Well it is 7.45 pm and Andy P and I are in Starbucks, Baku, just across from the port, making use of their wifi, air-con, the toilet, and occasionally buying a coffee. Meantime, I’m preoccupied with wondering if I dare sneak into the loos and use the hand held bottom washer to take a complete shower. I’ll carry out a spot survey over the next hour or so on the frequency of WC usage so that I can make an informed decision on this.

It’s beginning to get a bit repetitive here but we have just spent another full day sitting in the sun and/or shade at Baku port with an increasing number of Mongol Rally teams, which now number probably getting on for forty. So far only nine teams have actually got on a ferry since last Friday so the strike rate is not particularly good. Still, if I’m still here on Saturday 6^th it will be a memorable way to spend my birthday. Ha ha! Not much we can do about it and the atmosphere is good with lots of awnings and gazebos erected and today a couple of teams set up a portable croquet course. The British know how to enjoy themselves when the sun shines and there’s nothing else to do.

The reason we sit all day in the port is that we get told different information every few hours about when the next ferry will arrive and how many people/cars it can take. It is impossible to know what is true/half true or downright lies and we all fear not being around when one of the ‘lies’ turns out to be true and ferry tickets are scattered around on a buy one get one free basis.  As I say, there’s nothing we can do about it and so we have just got to take it on the chin. Trying to top up the tan in the meantime but I feel a wee bit overshadowed by some of the young fit things’ torsos that on view. However I have to say that there are also some rather large bellies in evidence amongst the younger generation about which I feel relatively smug.

I don’t want to go on too much but there MAY be one or two ferries tomorrow but we have heard that every day for the last three days so neither of us is holding our breath. Anyway today was not wasted and gave a chance for Andy P to catch up on some domestic chores and wash out a few of his ‘smalls’. Hanging them on a make-shift line to dry, the shade they provided was gratefully taken advantage of by five Mongol rally teams and an articulated lorry that was waiting to board one of the elusive boats that no one I’ve met has yet caught sight of.

Another positive development is that today the Port Authority took some pity on us because although WE are allowed to leave the port, our cars are all impounded by customs as we were only given a three day transit visa on entry to Azerbaijan in order to avoid import duties. So we HAVE to leave the cars parked where they are until they are sent on the ferry. If our transit visas for entry into Turkmenistan expire before we reach that country (by the 7^th of August), I presume Bluebell 2 will have to be ‘buried’ somewhere in the Caspian sea and Andy P and I will have to spend the rest of our lives plying our wares and skills between Baku and Turkmenbashi as persons with no legal country of abode. At least we will have a lovely tan and won’t need to worry about home maintenance and repairs. As they say, every cloud ……

So today, the Port Authority provided free drinks and food for everyone and the CEO came and talked to us all and said that he hoped all would soon be resolved. The experience of all Ralliers is that the Azerbaijan people are remarkably friendly, welcoming of strangers and honest. One young Australian guy went out on a ‘bender’ last night and by some quirk of temporary intellectual impairment lost his wallet with all his credit cards and $800 US cash in it. This morning there was a message for him on Facebook from the person who found it and he had it returned with nothing at all missing. Which I think says a lot.

Today we travelled in a taxi along part of the Formula 1 Grand Prix road circuit and passed the pit area. It must be impressive when it is all set up for racing and Lewis Hamilton is powering down the home straight with the backdrop of the fabulous buildings. This afternoon I ran across that same home straight traversing seven lanes of fast moving cars (the drivers of which all appeared to be wanting to be the first to receive the chequered flag), in order to reach a supermarket to buy drinking water. It is not something I would recommend and fortunately on the way back I discovered the pedestrian underpass. The fact that I was the only person crossing and dodging in and out of the traffic should have given me the clue, and I have to say that the drivers did appear to deliberately avoid hitting me so one has to grateful for small mercies.

Tonight we have debated whether to get a taxi back into town and try and find a hotel for the night but we really can’t be bothered and so are going to blow our air beds up and sleep under the stars (the fluorescent lights actually) in the port car park with a load of other ralliers who had Cindy Lauper blaring when we left to come to Starbucks. What has finally persuaded me is the result of the survey I mentioned previously and so I’d better call a halt to this now as I’m just off to take that shower.

Cheers for now, Andy Coe

Firstly, let me reassure all well-wishers out there that I am recovering and not to believe everything you read in the papers. No chicken products were purchased or consumed by either of us. Ha ha, it makes for a good story though.

