Day 38 (Baku)
The whole Turkmenistan visa / Caspian ferry malarkey is so bewilderingly complicated, it's clearly designed (if designed it is) to frustrate, even defeat all would be visitors. I'm not going to go into all the ins and outs of it - it wouldn't help you should you wish to attempt it yourself, as the process changes all the time – but, for us, it involved money (of course) three different locations, several forms and photocopies, many queues and a lot of waiting... A LOT of waiting... Waiting, waiting, waiting... Did I mention the waiting? Well, there was a lot of it, and by the end of the first day we still didn't have our visas. We did, however, have all the necessary payments and paper work sorted out plus a fairly hopeful 'come back tomorrow' from the guy at the consular office we had to bribe to see us at all.
Having checked out of our various hotels earlier, thinking we might be sorted that day, a notion which seems laughably in hindsight, we then had to go back and arrange another night's accommodation. We were put back into the same hotel, but not the same lovely big room. (The other couple, Adam and Corinne got that this time, which seems kind-a fair.)
Later, in the evening after a cool-down shower and sleep, we tried and failed to find the truck to put some of our stuff on board so that we wouldn’t have another hot day carrying it around the city from place to place. Fortunately, our hotel was able to track down Karen for us, and she plus another passenger showed us the way. By now, though (after ten o'clock) having not eaten since breakfast, we were exhausted and needed to eat. Fortunately – being again a little short on funds - we found a food stall in a park by the old city wall that sold chicken wraps and some very welcome cold drinks.
Day 39 (Baku)
The plan for this morning was for everybody to meet back at the consulate at 8:30.We found a taxi in good time, but our driver that morning had a much harder time finding the consular office – which, to be fair, is rather hidden away somewhere within a maze of identical looking alleyways - than yesterday's, and, after three quarters of an hour, we had to tell him to take us to a near by hotel, as Juli – still not quite well – was in need of the facilities NOW. He understood and, bless him, wouldn’t take a Manat more than the fare we’d originally agreed with him when we did finally find the others waiting outside the consulate. We waited with them and were eventually (I don’t recall how long, but we missed lunch again) rewarded with a shiny new Turkmenistan visa.
Boyed by our success, we all got into taxis and headed (that’s another story) back to the truck, from where we drove to the port (the ‘old’ port) to find out when the ferry was leaving. The grumpy woman in charge there indicated to Karen that it might be tomorrow and that we should park there and wait, so we did, not wanting to miss our chance to board the legendary elusive trans-Caspian ferry to Turkmenistan.
Someone – possibly Gayle (most recently from York; ex home office forensic scientist) had read or somehow knew about an air-conditioned shopping mall twenty minutes walk from the port. Making sure we had our trusty Tuffty Phone switched on in case ‘tomorrow’ turned into ‘right now’, we head off with the others in search of, well, whatever was there. What we found was an five story shopping Shangri-La full of shinny things to look at; a food court, including a KFC; a bank, where we were able to change more money; and a cinema showing Russian and American films. We decided to take our time exploring the mall so as to use up as much time as possible. We toured every floor slowly, going into every shop whether we were interested in what they were selling or not, not that we had any intention of buying anything, we just wanted to fill the hours until closing time.
After a couple of hours of this, our interest in shopping had begun to pall somewhat, so we decided to investigate the cinema. Some one had said they thought the films were in English on a Wednesday. I don’t know where they got their information from – quite possibly from wishful thinking – but it wasn’t the case, so we chose Ice Age 4 from what was on offer as the film most likely to cause us the least difficulty in terms of following the plot. (Plus, of course, it has those bits with the squirrel chasing after acorns with no dialogue at all.) Well, I think we got the gist of it, though evidently the Russian speaking locals got rather more from it than we did.
After that, we felt we’d earned our KFC meal, and had just sat down to eat it when the phone rang to tell me I’d received a text message. It was Karen informing us that we had to get back to the truck NOW please, as they had been told to move to the new port, a few miles down the road. Grabbing our food and drinks as best we could, we rounded up as many of the others as we could find and got back to the old port as fast as we could in the full heat of the day. We met the truck already halfway along the old-port side-road and climbed on board for the 8 Km journey away from the cool of the mall.
