Ken's Blog

A short postscript to the recent Baku armchair adventure…

So. You’ve reached Baku and want to catch the ferry across the Caspian to Aktau in Kazakhstan. Even if you haven’t, and have no plans to do so anytime soon, you may nevertheless find the story below intriguing. If only for the insight it provides into life in Azerbaijan…

Firstly, get yourself a local SIM card for your phone. Absolutely essential. Unless you want to die of old age here. Or be deported for overstaying your visa. Truth is, and that can be a very elusive quantity around here, in either case you’ll go bankrupt first. If, like me, you no longer have a mobile, you can acquire the complete package for around twenty pounds. Go and chat to the very helpful, trustworthy staff in Baku’s Tourism Information Center. Good English to boot.

Next, visit the port and locate the ticket office. Expect a door with ’Kasse’ painted on it, nothing more. From very close – fifty metres – to the intersection of Y.Safarov Street and Nobel Avenue, head down a rough road for a couple of hundred metres, past various wrecks of buses. Some may still be in service. Find the lady who seems to be there during the week, give her your phone number, and a small fee to help with the usual administrative costs. This last bit is crucial. Otherwise see previous paragraph. Crisp US dollars work best.

Then wait. By all means take the number of the ticket office, and call them twice daily, around ten and three. Great if you speak Russian or Azeri, but just saying ’Ship Kazakhstan’ works fine, with the usual pleasantries. If you do need help with the language barrier, the Tourism Information Center can help out. You suspect they have the ticket office on speed dial.

Now the intriguing bit. You’d be forgiven for thinking that ships to Kazakhstan are pretty rare, a few times a month. No schedule, they just go when there’s sufficient cargo, often at just a few hours notice. Admittedly things may be a bit different in winter, but otherwise there seems to be rather more sailings than you’d be led to believe. I reckon there’s one every 3-4 days, weekly at worst. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but, until I’d made a small cash donation towards administrative costs, the ferries were just rumours, ghost ships. Contribution made, phone call the next day. Ship to Kazakhstan.

[Author’s note: Oddly enough, the Kazakhstan end of the operation seems to have a far better grasp of what the ferry is up to – call agents Tagu in Aktau on 3292-513989.

Self-imposed editorial rules prevent identification of the lady at the ticket office, or the size of the contribution made to cover administrative costs. However, if you are planning on catching a ferry to Kazakhstan, contact me via the website – if I’m satisfied you’re a genuine traveller I’ll normally share this information with you]

Final instalment of Baku’s armchair adventure. Hopefully….

I’d barely got the ticket in my hand when the phone rang. There was a ship. Sailing soon, exactly when no-one was quite sure, but today certainly. I wasn’t surprised. The previous day I’d returned to the port, volunteered a small fee to help cover miscellaneous expenses. Remarkable how a ferry suddenly turns up. Coincidence I’m sure. Actually, I’d discovered that there’s probably rather more ships plying the route to Kazakhstan than you might be led to believe. Try about once a week in the summer, sometimes more frequent.

But none of this mattered anymore. No longer need I dwell on the fact that offer a small fee and you find there’s a second ticket office close by. I’d found a flight from Baku to Atyrau, the Sunday afternoon slot a few dollars more than the best offer for the ferry. Arranged through a Georgian travel company, not Azeri. Emma’s not keen on flying, but I’d been assured she’d be well looked after. And this option places me at the northern tip of the Caspian, where I’d originally hoped to be. Saves me around a thousand extra kilometres, and gives me a fighting chance of cycling the vast majority of Kazakhstan and still making the Chinese border in time for my visa.

I’m a bit disappointed at not sailing across the Caspian, but the primary objective is to cycle across Asia, not indulge in a passage on the high seas. And as for the intellectual challenge of securing a ship to Kazakhstan? Box ticked the moment the phone rang.

Intrigued as to what’s actually been going on? Coming this way yourself? Then wait a few days and all will be revealed. At least, my own assessment of the situation. Reckon I’ve researched my facts pretty carefully, got a good measure of how things work here, just putting the final touches to the post…

[With considerable thanks to Aysel for doing her level best to extract information from the ferry company. Brian for being such a great sounding board and, together with his daughter Savannah, a very generous host. Paul and Hammid for help obtaining an air ticket to Atyrau. Silvana, Johan and their friends for exploring the possibility of boarding other ships. Mark and my parents back in the UK for lots of helpful suggestions. And a few other friends who prefer to remain anonymous. Solo riding, team effort]

Armchair adventure, soap opera, simple saga, or never-ending story? You be the judge. Meanwhile, the latest instalment….

