{"id":144,"date":"2019-09-14T13:16:13","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T13:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=144"},"modified":"2019-09-17T14:42:54","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T14:42:54","slug":"the-ferry-from-baku-to-turkmenistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/14\/the-ferry-from-baku-to-turkmenistan\/","title":{"rendered":"The ferry from Baku to Turkmenistan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am sitting on an Azerbaijan cargo ferry\nin the Caspian Sea anchored off the coast of Turkmenistan waiting for the port\nto open. The port is closed because the Turkmenistan president, Gurbanguly\nBerdimuhamedow, has come to Turkmanbashi, where our ship is supposed to dock,\nand like all good dictators has ordered everything shut. We are on day two and\nhave run out of vodka. The captain says maybe we can dock tomorrow night.\nMaybe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
View of Turkmanbashi from the ferry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even though I\u2019ve never been to prison, I\nimagine it to be like this boat. There is no phone service, no internet and\nRamin the Captain has confiscated our passports. It\u2019s unbearably sweltering, the\nmen are all shirtless, and I\u2019m sleeping in a cabin of bunk beds with five men, all\nof us sharing the one communal squat toilet with a ferry full of truck drivers\n(and two women cooks who don\u2019t seem to leave the kitchen). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is also camaraderie, again like I\nimagine in prison. The ten of us in the three rally teams on the ferry hang out\non the deck with a group of friendly, if occasionally lecherous, Turkish truck\ndrivers who make concerted efforts to pantomime questions and share with us everything\nthey have: tea, food and cigarettes. We take photos of each other, pass around\nwater bottles filled with vodka and Fanta (tastes like musty cough syrup) and use\nthe phrase \u201cno problem\u201d a lot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The truck drivers are a lively lot. I\u2019ve\nnicknamed one \u201cGropey\u201d because he loves to sling his arm around me, intimately feel\nmy face with his thick hands and give me sloppy kisses on the check. Apparently,\nhe does this to everyone. He wears a small white undershirt that rides up on\nhis impressive belly and has a thick mustache under which is a big, toothless grin.\n\u201cGropey II\u201d is less boisterous, but loves to dole out mustached kisses whenever\nhe can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday morning, Gropey I and Gropey II shared\nan amazing breakfast cooked on the stove under a semi-truck. We dipped thick\nTurkish bread in a pot of warm tomatoes, onions, garlic and egg with a side bucket\nof chocolate and honey and sweet Turkish chai all while crouching on the deck. The\ntruckers drive a loop, from Turkey to Baku, then from Turkmenistan into Iran\nand back to Turkey. One is driving on to London, in seven days doing the same\nroute that took me two weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During the day, we all wander around the\nboat, finding solitary spots over the emerald green of the Caspian, nap, read and\nthen drift back to play cards and drinking games and spread the rumor that a\ntruck driver told someone that we are stuck on this boat for five more days.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Five more days is a problem. Our\nTurkmenistan five-day transit visa expires in two days and our single-entry\nAzerbaijan visa is finished. With the Turkmen road to Uzbekistan only partly paved\nand hundreds of miles to go, it seems daunting to cross the entire country\nbefore our visa expires, if we even get there in time. The truck drivers have\npantomimed that we can pay money to have our visa extended, but no one really\nknows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to get any concrete information\non anything. Even getting on this boat was an exercise in patience. After\ngetting our Turkmenistan visas at the Baku consulate, Ishamel the fixer said he\nwould text when the ferry was ready. Maybe the next day. Maybe five days. Who\nknows.  Meanwhile, our cars are impounded\nat the ferry customs as they are only allowed to be in the country for three\ndays and our visa is quickly running out. We hooked up with the Brighton\nBandits, three English boys \u2013 Owen, Alex and Narmy — traveling in a van with\n250,000 miles, no air conditioning and three beds they built themselves in the\nback. And we waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On day two in Baku, we sat at the port for\nhours trying to get on a ferry. When we were finally given the ok, we went to\nthe ticket office, a small unmarked door in a ramshackle unmarked building down\nthe road. It was closed. We walked back. Some phone calls were made. The ticket\nman didn\u2019t want to come back. Some more phone calls were made. He finally\nappeared. He wrote down a price on a piece of paper and slowly started typing my\nname into the computer. His phone rang. He answered, looked at me, said,\n\u201ckaput,\u201d and turned off the computer. The ferry had left. \u201cTomorrow,\u201d he said.\n\u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spent the night in a lively outdoor\nrestaurant on the square, eating plates of smoked cheese and shishkabab and\ndrinking Azeri NZS draft beer long into the night with the bandits and the\nfun-loving Matt and Claire from the Dragoman tour company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Downtown Baku<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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On day three, now with headaches, we heard\nthere was a ferry from another port.  After a long day of uncertainty, numerous phone\ncalls and pleading with a train conductor to move the train that was blocking\nin our cars, we made it on. Then we waited. At midnight, the engines rumbled\nand we slowly pulled away from Baku, the LED-lit Flame Tower skyscrapers rising\nabove the old city like huge torches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve just discovered that there is more\nvodka on board, the bandits are cooking peanut-beer curry in the kitchen (the\ncooks gave us some sympathy French fries after they tasted it) and there is a\nbreeze on the port side. In the distance are the barren mountains of\nTurkmenistan and the twinkling lights of the oil rigs. The sound of the Turkish\ntruck drivers chatting and smoking floats across the deck. I will try to sleep\noutside tonight, under the full moon and the breeze, and suddenly being stuck\non a cargo ferry in the middle of the Caspian Sea doesn\u2019t feel like prison at\nall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Wardlaw joins the gang of shirtless men. To be fair, it\u2019s more than 40C\/104F degrees.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am sitting on an Azerbaijan cargo ferry in the Caspian Sea anchored off the coast of Turkmenistan waiting for the port to open. The port is closed because the Turkmenistan president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, has come to Turkmanbashi, where our ship is supposed to dock, and like all good dictators has ordered everything shut. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_1127.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}