It has been a testing day or two over here in Azerbaijan. We are now at a bottle neck with at least twenty other rally cars all desperately trying to get a ferry across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, apparently one of the most difficult countries in the world to visit. Before the rally started I asked Andy P if we should book the ferry but he insisted that this wasn’t possible. I wasn’t prepared to take this at face value and so at the leaving party in Goodwood I asked every rally team we met if they’d booked the ferry from Baku to be told by all of them exactly the same thing. So this stage was always going to be a bit of a waiting game as we tried to sort out Turkmenistan transit visas (they will only issue a visa for five days duration and on a specific start date), and try to get on a ferry (a freighter really) as and when there was one in port with space available.

So it was an early start this morning for Andy P and me, and we ordered a taxi through hotel reception that the receptionist said would take half an hour to arrive. Seemed a long time to me but I was ‘going with the flow’ and we had got up really early so I wasn’t overly bothered. I started to get a little agitated once 45 minutes had passed and there was still no sign of our lift. I imagined all the other Mongol Rally teams ahead of us in the visa queue whilst we kicked our heels in the blazing sun.

So I felt a little more relaxed when the white Kia with the Taxi sign turned up. Now I don’t know why but in my experience taxi drivers in other countries do not possess such a thing as ‘The Knowledge’, something which all self-respecting London cabbies spend years learning. But, the driver assured us that he knew where he was going and so off we set racing through the traffic in the kind of direction that we thought we wanted to go. I realised it was all going a bit ‘tits up’, when he started ‘playing’ with his phone and googling maps of Baku and that it was going even more badly when he started phoning friends to get their views on where the hell the Turkmenistan embassy was. The thought of spending the whole day randomly scouring the streets of Baku on the off chance we might come across a Turkmen flag fluttering in the breeze loomed large.

With not a little inspiration from somewhere the driver eventually turned up a back alley and hey presto, there were parked an assortment of rally cars and the start of a queue of like-minded, though considerably younger, adventurers. It was whilst we were waiting for the Embassy to open that I made the discovery that all may not be as straight forward as I hoped.

Some of you will know ‘THE’ passport story and this suddenly looked as if it might shape up with equal difficulty. My Letter of Invitation to Turkmenistan (a must for getting a visa), had my birthday down as 30^th June whereas it’s the 6^th August. Worse and something that caused me particular offence is that it listed me as Australian! Clearly I should have checked the details before leaving but I’m a ‘big picture’ rather than a ‘details’ man. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out.

There were two Turkmens in the room issuing visas. A youngish guy who appeared very friendly and an ice maiden who never smiled and rarely spoke and whose job was to draw horizontal lines in a notebook and then meticulously record the details of the passports. I think if you’d ever managed to catch her eye you would have been turned to stone. When the guy looked at my passport and the computer screen he seemed to dwell on it longer than on the previous ones and then asked me for my date of birth. He seemed satisfied with my response because he gave my passport to the ice maiden and she carefully wrote down the details in her book. I couldn’t help thinking that I wouldn’t want to be sat on the ‘naughty step’ by this particular lady.

We then had to go about 2 miles to the Turkmenistan bank and pay our $85 US fee and then return (to the back of the queue) to be issued with the visa. Having got over the first hurdle I thought I was home and dry but when it came to getting my visa the fact that I am British and not Australian (something that I am eternally grateful for) was clearly an issue. Whilst Andy P sailed through the process, the friendly man said that there were some ‘discrepancies’ with my passport and that he would have to phone Turkmenistan to clarify things. He said it could be resolved and smiled. I have heard that sort of talk before!

The outcome was that I waited for an hour and a half (during which time I came up with all number of contingency plans — the most practical of which was for me to swim across the Caspian sea), but was rewarded with the issue of my much coveted visa and a profuse apology from the man for keeping me so long. The ice maiden’s face never cracked a smile.

We hailed a taxi to take us back to the hotel and the driver took out a range of magnifying glasses to look at Andy P’s map on his phone to see where to go. I remarked to Andy that I hoped his long distance vision was considerably better else it was likely we had spent six hours obtaining Turkmenistan visas that we would not be alive to use.

One useful piece of advice I would like to give you is to never try and buy a pair of shorts in Baku. We went into a shop which to my credit I did say to Andy P looked a bit too upmarket for me and asked one of the besuited salesmen if they sold shorts. To his credit he kept a straight face when he replied yes and somehow managed to refrain from adding ‘but not to the likes of you’. He showed us to a pile of fairly revolting designs and when I looked at the price I was delighted to find that they retailed for £185. He saw the look on my face and proffered the explanation that they were by Armani as though this justified spending the sort of money that some people in the world have to look after a family for several months on an item of clothing that frankly looked tacky . I thanked him and asked him to pass on my compliments to Georgio when he next saw him and decided that I would just make do and stock up at Primark on my return home.

