All Aboard the Cargo Ship

by Sheila on 21 Aug, 2014 - 2 comments

On August 8th, we set out to arrange our passage across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan. In what retrospectively may have been a poor idea, we walked in blazing heat to the cargo port of Baku (not the same as the ferry port: much further from our hotel and certainly more seedy) where we encountered one Rally team and two Italian bikers who had camped out for days on the side of the road into port awaiting passage to Aktau and Turkmenbashi, respectively. This wasn’t looking promising.

We were directed to a small, shabby building that served as the ticket office. Inside was an older man and a somewhat younger Russian woman fending off argumentative truckers. The older man at first appeared to be very brusque and irritable, but when he saw poor Mom and her red hot face beelining towards the one fan in the “office”, he didn’t argue. The special consideration given to us as two women (and with Mom’s limited Azeri) compared to the horde of truckers and the other male Ralliers was made very apparent when, as another Rallier went to stand near the fan, the older man immediately yelled at him to move aside. We were also treated to such rare comforts as two full bottles of ice cold water, no yelling, and were permitted use of the one spare chair.

The younger Russian lady informed us that there was a ship leaving for Turkmenbashi on the 9th, the day our Turkmen visas began. With a sympathetic expression, she told us that there were no berths for 2 on the ship, and if we had any friends/other ralliers able to go with us, we could bring them along so that we didn’t have to share a berth with truckers. “You know how they are, they are not nice.” With all that sorted, she told us to arrive at a port further down the road at 11am the next day.

Just to be safe, we headed out on the 9th around 9:30am and arrived at the correct port just before 10am. To our surprise, we found three other Rally teams already there: Team Disco (Ken and Gordon, two older Aussies), team Ulaanbanter (Ben and Julian, an American and German who’d stayed at our hotel), and three younger Aussies in an unfortunate Vauxhall. They had been told to be at the port the night before, and were jealous/slightly peeved that we had been given more correct information and thus a good night’s sleep in a hotel!

Even though we arrived at the port later, we still had to wait a couple hours before we could go through the exit process. Along with a horde of truckers, we obtained our ticket for passage, cleared customs, then sat and waited while the other ralliers did the same.

Intrigued by Mom’s Azeri abilities, nearly all the guards came and surrounded our car to chat with her after the exit formalities were complete. Laughs were had about the adventure, then came the forward questions, “How old are you?” “How old is your daughter? Is she married? No? Ah, she’s too old now [to get married].” (thanks for that) At which point, a much older guard came over and said, “Leave her alone, she’s having fun! Why should she get married?” (that’s what I think too!)

At this point, things got interesting.

I should first clarify that, when we entered Azerbaijan, the guards confirmed that we had around 22 days to visit as per the terms of our visa, but our CAR could be in Azerbaijan for 3 days only. As per the guard’s information, we could drive around the country for 3 days, then on the 4th day take it to the dock to go.

The 9th was day 4 for the car, and the day we had cleared everything and technically ‘left’ Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, one of the officers at the port did not concur with the earlier border guard’s assessment of the car’s status. He came up to Mom and said the car had to be checked out on the THIRD day, and that the car has now technically overstayed its visit by a day. To resolve this issue, we had to pay a fee and fill out paperwork at the customs office in Baku (not the port). Ken and Gordon of team Disco confirmed this info as they had run into the same issue the day before.

Unwilling to leave the car unoccupied with all of our important things at the seedy port, the customs officer arranged to have his brother drive Mom to the appropriate office. Without his assistance, we never would have found it or known what to do! He helped Mom to the office, fill out the forms, pay the 22 manat fee at the bank, helped her with the intense questioning from the officers (“Why did you not check out your car on the third day?” “You’re raising money for charity? Why don’t you raise money for children in need here in Azerbaijan? Do you hate Azerbaijan? Why don’t you like Azerbaijan that you do not raise money for charity here?”), and drove her back to the port in time for us to board the ship.

