Welcome to Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan's consular office is on a side-street near Almaty's main park. The embassy is a large yellow house set back from the road behind a high brick wall. The consulate is it's smaller annexe. Before you can enter, you must stand under a roofed terrace that juts across the pavement. Moody security men emerge from a guardroom from time to time to direct the luckiest individuals to a side-gate, through which they enter the compound down a breeze-block walled pathway.

At 2pm one Friday afternoon, around forty people were gathered outside waiting to have their visas processed, Uzbeks who needed 'exit visas' renewed, Tajiks and Afghans looking for transit visas that would enable them to cross Uzbekistan on their travels home. I wanted a tourist visa.

By 6pm the temperature had fallen to -6 and there was still a sizeable, increasingly angry crowd. A lucky few of us were upgraded to a bench inside the heated guardroom.

It was a plain room with yellowing walls. Next to the bench were two tatty chairs, their broken backs repaired with sellotape and wire. The guards sat at two mismatched desks pushed together. On one of the desks was a computer and monitor displaying high-resolution close-circuit tv.

The computer was locked inside a metal box.

Quite how we managed to be the last people admitted had something to do with my guardian's unwavering determination, and her inexhaustible supply of contacts in the right places. But after waiting for six hours, we were taken inside. Every other dejected applicant had been told to come back the following Monday.

This room was different. It was partitioned in the middle from floor to ceiling by a counter with blacked out windows. Yellow walls and a table with scissors and glue for fixing your passport photos. How thoughtful of them.

I got my visa in the end. I am grateful to the nervous young civil servant with a paunch. He'd just started his job apparently, so things were taking longer than usual to process.

And I wondered: Can you tell what kind of people run a country by the lamentable condition of their consular services? Or by their transparent disregard for citizens and foreigners alike before they have even arrived?

On a warmer note:
Did you know? Uzbek lemons are orange, and they're wonderful.