Azerbaijan and across the Caspian

Azerbaijan: 28th May 2011 to 1st June 2011

Total distance travelled: 7,055km

Total days travelled: 45

Accommodation breakdown thus far :

Bushcamps: 12

Campsites: 18

Hostels: 4

Homestays: 4

Hotels: 6

Boats: 1

After all the palaver we suffered (mostly that Jim suffered really) to get the bloody Azeri visas the border crossing was pretty smooth and all done in about 2 hours, the only sign of any change being the border guards hats getting ever bigger (sadly no photos).

We were only in Azerbaijan (or Abijan as some people on the trip insist on calling it) for three days, but seemed to do quite a lot, starting with staying in this really cool Caravanserai in Sheki/Shaki/Seki.  The Caravanserais were like big hotels/markets/stables operating as stopping off points on the silk road.  In ye olden times animals would be stowed on the ground floor (in modern times it was the more unlucky members of the group) and people on the upper floor in these great little rooms all arranged round a huge courtyard.  

Caravanserai with huge big entrance door

Caravanserai from the inside

Also in the lovely Sheki was a very small, but very ornate Khan palace which was worth a little wander round.

Sheki Khan Palace

Jim leading the girls off to market (we got shouted at by
hotel management for this!)

Local transportation

This guy was so proud of his bike

From Sheki it was off to a bush camp in a very strange landscape which was slightly reminiscent of New Zealand or Bolivia in that there were active mud pools all over the place, but very different as there was no sulphur smell and the mud was cold (thankfully, as a couple of people fell through the crust).  Noone seems to be quite sure what causes these pools (they're known as volcanoes but it's rather over egging it).

Bush camp in the middle of nowhere

Bubbly mud with a shallow muddy lake in the background

There's always one!

Muddy feet (from paddling in the lake)

From there we went to Baku which is quite a flash, wealthy place from (I guess) all the oil and gas money coming through.  I managed to go out and abuse the credit card in some of the western branded clothes shops and take a wander around the pretty (but rather rebuilt and sanitised) old town while the boys were down at the port sorting out our passage across the Caspian.

Maiden't Tower in the old town

Loads of building work was going on including these lotus
flower/ships prows 

Mosque in the old town

Azerbaijan: Eurovision winner 2011

The boys announced that we were due to board a boat at 3am so it was off to bed for a wee kip and then up again for a taxi ride to the port.  I use the term port in the loosest possible sense here.  It's got a dock and ships coming in and out, but it's down a wee side road and the taxi drivers didn't have a clue where it was.  This is possibly as the ships only really transport oil and gas (rather than trucks and people) and the whole lot is dragged in and out on train lines which run directly onto the boats.

After taking bets on what time were were going to board and to leave I was only out by an hour when we finally set off at about lunchtime, but we were entertained in the intervening hours by trains coming to get the oil of a previous ship, stray cats and general wandering around.  And it was warm and didn't rain which is about as much as you can ask for!

Trains coming in to pull oil off a ship.  They work in pairs (don't want
any capsize drills!) and pull off two sets of carriages each.  We reckoned
each ship was carrying about 28 tanks of about 1,000 barrels each.
In other words, lots of cash!

Camp at the port

More trains in the morning (you can just about see the boat in the background)

Baku port.  What you don't see is the massive oil slick covering much of the Caspian.

We were promised a journey of anywhere between 16 hours and a few days, but we were really lucky as the Caspian was as flat as a mill pond and we were done in the minimum of 16 hours.  Which was probably a good thing as the captain (or someone who claimed to be) had taking a liking to me and some of the girls who tried to sleep on deck received a bit of unwanted attention too.  And none of us were really able to contemplate using the one available toilet ever again (see pic and note the poo on the floor!).  

So after a few hours sleep in our luxuriously appointed cabins (there may have been a little sarcasm there) we were awoken at 5am by a squat scary loud russianesque battleaxe of a woman and told to bugger off.  Sadly it took another couple of hours for us to get off the boat, another couple of hours to be processed by the Turkmenistan border control and a further few hours to wait for the trains to come get the tankers off so our little truck could squeeze off too.  But we were on our way in Turkmenistan, complete with up-his-own-backside guide at around 130 which wasn't too bad in the grand scheme of borders.

Our environmentally friendly boat

The dreaded toilet.  It was like someone had built
a normal western toilet then got confused and added
the footplates for squatting.  Not quite sure what you
would do in high seas. And not quite sure why noone
ever seemed to flush it.