brian 🙂

Oh….and can you guess what the only thing they scanned from the car was? Yes my sleeping bag……Sod’s Law as my father would say!!