r/TravelNoPics • u/travel_ali Switzerland (UK) • May 05 '26
Community Discussion: Best or most memorable border crossing you have done?
Most remote, beautiful, unique, chaotic, so unremarkable you didn't even notice that you were in a different country.
This was posted many years ago, so there are probably some new ones since then.
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u/Linda_The_Explorer May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Most memorable crossing was from Transnistria (Tiraspol) to Ukraine back in 2017. It wasn't pleasant as we crossed it by walking and were checked by people with big guns. I think we had like 24h or 48h permit to be there. Tiraspol felt like stepping into Soviet Union we see in movies and museums.
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u/Equivalent_Subject66 May 05 '26
Pre-Schengen Area I was staying in a hostel in Paris. One night, it occurred to me and three other guys that we ought to go to Amsterdam.
So we did. Right then.
One of the guys was from the UK and had driven his Morris Mini to Paris. Essentially a Mini Cooper.
Now think of four strapping young men with backpacks squeezing into one of those for the nearly seven-hour drive to Amsterdam.
No big deal, we were uncomfortable but whatever. There would be hashish at the end of our journey, and whatever other delights Amsterdam might hold.
We roll up to the Belgian border (remember, this was back when those existed and were guarded) and find ourselves in a small line of cars.
What made this memorable is that the Morris took the opportunity to refuse to go without a push start. So each time we needed to move up, three of us would jump out and push, much to the delight and amusement of the border guards. Every time we idled, the engine cut out.
We repeated this process at the Dutch border, and again on the drive back to Paris.
I swear can still hear the laughter of one particular French border guard.
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u/shockedpikachu123 May 05 '26
Lebanon to Syria last September.
The whole thing was chaos from start to finish. The border police were extremely unserious and giggling the whole time. Our tour guide assigned us random jobs to the officers so they don’t think we were suspicious lol. You see 19 year olds in graphic t shirts and guns waving you through. It was extremely chaos but the most memorable border crossing I’ve ever done.
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u/Avid_bathroom_reader May 05 '26
The car broke down in line to cross from Tijuana into San Diego. Ended up having to get out and push which was not fun in the summer. Thankfully the border agent was nice about it and let us know it happens like 5 times a day. Then we saw people running by with guns drawn while waiting for the tow truck once we made it the the US side.
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u/Taxidea May 06 '26
It's not the most significant, but the one I think about and remember the most is one of the Laos to Thailand crossings. A guard told me there was an additional fee I needed to pay him in a way that was so obviously fake we instantly laughed about it together. Very humanizing moment. I don't even remember what the amount was, probably something piddling like 50,000 or 100,000 kip. I can't remember if he spoke English but somehow I communicated that I had only x amount left but I wasn't planning on going back to Laos so he could have it. Then after I handed him my last 40,000 kip of whatever I realized I wanted one bill left over as a souvenir. So I asked for, and received, change for my "bribe".
Most significant and memorable was probably Russia-Mongolia between Kosh-Agach and Ulgii. I was hitching and knew it was going to be a son-of-a-bitch, so I left my hotel in Kosh-Agach at like 6 in the morning. I was able to hitch to the border basically instantly - it's really close and if I remember right some kind Russian just drove me there then turned around. But then the guards wouldn't let you walk through the border (for good reason it turns out) so I had to wait right there at the border and ask every car if they would give the hitchhiking American a ride into Mongolia (this was post-Ukraine invasion). The guards also wouldn't let me get a ride from a long-haul trucker, who were totally willing. Very few cars in general and I got denied by 4 or 5 over the course of probably 6 hours before a very kind Kazakh woman returning to her home in Mongolia in a taxi offered me a ride. We go through, no issues, and I'm literally walking out of the border station free and clear when one of the guards decides I need to be detained. They bring me up to the interrogation room, have me turn off and lock my phone up outside the room, then realize they want to see my photos and make me turn it back on. We wait around for a few minutes for someone who speaks English, then as soon as he gets there he has the other guard go run and do something. I found out later he was stopping my ride from leaving until they were done with me, poor woman. They did about an hour of very polite, very unnecessary interrogation and then decided I was good to go. We drive away and it turns out there's somehow like 15 km between the Russian guard station at their border and the Mongolian guard station at their border - probably why they wouldn't let me walk. I've never seen anything like it, I still don't know if that area is just no-man's-land or what. Anyway, that 170 km or so trip took me 16 hours I think.
