Marooned on The Caspian Sea

Day one - Left our hotel at 09:00 for the short ride to Baku’s port and another slow, slow border crossing was in progress. This time though it involved a boat (ferry?/liner?) trip for the crossing to Turkmenistan. Much boredom later we followed the train cargo containers into the hull of a worryingly old looking rusty Russian ship. Oh well, never judge a book by its cover and all that... Oooohhh, how wrong was the person who said that! The ship (cargo) clearly doesn’t cater for those mad or desperate enough to use its services. Dilapidated would describe everything about the interior and its cabins. I won’t go into detail but suffice to say that some of you would have cried, you know who you are... So, “time for some sleep and don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Like I can prevent that from happening...

Day two – 08:00 Awoken by the unmistakable sound of the anchors being realised. Excellent, that only took 15hrs! But it looks like my plan to ‘eat light’ to prolong the inevitable is a waste of time though. We’ve been told that the Turkmenistan port is closed due to the wind being over 25kph(!?) so we’re moored off shore in a queue for an unknown time... Still, chin up and all that. I continued dipping into my rations but me being me plumbed for the local tuna rather than get ripped off with the overpriced ‘John West tuna steak.’ Oh dear. My offering it turned out was seaweed (I think) with some unknown ‘bits’ floating around in a warm sea water/oil mix. Absolutely disgusting. Still, in a strange way I’m enjoying this, it’s all very Micheal Palinesque, who’s one of my heroes. Opened a sweepstake book before bed on the time of the first bike of this wreck...$17 winner takes all. I went for an immediate time as it gave the biggest time spread.

Day three – Despite sleeping for most of the day yesterday I actually slept all night. A hot meal of chicken and chips seemed to raise everyone’s spirits and I’m coping with this better than most I think. For the first time we’ve had some genuine free time and I’m getting stuck into my ‘A State Of Trance 405’ and onwards. I haven’t been able to listen to them whilst riding as the deep rumble of the engine and wind noise don’t work well with this type of music. But my god, it’s making me miss my lovely GTR girls. OK...and the rest of you ;-) The sea looks like it did yesterday and I’ve heard we’ll be docking late tonight at the earliest. Looks like Werner will be $17 richer. Ended the night playing poker and ‘shithead’ (Cape Town rules) whilst drinking the last beer on the ship! This could end up being an international incident if we’re not off soon...

Day four – Woke at 04:00 to the noise of crew members up and about, something was to happen surely? Well it did, finally at 08:00 we hauled anchor and were heading in. As expected the border procedure was LONG. Nothing happened up to us finally being allowed entry at 18:00 except some paperwork and lots of waiting in the heat, 36deg in the shade!