In 1924, the OGPU made Blumkin an illegal resident in the Arab peninsula. From the summer of 1924 to the fall of 1925, he worked for the OGPU in Tiflis and was the Assistant Chairman of the Soviet delegation in the mixed Soviet-Persian Border commission and a member of the Soviet delegation in the mixed Soviet-Turkish Border commission. It is claimed that in 1924, he travelled secretly to Afghanistan or Pamir to contact the Ismailites and the local representative of the Aga Khan for the purposes of "anti-imperialist struggle" against the British, and he then disguised himself as a dervish and travelled with an Ismailite caravan and explored the British military positions in India as far south as Ceylon. In 1926, Blumkin was supposedly the secret representative of the GPU in Mongolia, where he ruled for some time as a virtual dictator and occasionally travelled on missions in China, Tibet and India until he was recalled to Moscow because the local communist leadership was tired of his reign of terror.