We awoke in our incredible caravanserai and prepared to leave for the east. We were following in the footsteps of all those merchants in centuries past who’d braved the Silk Road, transporting their goods across the world. Our aim today was Baku, the unofficial capital of the Caucasus, a booming, modern metropolis perched on the edge of the Caspian Sea. From there, we had a ferry to catch, destined for Central Asia.
We came down off the back of the mountains into a much more barren, rocky and sun-drenched setting that wouldn’t look out of place in a spaghetti western. The temperature rise and the landscape became emptied the further we went until the sparkle of the Caspian, famed for its oil and caviar, caught our gaze. Suddenly, we had entered the suburbs of the city and rounding the headland was the Azerbaijani capital, booming with half-constructed glass skyscrapers and golden-hewn buildings that wouldn’t look out of place in any grandiose European city.
The idea was not to stay in Baku for too long as we wanted to press on into Central Asia and spend more time there than in a well-scrubbed but essentially ubiquitous city that could have been anywhere in the world. Our main purpose for being here was to catch the ferry. Unfortunately, the Baku ferry, taking passengers (but mainly cargo) from Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan, is notorious for being one of the hardest in the world to catch. The schedule is erratic, it is held up by frequent delays and when it does go it is anyone’s guess as to how long it can take. Helping us secure passage on this boat was our ‘fixer’ in the city, Ismail.
We had agreed to meet him at Hotel Hazz in the city centre where he had arranged a room for us to stay and after parking the van down a tiny one way street, squeezing it tightly up against the wall, we checked in. His contact details had been given to us by an official at the charity we were donating the vehicle to, Go Help, who said he had been helping teams at this point for 10 years, so we had no reason to distrust him. At this point, we also caught up with another team doing the same rally, from Switzerland, but their experience with him was far less savoury.
Ismail introduced us to the Swiss team, Marcel and Elias, who were taking an ambulance on the journey and had put in a lot of marketing effort from previous work experience. They not only blogged but filmed as they went, sending the footage to a Swiss TV station who spliced and edited the material. So far, they had only seen one person murdered: a man shot dead in Turkey after an argument over a car parking space. As an ambulance, onlookers had even thought they were at the scene to assist!
Ismail thought the ferry would leave the next day so we asked to be on it, wishing to budget our time effectively. He left us to check with the port as we went out to dinner with the Swiss. After traipsing through Baku’s backstreets for what seemed an age we discovered an incredible restaurant decked out in glorious colours and richly-patterned rugs and curtains, serving traditional Azerbaijani cuisine. We shared a buffet of classic dishes, featuring flat breads, sour yoghurt, dolma (stuffed vine leaves), a tortila-like dish stuffed with lamb and beautifully fried aubergine, finished off with sweet, Arab-style tea. We were even given the dubious honour of a live violinist to play for us as we ate!
It transpired that the Swiss had been staying at Ismail’s house for the past couple of nights, which was a little bit strange and were up until 5am the previous night at a karaoke nightclub. The very same venue we now found ourselves in, where Ismail appeared, obviously drunk and with a pouting woman all over him! The woman, constantly checking herself out in the mirror to cheesy Azerbaijani pop songs, he claimed was his girlfriend, even though he’d told us earlier that he was single! He bought us a drink, said the ferry would leave tomorrow and complained about getting a speeding fine. Hardly very professional.
We didn’t stay long, as we had to be up early ready to rush to the port when we heard the ship was due to leave so left them to it where they stayed until 4am.
Team Yes We Khan 