I caught back up with H&E again in Aktau, Kazakhstan.
Aktau is a small city, that unlike Moynaq in Uzbekistan, still sits next to an existing body of water. Namely, the Caspian Sea. Go look at google maps. It seems as if a cyclist shouldn’t have to cross the Caspian. There are plenty of countries around it. Iran, Russia… Many European cyclists do in fact traverse Iran on their cross-Asia cycle trips. Unfortunately, though, for us ‘muricans, Iran is a no-go, and the Caucasus in Russia has been a sketchy area for centuries.
So my plan was this: Show up in Aktau and wait for a boat to take me from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, on the other side of the sea.
Above: Some motorcyclist friends heading in the opposite direction. There is one hotel in Aktau that is not absurdly priced, and all the low-budget western travelers were there. We became fast friends, and even almost got arrested together. While having a beer in a local park, some police (thugs) came up to us and, while at first friendly, suddenly decided to try their hands at extortion. We all quickly dispersed, pretending not to understand what was going on. I managed to make it back to the hotel unscathed, but three of the other guys barely got out of having to pay some serious baksheesh. Pro traveler tip: Police in developing countries are not real police! Always try to ignore them if possible. When going through checkpoints, just pretend like you don’t see them and head on through. If they ask for your passport, pretend not to understand. This seems like crazy talk coming from America where police will shoot you if you sneeze, but I’m serious, it works out here.
Ah the beautiful port of Aktau. Luckily for me, we got a call from the shipping company the morning after I arrived. The lady told us to come buy our tickets and then head down to the port because the boat was leaving today!
Well…we ended up spending more than 24 hours inside the port. I had enough time to watch the sun set over this pooper.
And Emese got so bored she put a bunch of mayonaise all over this cat’s nose. Then we watched it try to lick it off for 10 minutes. Animal abuse.
Finally, after playing frisbee in front of the immigration office, and sleeping outside in my hammock at the port, the boat was here. Our vessel was to be the Academic Zerifa Aliyeva, Zerifa Aliyeva being the name of Azerbaijan’s first lady.
This is one of the boat crew trying to make Hannah pay $5 to tie up her bike. We just laughed at him.
After we boarded the boat, a train boarded the boat! There are train tracks on the boat! How cool!
Here is the cabin we were assigned.
They put me, H, E, and this Japanese guy in the same cabin. Here we are in the mess hall. The food was actually really good and prepared with love by a cute little old lady.
It must’ve taken 30 hours from the time we boarded the boat to the time it arrived in Azerbaijan. Overall, it was pretty pleasant though. We slept, read, ate, talked, walked around a little bit, and mostly just relaxed while waiting for the time to pass. Nobody got seasick, although the girls did get propositioned by crewmembers a few times.
Here I am standing at the back of the boat as it docks in Azerbaijan. The port, however, is not in Baku, the capital, but in Alat, some 70km away from Baku in the middle of nowhere.
But no worries! No sooner do we roll off the boat than does a local Azeri man put us up for the night and feed us tons of food! Nothing can go wrong on a bike tour!
Aktau is a small city, that unlike Moynaq in Uzbekistan, still sits next to an existing body of water. Namely, the Caspian Sea. Go look at google maps. It seems as if a cyclist shouldn’t have to cross the Caspian. There are plenty of countries around it. Iran, Russia… Many European cyclists do in fact traverse Iran on their cross-Asia cycle trips. Unfortunately, though, for us ‘muricans, Iran is a no-go, and the Caucasus in Russia has been a sketchy area for centuries.
So my plan was this: Show up in Aktau and wait for a boat to take me from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, on the other side of the sea.
Above: Some motorcyclist friends heading in the opposite direction. There is one hotel in Aktau that is not absurdly priced, and all the low-budget western travelers were there. We became fast friends, and even almost got arrested together. While having a beer in a local park, some police (thugs) came up to us and, while at first friendly, suddenly decided to try their hands at extortion. We all quickly dispersed, pretending not to understand what was going on. I managed to make it back to the hotel unscathed, but three of the other guys barely got out of having to pay some serious baksheesh. Pro traveler tip: Police in developing countries are not real police! Always try to ignore them if possible. When going through checkpoints, just pretend like you don’t see them and head on through. If they ask for your passport, pretend not to understand. This seems like crazy talk coming from America where police will shoot you if you sneeze, but I’m serious, it works out here.
Ah the beautiful port of Aktau. Luckily for me, we got a call from the shipping company the morning after I arrived. The lady told us to come buy our tickets and then head down to the port because the boat was leaving today!
Well…we ended up spending more than 24 hours inside the port. I had enough time to watch the sun set over this pooper.
And Emese got so bored she put a bunch of mayonaise all over this cat’s nose. Then we watched it try to lick it off for 10 minutes. Animal abuse.
Finally, after playing frisbee in front of the immigration office, and sleeping outside in my hammock at the port, the boat was here. Our vessel was to be the Academic Zerifa Aliyeva, Zerifa Aliyeva being the name of Azerbaijan’s first lady.
This is one of the boat crew trying to make Hannah pay $5 to tie up her bike. We just laughed at him.
After we boarded the boat, a train boarded the boat! There are train tracks on the boat! How cool!
Here is the cabin we were assigned.
They put me, H, E, and this Japanese guy in the same cabin. Here we are in the mess hall. The food was actually really good and prepared with love by a cute little old lady.
It must’ve taken 30 hours from the time we boarded the boat to the time it arrived in Azerbaijan. Overall, it was pretty pleasant though. We slept, read, ate, talked, walked around a little bit, and mostly just relaxed while waiting for the time to pass. Nobody got seasick, although the girls did get propositioned by crewmembers a few times.
Here I am standing at the back of the boat as it docks in Azerbaijan. The port, however, is not in Baku, the capital, but in Alat, some 70km away from Baku in the middle of nowhere.
But no worries! No sooner do we roll off the boat than does a local Azeri man put us up for the night and feed us tons of food! Nothing can go wrong on a bike tour!