So, IF we manage to get a ferry today we will probably be out of wifi for a wee while so you may be relieved to know that this is probably the last of our blogs for a while. In the meantime I leave you with a phrase that has become dear to us during this trip and whose meaning is only now realising its true significance: ‘We should have booked the ferry.’

Cheers, Andy Coe

 

We chugged into Baku around 5 pm yesterday having spent the previous night in the Ramada Plaza hotel enjoying a little bit of luxury and a buffet breakfast to be proud of. Whilst I was loading Bluebell 2 with the luggage an Azerbaijani family came over to talk to me. The daughter was in her mid-teens and spoke great English and I told her about the rally and where we had been. They were really interested in what we were up to and very grateful that we had not visited Armenia with whom Azerbaijan has a long standing dispute. In fact, so strained is the relationship between the two countries that if you have an Armenian stamp in your passport you will not be allowed to enter Azerbaijan.

As we headed east to Baku the land became flat on both sides of the road stretching out into the distance, barren scrub, desert really. Every now and then we’d pass a cultivated area and there would be stalls along the side of the road with fruit stacked high. I remarked to Andy P about a woman with a particularly fine display of melons which he interpreted (quite smuttily I thought), as a double entendre, which could not of course have been further from my mind. I have come to realise on this trip that there are some people with very little culture and filthy minds.

We also passed cars on the motorway that were loaded down with melons, in one case the back seat was jam packed with them and in other places there were people sitting just off the hard shoulder barbecuing sweet corn for sale. Also worth noting was that on a couple of occasions cars drove along the hard shoulder towards us and on one occasion on the inside lane itself, going at quite a lick. You need to have your wits about you as the road rules we’re used to following in Britain don’t necessarily apply this far east. Lots more people in Azerbaijan honk their horns and wave when they pass us, much more so than in any of the other countries we’ve visited to date.

We were travelling in convoy with our new found buddies Paul and John who are similar ages to us and after a while we stopped for them to fill up with petrol and to get a coffee. The café wasn’t busy and the waiters (and owner?) kind of crowded round our table talking fast and excitedly. I always find it a little worrying when the ‘personal space’ norms of our own culture are overridden particularly when you can’t understand what is being said and are trying to interpret people’s intentions through body language and tone of voice. It’s easy to get it wrong but you just have to stay cheerful and ‘go with the flow’.

Several of the guys wanted their picture taken and ‘the owner’ in particular. His claim to fame was a set of gold teeth that would have made James Bond’s ‘Jaws’ green with envy as he smiled for the camera. I guess it is a cultural thing but a lot of people in Azerbaijan have gold teeth fitted and I suppose it might be something of a status symbol. I have to say it doesn’t do it for me but culture is a powerful shaper of people’s actions and I’m sure there is much about our own culture that those from elsewhere find pretty weird. Another difference is that I’ve seen lots of men walking arm in arm or holding hands and giving each other a kiss when they part. This has nothing to do with sexual orientation but is simply a mark of friendship and is something that I saw in India last year as well.

The road was good and during the afternoon the outside temperature rose to about 35 C and we came across an ageing hippie from California broken down by the roadside. We stopped to see if we could help him but neither of us are mechanics and so we offered to rearrange the luggage and give him a lift to Baku. He was a nice old guy, a wee bit unkempt and simple, and gave the impression of being completely stoned. It worked out well for us though as we were very tired by this point and he kindly offered to drive the rest of the way. When you receive kindness from strangers it is nice to be able to give a little back.

Baku is another lovely town. John and Paul had booked a hotel but there was one room left for us to rent so we hit it lucky again. The hotel is a five minute walk from Fountain Square and the old town so we were able to stroll in later and look around. Once again, a peaceful, clean place with beautiful infrastructure full of well-dressed and polite people enjoying themselves right into the night with small children in tow. No rowdiness or drunkenness to be seen.

The big issue now is getting a visa for Turkmenistan. We have a letter of invitation which we need to take to the Turkmen embassy here and they will hopefully issue us with a five day transit visa to let us cross Turkmenistan and head into Uzbekistan. The embassy is closed today so we are going to go to the port and see when the next cargo ships are leaving that might be able to take us across the Caspian Sea. It takes about 14 hours to cross and even if all goes well we have a little time to stay here in Baku. I can think of far worse places to spend a few days relaxing.

Cheers for now, Andy C

 

We are now in Tbilisi, Georgia and what a great couple of days we’ve had. In Andy P’s last blog he left us stranded on the Turkish/Georgian border somewhere after midnight but in good company with some fellow ralliers, a trombone and a case of Fosters. The Fosters and trombone kept us amused for an hour or so and even the patrolling Turkish police joined in the fun by letting off little blasts on their police car siren. But as time wore on the party faded and we crawled yard by yard towards Georgia, time in which to reflect on the previous day’s events and one in particular. With Andy P driving, a local car had pulled alongside and the driver had cheerfully shouted across at us.

