Across the Caspian Sea

Location:	Baku
Mileage:	4,122

In Sheki, I gave the team a comprehensive briefing about Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, and the port where we would catch the ferry to Turkmenistan. I use the term “ferry” loosely. Let me try and create the right image for you. Remove every normal facility from a ferry, let it rust for sixty years, never replace any fixtures and fittings, leave maintenance to a bare minimum and chug across the Caspian each day, with only a handful of passengers, train freight and an aged crew. This is a ghost ship on a voyage of the damned.

I told the riders to stack up with drinks and nibbles – it wasn’t unheard of for the boat to stay out at sea for over 2 days – and to take their own sleeping bags as the mattresses were still the originals and very well used. As the support crew, we piled the van with rice and meat for the ship “chef” to cook plov and a reasonable quantity of vodka.

Arriving in Baku, we were in luck – a ferry was due in the next morning and we were down to the docks to secure our place on it. The next day, our bikes were lashed down in the belly of the ship, next to the massive train carriages, using our own straps, whilst a couple of deckhands smoked tabs, totally uninterested in our presence. We were joined on board by two other passengers - Azerbaijan Footballers who were going to play for a Turkmenistan team. They smoked and drank lots of Vodka so no different to back home then! Alcohol and arm wrestling was the evening’s entertainment. God Bless P&O!

A bleary eyed breakfast was courtesy of Cotswold Outdoor (http://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/) who had provided us with a huge quantity of boil in the bag camp food – the “all day breakfasts” went down very well! It was a couple of hours wait for the Turkmen Immigration to visit us on the boat and check out we were all healthy enough to be allowed to enter the country and another 7 hours trying to complete formalities to get the bikes in. (At least we were only one night on the boat!)


What seems to take the time to enter is the little man who has to draw your intended route on the vehicle permit, then calculate the distance you are covering and charge you a fee to make up for the fact that you are not entitled to the cheap fuel in Turkmenistan (which is about 20p per litre). Oh and then there’s no computers and all documents have to be done in triplicate.

Kevin Sanders