Time to Reflect

I wrote this on Saturday 6^th and this is our first access to wifi since then.

My bed on the night before we got the ferry

We are now sailing across the Caspian Sea and the memory of five days we spent in the blazing sun in Baku Port car park is already fading and being put into true perspective. In a week’s time when our visa timings have been caught up with, its inconvenience to the rest of our lives will be a big fat zero. So whilst I thank all of you who expressed sympathy at our predicament, bear in mind that we were in that position because we signed up for the rally voluntarily and because we wanted an ‘adventure’. In the car park we were free to come and go and buy food and water whenever we wanted and for the most part we had access to a toilet.  We had a nice secure travel insurance for if we became sick and we weren’t under any threat of physical violence. If we’d decided we’d had enough we could have bailed out at any time, checked into a five star hotel and booked ourselves a flight home the next day with ‘a bit of a story’ to tell down the pub.

Contrast that with the situation of those people who endure unspeakably worse situations in refugee camps around the world and who have lost control over almost every aspect of their lives. Many of them have fled conflicts where they have seen family members and/or friends killed and their homes have been destroyed. They may have no money and no idea of how long they will be there and no power to do anything about it. Having seen their lives through the tiniest window of shared experience it makes me weep. So please, whilst I thank you for your sympathy, save it for the refugees of the world because they are the ones who are truly suffering and who merit it.

So, today we should land in Turkmenbashi and I foresee a few problems ahead. Our Turkmen transit visas are only valid until midnight on the 7^th which doesn’t give us sufficient time to reach the Uzbekistan border to comply with them. We are hoping we might be given an extension for a day or two by immigration when we enter Turkmenistan but we have the added complication that out Uzbekistan visas are only valid until the 11^th which means we have to tie that in a well. There was clearly a slight cock-up on our timings when we applied for that particular visa.

The boat we finally got on is only two years old and is as good as any Irish Sea or cross channel ferry that I’ve ever seen. We managed to get a cabin which has a shower and a toilet and comfortable beds. I went to bed last night in my fifties and woke up this morning entering a new decade. But, they say that 60 is the new 40 (at least, that’s what I say), and so I will embrace it and make the most of what it has to offer. As I have said to a lot of people recently, ‘You’re only old once and every day’s a bonus.’

Stretched out on my cabin bed gives me a chance to reflect on all that has happened since we first arrived at Goodwood on 16^th July. We have travelled through eleven countries so far and have seen some wonderful sights both natural and man-made. Because we are on a rally we’ve not been able to dawdle much and have missed lots of things through lack of time or simply because we didn’t know they were there. So there are lots of places I would like to return to and spend more time, with Georgia being high on the list. The most important experiences to me are the people we’ve met and interacted with, both locals and fellow ralliers. The locals in all countries have, almost without exception, been incredibly welcoming and kind and they have ‘made’ the whole experience so far as I’m concerned. They have confirmed to me that there is more in the world that unites people than divides them which bodes well for resolving the difficult issues that are currently facing us.

The fellow ralliers are an amazingly diverse bunch in terms of personality. I would say that most are in their twenties or early thirties and are doing the rally for all sorts of reasons: after University; before University; career break; between jobs; serial travellers; early retirement, etc. Ninety percent of them are blokes. There are relatively few as old as Andy and I and so I’ve had a lot of conversations with people the same age as my kids. Some of them are very thoughtful and philosophical almost beyond their years, and others are loud and ‘full on’ and occupy a lot of ‘space’. It is interesting to think back to when I was their age and I suspect that I would then have been classed as being in the ‘loud’ and ‘full on’ category. I like to think I might have developed a little bit of the ‘thoughtful and philosophical’ in the intervening years. I guess all of you out there might think otherwise.

The ferry is Turkmen owned and registered and the set-up is fascinating. There is a big photo of a smiling man in a suit in the restaurant who I suspect is the President of Turkmenistan. The processes on board, from buying a ticket to trying to order food, are slow and laborious and stimulate comments to this effect from most Ralliers. But of course to the Turkmens (I assume most of the staff are Turkmen), this way of working is completely normal. People are entirely used to waiting for things to happen and do so without apparent irritation. Last night in the restaurant I queued for about half an hour to order two bowls of soup with bread. It was a very rigid process and half way through the type of soup dished up changed suddenly, presumably because the kitchen ran out of the original and I’ve no idea what we ended up with. But it was hot and relatively tasty and I think the young waiter coped brilliantly with facing a sudden deluge of fifty or so people all wanting to get food when without us lot, the restaurant would have had half a dozen people at most.

Well that’s the end of today’s piece, not sure when/if you will read it as wifi will be scarcer from now on. In the meantime we will, (hopefully), be on Turkmenistan soil and heading for the Uzbekistan border.

Cheers for now, Andy Coe

PS. We are now in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in a quaint little hotel near the centre and today is to be a day of rest and pottering. Hopefully we’ll get something written to bring you up to date with our progress.