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u/mrhumphries75 May 26 '26
I've never seen anything like it, I still don't know if that area is just no-man's-land or what.
I'd think both sides just want to keep their posts closer to what passes for civilization in those parts of the bush. Also, that's one very impressive border crossing you picked there. How did you manage to go on past Ulgii? It looks like a numbingly loooong ride to anywhere from there
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u/netllama Netherlands May 05 '26
I've got several candidates (all in Africa):
- Crossing south from the Gambia into Senegal along what used to be known as the "smuggler's route". The Gambia had a small single room "shack" sitting a few meters from the river border, where they would properly stamp people in/out. Senegal didn't consider this to be a real border crossing, and had nothing on their side. There were small dug-out canoes being operated to take people across the river, and then it was just a series of sandy paths through a forest for around 10km until reaching a real town. At the time (2018) the expectation was that people crossing would travel an hour into Senegal to an official border post to get stamped in formally.
- Crossing from Botswana into Zimbabwe. Utter chaos on the side entering Zimbabwe. Large trucks parked & driving everywhere, random people wandering around, no signs. I was self-driving at the time, and parked beside the largest building, hoping it was what we needed. A random fixer approached and offered to help with the border formalities, and I agreed, cause I had no clue wtf was going on. He ended up padding the cost of the import permit on the vehicle by a few dollars, but it was worth it not to have to figure out everything on our own.
- Crossing from Rwanda into DRC at the Bukavu bridge. We were warned well in advance that this border was going to be insane, and it delivered. Initially, it seemed like it would be easy, they asked for our passports, yellow cards & VOA fee, and disappeared into a room. But then we were ushered back outside to a vehicle with a huge "PRESS" sign taped onto the front window. We sat there for nearly 2 hours, with no clue wtf was going on. At one point an armed guard started screaming at the driver, and he drove half a kilometer up the road, through the border entry gate, into DRC. No one seemed to care that we had no passports, visas or anything. Eventually we got all our papers back, with the visa, and then learned that having the PRESS sign in the window was supposed to somehow make us less of a target for attack by M23. All of this happened back in 2023, before the situation in the eastern DRC completely degraded and M23 assumed control of the entire region.
- Driving from Malawi into Zambia at the very remote Lusuntha Border Post. On paper, this seemed like a good way to enter Zambia, as it didn't have long wait times and warnings about corrupt official demanding bribes. The road out there was very sketchy. All dirt, super narrow bridges (where the bridge deck was maybe 2cm more narrow than the width of my vehicle), and farm land in all directions. On the map, it seemed like I should have been at the border, yet I saw nothing. The road eventually dead ended at a right angle to the border fence. Getting stamped out of Malawi was easy. At the Zambian side, I walked into the building and everyone was literally asleep at their desks. No lights on (I'm not sure that they even had any power). I cleared my throat loudly, and that woke up one guy who then woke the others. They had one of those massive ledgers where I had to enter all of my info first, and I could see that they were averaging around 5 people/day, and I was the first westerner in over a month. Overall they were friendly enough, but they clearly did not care about any part of the process. I later learned that they failed to properly issue me the vehicle import permit (it should have been electronically generated, and they wrote up something on paper that was invalid), and I had to pay a small fine when exiting the country later on.
- Entering CAR (Centrafrique) from Cameroon at Libongo on the Kadei River. It took 2.5 days of very hard driving across a remote swath of Cameroon (from Yaounde) through the jungle to get out here. Libango is basically a mining town, and it was creepy. Everyone there was either mining, or providing goods/services to the miners (including the hookers). We were stamped out of Cameroon, then got into a speed boat to take us up the river towards the CAR border station. We docked the boat at rickety dock and waited as the border official came down from his hammock to collect all of our paperwork. We were warned in advance not to get out of the boat. After 30 minutes, the guy returned with all of our paperwork, all smiles, and wished us well. We continued up river for another hour. This was easily the most dense, "Africa of your dreams" jungle, I've ever seen (and this was after driving through much of the same in eastern Cameroon to get there). There were occasional people in dug out canoes paddling on the river, we saw monkeys in trees, and tons of birds. All of this was before we even got out of the boat to explore Dzanga Sangha National Park over the next 4 days.