Although we now had a place in the queue, it turned out – though you can’t be too careful, it seems – that our haste had been unnecessary, as nothing further happened that day. That night, everyone slept on top of or inside the truck, just in case we had to move again, fast.
Day 40 (Baku RO-RO Ferry Port)
The next morning, we got some breakfast from a restaurant some of the others had found the night before. An anonymous place set inside a walled garden with private dinning rooms arranged around the sides. Some of the rooms had beds and small bathrooms attached and we thought, if only we known, we could have checked into one for the night. However, we learned later that the rooms were likely to have been available on an hourly basis complete with hostess.Later in the day, while waiting back at the port, Juli noticed some Turkish lorry drivers brewing up on a very neat little combined stove and kettle contraption. She only wanted to take photos, but, of course, they invited her to share their brew, which turned out to be coffee rather than tea.
Finally, it was our turn to go through the gates, out of Azerbaijan and into the inner port no mans land. We still had to get stamped out of the country though and collect our all important ferry tickets, which necessitated more queuing and waiting in the hot sun until called forward. Karen and Will went first to pay for our tickets and to get a handle on the process. When she came out, she told us that she had been quizzed by the apparently very anti Armenian customs official about why we had been their and briefed to say, if asked, that we only went through Armenia because we had to and that we didn’t much like the place and that Azerbaijan was much nicer. In the event, the official never even mentioned Armenia and seemed more interested in getting us through as quickly as possible.
However, we learned later that things hadn’t gone quite so smoothly for Will and the truck paperwork, due to some document or other having expired the night before. Consequently, he was ordered to go back into town to pay a fine, which seems rather unfair considering we had been ready and willing to go through the previous day. Further more, when he got to the customs office to pay this fine, they refused to allow him in as he was apparently improperly dressed in his T-shirt, shorts and sandals. Really not sure what they were expecting, but he had to go and buy some smarter clothes so he could get in to pay this unfair fine, which turned out to be just £20 pounds.
Finally, at around 4.00pm, we were loaded onto the ferry and underway by about 7.00pm: three hours earlier than expected. (As previously mentioned, they go when their full.)
We’d been warned, based on last year, that the Journey was likely to be horrendous: we would have to claim a space on the deck and defend it; the crossing could be vomit inducing; consequently (or just anyway) that the loos would be a new and lower circle of hell and that there would be no refreshment available during the 14 hour crossing of any kind. The reality was that for a $20 upgrade, we had a double cabin with an en-suite, very clean western-style flush loo, basin and shower; there was a comfortable if rather basic lounge; and a (sort of) restaurant with bar. We had a lovely calm crossing and arrived, clean and refreshed shortly after 8.00am the following morning.
Day 41 (The Port of Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan)
As previously tweeted, our Turkmen transit visa didn’t kick in until the following day, so,as expected we were held in no-mans land all day with very little shade and absolutely no facilities of any kind. There was a loo on the other side of the magic door, but the you men with guns would make no exceptions and hear no appeals for mercy. This was very difficult for everybody, but particularly, for Juli, still not quite right and unable to rely on her body not to assert immediate demands, if you take my meaning. There were, however, two bright spots to the day: first, we had another birthday girl and another cake (more a flan, really) with candles (well, a candle) – you really have to hand it to Karen for doing her best even in the most difficult of circumstances – and later, Karen and that evening’s cook group cooked up a feast from the freezer and shared it with the few other ferry passengers still caught like us in no-mans land. This included a couple of groups of British lads and a small Italian group all competing in a charity rally between the UK and Mongolia. Despite the adversity, we had a very jolly and international evening.
At about 11.00pm, the men with guns indicated that we should start to bring our passports to the door, and by about 1.00am, we were all through. All that is bar the drivers, who had very many more loops to jump through – I haven’t detailed all the different stages and queues we had to go through, but they had it ten times worse, apparently – and finally emerged at about 4.00 am, by which time we passengers had bedded down in the customs hall on the land side of passport control, trying to get some rest, a simple task made very difficult by the bright lights and constant (and indescribably awful) Turkmeni folk music on the telly they wouldn’t let us switch off. By about dawn, I was considering goading one of the soldiers into shooting either the telly or me, I wasn’t really bothered.
congratulations Nick on wringing some humour out of what sounds like 4 days of hell!
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