We arrived at the border to Somaliland – at a first glance the village looked like other small towns at borders: more plastic bags in the scrub than inhabitants and goats.The Ethiopian border formalities were fast and friendly as were the Somali ones. You did not have the impression, that you entered a non – existing country. Maybe a little strange: the Somaliland immigration takes a picture and fingerprints of you when entering as well when leaving the country. Maybe an anti – terrorist measure or simply an action against the neighbouring Puntland pirates, or, even worse, the Al-Shabab fighters in remaining Somalia. Who knows, it was surely a justified measure.
The other slightly strange issue was the stamp in our Carnet de Passage without keeping their own copy for customs. No problem for us, it’s theirs. So we entered with our car – from a custom’s point of view a car ready to sell without paying taxes to the non – existing country. After a few hundred meters we got stopped by police, immigration, customs and national secret service at a road block. We showed them our (probably not valid) entrance stamps in the passport, the proof of legal importation of our car (without any trace in their own admin. system) – and off we went. This important procedure repeated without any problems another 5 to 6 times until we finally reached Hargeysa – the proud capital village of the non – existent nation.