Strong, warm, gusting winds off the Caspian, dust and debris swirling amongst the buildings. Day Seven in Baku. Good to her word, Aysel at the Tourism Information Centre called shortly after ten. There’d been a sighting. Well, seemed the ship had left Kazakhstan and was returning to Azerbaijan. Eighteen hour passage. Expected back in port tonight. Would it sail again today? Or perhaps tomorrow? Nobody knew. Not yet anyway. Aysel would check again with the shipping company that night and let me know. Nothing to do but wait. Thought I might wash my socks.

The armchair adventure continues….

Good news. Definitely a ship to Kazakhstan. It had sailed the previous night. Bad news? I’m still in Baku. Seems that since my unfruitful visit to the shipping company the previous morning, they’d decided to sail it after all. Aysel, the very helpful lady in the Tourism Information Centre, doubled checked. Yes. It had gone. Extremely frustrating, especially as I’ve never missed a ship, train or plane as far back as I can remember.

I needed a plan. Simply couldn’t afford, in more sense than one, to miss the next sailing, whenever that might be. An hour later I had a second hand mobile telephone, all for about twenty pounds. Whilst there was no timetable, a pattern was emerging. The ship usually arrived in the morning, sailing again in the evening, normally around six. Aysel would check at ten in the morning, and again at three, calling me the moment there was any news. And, I was assured, if anything different happened, she’d get a call from the company and would then ring me right away. I trusted her.

[Author’s note: If you are ever mad enough to contemplate doing this for real, remember two things – a mobile telephone with a local SIM card (25 Manat or about £20 – various places around 28 May Street) – and a visit to the Baku Tourism Information Center, 36, U. Gadjibekov str. Baku Az1000, Azerbaijan, (+994 12) 498 12 44 tic_baku@tourism.az. Ferry ticket is about US$60 per person, plus about the same for a bicycle]

An armful of visas. Kazakhstan and China in sight. Almost. Just need to catch a ship across the Caspian Sea. What could be simpler? Try World Peace. Intrigued? Maybe not, but just be thankful you’re not trapped in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. So sit back and enjoy a bit of armchair adventure. Here goes…

First locate the shipping company’s ticket office. A sketchy map in a well-known guidebook helps, but you’ll need to conduct house-to-house enquiries to find the right doorway. Don’t worry if you find it locked on your first visit, because you’ll be coming back in any case. Many times.

Once eventually inside, mutter a few words of Azeri and then the magic phrase – Kazakhstan. It probably helps if you’re a budding actor or an aspiring author since, chances are, you’re already used to rejection. If not, you soon will be. Expect to hear “No ship. Tomorrow maybe. Ten o’clock information” or variations thereof. Sometimes you get shrugging of shoulders. Animation helps break up the monotony. If you’re really lucky, they make a phone call first.

After a while, the merest snippets of information seem like progress. Some are actually quite helpful, like discovering the ship goes to a different port to the one you’d been expecting. And the vessel – if it actually exists, and after a while you do wonder – is there to transport freight trains en route from Georgia, not you. So just be grateful if they let you board. That is, once you’ve handed over your stash of US Dollars. You may be tempted to console yourself with a coffee, but this is Baku, so that’s probably your whole day’s budget gone.

There’s no timetable for the service, if you can call it that, and, it seems, no one has any idea when the ship last sailed. You begin to wonder if it’s sunk again. Or who these people really are. But, quite unusually for Baku, nobody will accept your money, purportedly for a ticket, until there’s actually a vessel to board.

Once you realise that turning up in person makes not a jot of difference, you can always get the Tourist Information Office to call them for you. Staff speak excellent English. And there’s a lovely coffee shop nearby. Not that you can afford to go in. Still, you could always pop around to the local chemist. See if they stock Prozac. Or go and sit on the Promenade, watch the seasons change, and contemplate how to bring about World Peace.

On the shores of the Caspian Sea from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.

Ken describes reaching the shores of the Caspian Sea, the first stage of Asia now complete.

Waiting for a ship to Kazakhstan from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.

Ken describes the frustrations of waiting for a ship across the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan.