Onto the Silk Road

1st June, day 45, Still in Baku, Azerbaijan


Today's boat to Turkmenistan was redirected to Kazakhstan, so we're still here in Baku getting itchy feet and wanting to move on. To make things worse, there's a conference in town (Baku Oil and Gas exhibition) so nearly all the hotel rooms are booked. We need to stay here another night so we crowd into the few available rooms, some people on the floor. The trip is now 1/4 of the way through!

2nd June, day 46, Still in Baku, Azerbaijan

Waiting for the boat is wearing very thin now, and we need to make arrangements for accommodation tonight because the hotels are even more fully booked that last night. We decide to retrieve the tents from the truck and set up camp in the hotel courtyard. Pete, Mike and myself go to the port where the truck is parked up in the customs compound waiting to be loaded onto the elusive boat. Pete has a chat with the Port Captain and after that, things seem better, as we have finally been issued with tickets, and we are promised the the boat will dock during the night.

That night at bed time Joy and I find a place to sleep. There's a covered section behind the hotel which we can sleep in, so we decide not to bother with the tent, especially since we could be woken any time in the night to go to get the boat. Bad move. Our sleeping space is shared by about 1000000000000 mosquitoes.

3rd June, day 47, finally leaving Baku!

At 5am the call came that the boat has docked and we'd better get down to the port. At last, we're on the move, a new country awaits!

At 10am the boat finaly leaves. Maybe we could have slept in a bit longer.

It is hot and sunny, and the Caspian is rather a warm sea. The result is high humidity, but at least there is a breeze. I'm starting to suffer from the heat and humidity combined with lack of sleep now, the last 2 nights have not been very comfortable.

I spend a good chuck of the day asleep in my cabin. Now, this boat is unlike anything else I've experienced. It's an old Soviet Union boat and all the signs are in Russian. It is very scruffy and musty enough so that breathing the air inside almost makes you feel sick. The cabin has 4 bunks with matresses you dare not lie on for catching some dreadful undiscovered disease, but I inflate my air bed on top of it, open the porthole and let the sea air in, and fall asleep. That's about all there is to do on board, anyway. It's everything the Queen Mary 2 isn't.

By midnight, you can see the coast of Turkmenistan, but we drop anchor and spend the night on the boat a few hours from the port. It's best on the top deck sleeping under the stars. That was actually quite nice.

4th June, day 48, at anchor outside Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan

The day dawns far too early - that's the trouble with sleeping outside - attempt a lie in and the sun will roast you.

The Turkenbashi port works to its own unique schedule, and certainly not in any hurry. I've heard stories that last year's group were kept waiting at anchor for 3 nights, so needless to say I was worried a similar thing would happen to us. Early on, a boat the same as ours was spotted at anchor nearby. When, at about 10am, it was seen to move towards port, our hopes of landing today took a serious blow. It takes the best part of a day to turn a boat around, and even if we were next in the queue, we wouldn't be in today because the port apparently closes at night, which means another night on board.

The day was spent trying desparately to find air. It seemed to be in rather short supply. The air inside was stale and musty, outside hot and humid. This miserable day found me wondering what part of my insane little mind wanted to come on this trip anyway.

Then, at 3pm, me were on the move again, and our spitits lifted. This raising of the spirits is short-lived, however, as the anchor drops again at at about 6pm. We were told that the port would work through the night and we would land today, but no-one really believes this. But at about 9pm, we're actually on the move again. We finally dock at 10:30pm, after some 36 and a half hours on board.

Then the border formalities start. This starts with a medical examination. This is not exactly thorough. Me standing up and confirming my name seems to satisfy them that I'm still alive, along with everyone else, so we are clear to leave the boat by about midnight.

Then the passport/visa formalities take about 3 hours, so at 3am we are released into the dark desert wastelend that is Turkmenistan, where we set up camp for a few short hours of well needed sleep.

5th June, day 49, bushcamp near Turkmenbashi - Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

A long day on the road through the fierce heat of the desert.

Turkmenistan is a strange country, quite unlike any other so far. Every so often on the road there are police checkpoints. Even Turkmen citizens need a special permit to travel to a different region of their own country. Luckily our papers are in order and we have a local guide (again, a state requirement) so we are allowed to proceed by the police officers with huge peaked caps. (The size of the peaked caps indicates the degree of totalitariansim of the government, or so it seems to me. Turkmen officials were large caps)

We are a day behind schedule thanks to the delay getting on and off the boat, and we lose one of our nights at the very posh 5-star Grand Hotel.

6th June, day 50, in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan


The heat is vicious. When there's a breeze it blows at you like so many hair dryers. Despite the heat, the morning is spent looking round a large and impressive market near Ashgabat, where you can buy anything from a camel to a bottle of perfume.

Prices are a little bit confusing, because they've recently revalued their currency to lose the string of 0's off their banknotes. So one new Turkmen Manat equals 5000 old Manats, and old Manats are no longer legal tender. But some people live in the past and still express prices in the ld currency despite it no longer being in use, and so if a price says 10000, you know it really means 2.

The afternoon is then spent in air-conditioned bliss in our hotel room. Unfortunately not the nice 5-star Grand, but the rather more modest former Soviet In-tourist Hotel Ashgabat. Still, it had aircon. Lovely.

7th June, day 51, Ashgabat - Darvala Gas Crater, Turkmenistan

This morning we take a stroll around Ashgabat. On almost every street corner, more bored-looking police lurk underneath their huge peaked caps. These are pretty much the only people about. I'm a bit worried about taking photos here, because sometimes foreigners can get into trouble for taking pictures of things they shouldn't. I'm up for a certain amount of adventure, but going to a Turkmen jail is one step too far. I get the feeling you could be jailed here for breathing at the wrong time without a permit.
I risk a photo of the theatre. It's a white marble building with columns in front, with ornate copper over the windows. Very pretty, and, like the rest of the city, quite deserted.
Ashgabat is a city of wide tree-lined boulevards and white marble buildings, interspesed with the occasional fountain and statue of their Glorious Leader. Apparently we are allowed to photograph those. Lucky really, because there's not much worth photographing. Ashgabat is like Milton Keynes, it's artificial, it's the president's folly, it's been planned to within an inch of its life.

I think here, I will digress slightly to discuss my view on the role of a president, or political leader of a country is. Many in the West probably will agree with me - that their job is to oversee the government whilst it goes about its work of looking after their country's infrastructure, economy, education, healthcare, and so on. Hopefully I'm not being too naive here, although I know it's simplified. But here is Asia, the job of president is quite different. His job is to decree the building of fountains and statues of himself. Sounds like an easy job, anyone could do it. Things are a lot simpler here.


We leave Ashgabat at lunchtime for a fairly quick drive north through the hottest desert in Central Asia to the Darvala Gas Crater, right in the middle of the desert. About 40 years ago, a pocket of natural gas was found and an attempt was made to tap it. It went wrong, the installation fell through the ground into the cavern below, and an uncontrolled release of gas into the atmosphere started. To prevent escape of poisonous gas, they set light to it. It's been burning now for 40 years.

We bushcamp that night about 7km away among the sand dunes, but still the light from the fire is visible in the night sky.

8th June, day 52, Darvala Gas Crater, Turkmenistan - near Nukus, Uzbekistan

The original plan to camp at the former coast of the Aral Sea at Moynaq was scuppered by a long wait at the border. So we just make it to a bushcamp along the route.
Now we're in Uzbekistan the desert gives way to endless flat plains of farmland, mostly cotton. By rights it should be desert, but thanks to a vast network of irrigation it is now fertile. All the ditches full of water and the accompanying greenery turn the heat into the sticky humid kind, much more uncomfortable. And the mozzies here are expert at finding the one little bit of skin you missed with the repellant spray. Bastards.

9th June, day 53, Nukus - bushcamp near Urgench, Uzbekistan.


We leave this place and head north through more desert-turned-cotton plantations to the small fishing town of Moynaq, on the coast of the Aral Sea. We stand on what was presumably the sea wall and look down at a fleet of fishing boats slowly falling apart in the hot sun, and all the way to the horizon is the price of the vast irrigation - endless sand. The sea cannot be seen from here at all. Suddenly, what people are doing to this planet is no longer just another news story, and it's no longer about being good and using the recycle bin and switching to unleaded, it's very real, it's right here staring me in the face. To be honest I was a little moved by the harshness of the reality, and the plight of the poor people of Moynaq who somehow live on without their primary means of income.

The heat today is shocking. Definitely above 40 degrees.

10th June, day 54, Urgench - Khiva, Uzbekistan

Unbearable heat, even at 7am. The nights don't get much below the mid 20's, and then only too briefly. The minute the sun gets onto the tent, it's an oven. You get up early or you cook.
Some people have started to get heat-stroke, and now I join their numbers. I feel sick and lost my appetite and have no energy. We had to walk across a pontoon bridge because the truck would have been too heavy with us on board. The walk makes me sick, or at least, would have done if there was anything to be sick with. I lean over and nothing comes out, but at least dry-vomiting still relieves the nausia.

It's only about 9:30 when we get to Khiva, and now it's hotels all the way to Kyrgistan. It's a relief to not have to camp when feeling so shit. I flop into the hotel room, turn on the air-conditioner at 18 degrees and sleep most of the day. I wake up feeling a whole lot better and so I'm able to join in the group dinner in the courtyard, which even at 7pm and in the shade is like a furnace. I don't stay long, for fear of coming down with heatstroke again.