Boarding took an age, as the order of boarding was specific and some trucks had to fill half of the lower deck first before we three rally cars could get on. Additionally, not all of the cargo was being accompanied by a driver, so most of the trucks were driven on, parked, then the cab disengaged and left. This was a big ship, and it could fit a LOT of cargo. By the time the ship was filled, the sun had begun to set.

Before we left our cars in the hold, we were told to take what we needed as access to the cars while in motion would be limited. Expecting the voyage to be overnight, we grabbed some essentials and some food and headed up. Cargo ships are pretty cramped, and the climb up to the non-storage areas involved a lot of vertical ladders. We made it though, and were shown to our berths which were…Spartan. Actually, I’m certain the Spartans had standards of hygiene, and that was clearly missing from this boat. Unwilling to stay down in the berths, we and the other ralliers headed up to the mess area where there were tables and booths.

The most unfortunate thing about being on a ship filled with Azeri/Turkish truckers is that they chain smoke, and they are allowed to do so just about anywhere on the ship. In short order, absolutely everything on and around us smelled like bad cigarettes.

We finally launched around 9pm, the lovely breeze across the sea helping to dissipate the cigarette reek. The Caspian doesn’t have that stereotypical salty ocean scent as it is much less salty in comparison, but instead it’s more like a pleasant lake. The sea was calm and sailing was smooth. This is about the only thing that went smoothly.

While outside was cool and breezy, inside was unbearably hot and sticky even with all of the portholes open. Compiled with the constant cigarette smoke, the only reasonable option was to remain outside on deck. Since we didn’t bring anything to sit on, we were obliged to sit anywhere that we could find, which often meant hard dirty iron. We made small talk with the truckers, mostly because they were so curious having women on board. The other ralliers used Mom as a translator between themselves and the truckers/crew for anything from interpreting the rules of a card game to asking for food. I think she should have charged per minute!

(The First Mate and the Electrical Engineer on board, both of whom tried to monopolize my time with pretty much everyone else, and tried to convince me to marry them)

We arrived at the lagoon of Turkmenbashi on the morning of the 10th, but much to our dismay the ship dropped anchor. Word came down that the port would not let us dock as they were “full”, and we had to wait. With 25 other ships in the lagoon that we could see, things suddenly looked pretty grim. The truckers began angrily chain smoking as their cargo was losing money, and our personal food stores were running out. Compounding the issue, the “toilets” on the ship were so grimy and disgusting that both of us were hoping to avoid using them, but if we were going to be on the ship for an extended period of time, that wouldn’t be possible. Hello Immodium.

The 10th came and went, with no one able to do more than lounge despondently and play cards. I finished reading 3 books. By the 11th, we heard the news that the Captain managed to convince the port to let us dock that day!! Hallelujah! Late that evening, we finally pulled in to port. The excitement of seeing land quickly wore off as, due to the location of our cars in the boat and the sheer amount of cargo that had to be offloaded, we weren’t able to drive our cars off the boat until after midnight. Success! we thought.

Then we became acquainted with the Turkmen border entry procedures. What followed can only be depicted with a diagram, as this one by team sKhandinavia from last year’s Rally shows:

Each booth had a different function (never entirely made clear), and at each booth you receive a teeny slip of paper with handwritten information. If you lose or toss ANY of these slips during the process, you are screwed. Fees are requested from you in both USD and Turkmen Manat. These fees total very bizarre amounts (they wanted 4 Manats for some part of the process and refused to accept other currency, but there was nowhere to exchange for Manat), and absolutely nothing was digitized. This isn’t to say that there were no computers, they just refused to use them.

We manoeuvred our way through this illogical maze until, around 2:30am, we emerged victorious. Sort of. It was now August 12th, and we had less than 48 hours to leave Turkmenistan. We tried to request a one day extension of our visas, to which the official laughed and said, “No sleep, just drive!”. Which is almost precisely what we did.