4 1/2 days…on a 40 year old ex-Soviet cargo boat….in the middle of the Caspian Sea….for a crossing that was only meant to take 20 hours.
Ahhhh. Yes. Now this was the bit of the trip I’d been warned about.
One word: Intense.
From Georgia, I headed straight east to the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, which lies on the western shores of the Caspian.
Here there’s a choice - either go round the Sea by taking a 1,000 mile detour through such charming and secure places as Dagestan* in Southern Russia and then down through the western Kazakhstan desert.
Or wait for a cargo boat straight across the Sea from Baku to Aktau, Kazakhstan.
Simple, eh?
Well, not so much. You see the cargo boat from Baku to Aktau is infamous for it’s unreliability - it only goes when it is full, you don't know when it’s going to turn up and despite it meant to take only 20 hours, it often takes longer. In some cases two weeks longer.
All of this when a) only 16 of the 72 hours of customs clearance for the bike remained, due to waiting for an Uzbek visa, and b) I need to be in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan 3,000 miles away in 3 weeks time.
Despite the dangers, and with some expert advice from a friend in the security business, the Dagestan route was actually a more tempting route then it first sounded. It might take 4 days of tough riding, but it offered more certainty than the boat.
Nonetheless, I decided to punt for the boat as the first option. I’d met an Aussie couple two days before who’d done the reverse trip in 24 hours flat. If there wasn’t one on that (Wednesday) evening, I’d head straight to the Russian border.
To get said infamous boat, you have to turn up at one of two ticket offices In Baku to find out if it’s sailing that day. One ticket office is in the Old Port, the other in the New Port, 5 miles away. And this is where the fun starts…because the lady who sells the ticket will be at one or the other, but you don’t know which one.
At about 3pm, I punted for the first and she was there. What’s more, there was a boat going that evening. So far, so good.
Confusingly, it turns out there was a third port however, the one where the boat actually leaves from - 40 miles away. And I needed to be there ASAP, to board at 5pm.
No problemo. But with fellow Brits Leo and Rhys who are doing the Mongol Rally, the waiting began. 5pm came and went. As did the departure time of 7pm. Dusk came and went. The boat arrived. And we finally got to board…at 1 a.m. in the morning.
After casting off 3 a.m., beers with the Azeri apprentice lads on the boat and a windy but pleasant night sleeping on the top deck in our sleeping bags….the next morning the boat came to a halt.
Outside of Baku.
Now I’ve never actually experienced cabin fever before. But needless to say, stuck where we were with no sure departure day, no real contact with the outside world**, food which made the cooking standards of even most culinarily inept first year undergraduate look like they should be on Masterchef and frustration of the uncertainty of how long we might be stuck there, I have now.
After 3 days, Season 2 of The Wire, the first three episodes of Season 2 of True Detective, Series 1 of Sherlock, one John Grisham novel, multiple (rejected) requests for cash from Mr ‘$10 please’ aka the ‘chef’ for his ‘cooking’, we finally set course to Aktau, where we arrived yesterday evening.
But despite it’s frustrations, it’s been a good experience - and one which gives you just a flavour of what day to day life is like for the people working he modern trade routes in this part of the world, along with some spectacular Caspian sunrises and sunsets and clear night skies that would bring astronomer Patrick Moore back from his grave.
And I was lucky enough to be in good company - not just from Rhys and Leo, but also from ‘we’re going to walk to China from Austria’ Simon and Christoph and the friendly, inquisitive and often downright confused Azeri crew and truck drivers also on the boat, who were always keen to offer you chai (tea) and learn what they can about you and the UK, despite the language barrier.
Boxed ticked! Time to head to the desert, Uzbekistan and the Aral Sea, or what’s left of it.
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*Charming and secure if you are one of the following:
- A corrupt local law enforcement official
- A terrorist on the run from neighbouring Chechnya
- A member of the Islamic State
- A member of an organised crime syndicate
- A soldier serving in a Russian Army Special Forces unit
**I.e. Facebook.