‘What did he say?’ Andy P asked me urgently.

I looked at him with what I can only imagine was a somewhat condescending stare.

‘I have no idea Andy,’ I replied with all the dignity I could muster, ‘because unless I am seriously mistaken I’m fairly certain he was speaking Turkish.’

Perhaps you had to have been there to see the funny side of it.

When we finally reached the border we passed quickly through passport and customs control and entered into Georgia a little after 6 am. Georgian customs asked us to open Bluebell’s boot but when the guy saw the amount of stuff we had crammed in his eyes sort of glazed over at the prospect of searching through that lot and over-running his shift,  and so he just motioned to close the boot again and presumably never darken his door again.

By now we were in desperate need of a coffee so I asked some Georgians who looked a little like Mafia bosses where we could get coffee and change money. They pointed to a café but said we should wait to change money further into Georgia because the exchange rate would be much better and then promptly gave us five Georgian ‘Lari’ to get two coffees. The kindness of strangers, even those in the Mafia, has been a feature of our trip so far and long may it continue.

We headed off into Georgia and decided to take a more circuitous route to Tbilisi that took us into the mountains so that we could get a better feel for the place. It was still marked on the map as a main road so we were confident it would only take an hour or so longer. We stopped in a little village for coffee and there was an elderly lady cooking what looked like large flat dough pancakey thingies. We bought one which made her very happy and they were quite delicious, like donuts without the sugar. By then some other Georgians had arrived and we got talking to one of them and when we ordered two more donuty things he insisted on paying the woman for all three. I began to think that we must look poor and in need (I have been accused of this plenty of times in the past, mainly by my kids – colleagues and friends are usually too kind), especially when we then tried to buy a couple of apples from a nearby stallholder who also insisted on giving them to us.

As we went further along the road the tarmac disappeared as did the road signs. By now the road was made of stone with huge ruts and protruding boulders and dusty in the heat. We began to climb up into the mountains, the scenery was spectacular, green hills with lots of trees and clear blue skies. Travelling was very slow now, sometimes five miles an hour or less as we crawled along, not wanting to damage Bluebell’s suspension and fairly convinced we were travelling the wrong way. But every now and then we stopped when we found someone at the side of the road and showed them on the map where we wanted to go and every time they just pointed ahead. (I have experience of this concept too whereby people who have no idea what you’re saying or what you want just agree with what they think you want to hear. It happens to me in the UK too — I think I may have a permanently simple look on my face).

When we eventually reached the summit we felt like we were at the top of the world (about 7000 feet in reality by why let the truth spoil a good story), and it was then just a case of making our way done the other side on an equally bad road. It took us five hours to travel about 60 miles and when we finally pulled into the town we were looking for, it was after six in the evening. We were rewarded with the luxury of the Royal Palace hotel, four star accommodation for the price of £15 each. After a shower to wash away the dust from all those crevices that have developed over the years, Andy P set to work on TWO letters of complaint. One to the Georgian roads department in which I believe he stress the importance of upkeep and sufficient road signage, and one to the publisher of the map (that I had bought) demanding his (my) money back. Good luck with both of those Andy.

Next day (yesterday) it was a smooth fast drive along great roads to Tbilisi. Again we stopped off on the way to wander round a tiny market and take some pictures and I made ‘friends’ with some Georgian guys who invited me into the back of their van and gave me a good measure of vodka. Stopping and meandering is certainly the way to really experience and get a feel for the place and both of us are smitten with Georgia.

Tbilisi is fantastic. We quite by chance found a lovely friendly guest house on the edge of the old town of Tbilisi and the landlady’s 16 year old daughter Marium speaks good English and took us on a walking tour of the city. It is wonderful, very clean and peaceful and full of kind and friendly people. Marium showed us a little Georgian restaurant and wrote down a list of things that we were to try. When we went there later we gave them the list and there were a couple of things they didn’t have and so we asked them to replace them with something of their choice. They explained it would all come to 40 Lari which is about 13 quid. At this Andy P expressed his serious concern that we had perhaps not ordered enough. His fears were allayed when they first brought out what appeared to be a salad for a wedding party and about three loaves of cut up bread. When all the food arrived we had no idea what most of it was but we did manage to work out that there was a lamb (lamb gristle in fact!) dish, and two chicken ones, plus another flat bread thing with cheese. It wasn’t ‘cordon bleu’ but it was very tasty and to our shame we couldn’t possibly finish it all though we had a damn good try.

Georgia and Tbilisi are a revelation to us. So many great places in the world to see about which in our everyday lives we know nothing. Bring on Azerbaijan.