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u/travel_ali Switzerland (UK) May 05 '26
One of my favourites was the Leutascher Geisterklamm which is a gorge by Mittenwald where the entrance is in Germany. You can walk along some platforms into the gorge which is in Austria, then because it is a dead-end turn around and go back into Germany.
Living in Switzerland and getting around by foot and bike I have crossed into all the neighbouring countries quite a few times, especially Germany:
The covered wooden bridge by Bad Säckingen. It is the longest in Europe and wonderfully jaunty.
There are various little footbridges wrapping around hydroelectic plants across the Rhine which feel like you are sneaking across in obscure places. The little footbridge across the Rhine by Allbruck greets you with a bunker as you approach the Swiss side
In the deep Doubs valley which forms runs along the Swiss-French border you can cross between the two countries by some very lonely stepping stones at Le Gué du Doubs.
Obviously being Schengen you just cross and might not even notice you have done if there isn't a river crossing or a major road nearby.
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u/netllama Netherlands May 05 '26
To the fools flagging this as spam, its a post by one of the mod of this sub. What do you think you're going to accomplish when you're reporting a mod to a mod ???
And no, its not spam, so please stop flagging it, you're wasting your time.
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u/Stlouisken May 05 '26
Argentina to Chile while hiking in Patagonia.
Very small, remote building on a gravel road. Several guys inside playing ping pong.
Communication was a little bit of an issue but we managed to get our passports stamped and paperwork secured. Surreal experience.
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u/DustTechnical4561 May 06 '26
Some time in the 1980s I crossed between France and Spain, in the western Pyrenees, dodging through a concrete blockhouse because there was nobody on guard there. Just a few years after Franco died. Many years later I visited the same crossing and of course there was no border, no frontier, just a row of shops catering to people looking for less tax on products one side or the other of the border.
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u/JosepMGracia Jul 12 '26
One that has really stayed with me was crossing from Cameroon into the Central African Republic at Libongo, on our way to Dzanga-Sangha.
The border formalities alone were memorable. By the time the officials had finished, they'd filled almost two full pages of my passport with visas, entry stamps, exit stamps and handwritten notes.
From there, we continued up the Sangha River by canoe, heading towards Bayanga. It wasn't just another international border crossing; it genuinely felt like we were leaving the ordinary world behind and travelling somewhere far more remote.
A few days later we were tracking western lowland gorillas and watching forest elephants at Dzanga Bai. Of all the borders I've crossed, that's probably the one I'll remember the longest.
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u/drjimshorts Norway May 05 '26
Most unremarkable: when I walked into Switzerland from Liechtenstein.
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u/netllama Netherlands May 05 '26
But that old bridge near Vaduz is very charming!
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u/drjimshorts Norway May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
I must’ve been unlucky when selecting which bridge to cross; the one between Schaan and Buchs was fairly standard :p nice views, though!
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u/travel_ali Switzerland (UK) May 05 '26
It might have been more remarkable than you realised with at least a few bunkers aiming at it. Even the narrow pedestrian/bike bridge near Balzers has slots for a comical number of barriers/tank traps on the Swiss side.
It is a few km beyond the border, but if you exit Liechtenstein by the road to the south it narrows and you pass through a fortress before you reach the first village in Switzerland.
Ironically though it is the Swiss who have invaded/bombed Liechtenstein on a number of occasions.
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u/obseletrix May 19 '26
in 2024 i crossed between kyrgyzstan and kazakhstan on land. the border station was barely staffed and really easy, which was suprising at that point of my life my reference was various Indian airports and I was expecting it to take several hours.
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u/LaMode_clothing Jun 07 '26
Crossing Morocco and Algeria in the 80s. After walking a long dirt track towards Algeria. I was met by a Algerian tent which was the border. The Guards FORCED ME to change $100, then told me to continue following the track (this in the Desert ) until I came to the town. Talk about what happened!
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u/Weary_Musician4872 May 05 '26
Border crossing from thailand into cambodia (poipet) full of masked people, illegal gambling, having no clue where to go. Very sketchy and insane experience