Travelling time: 09:45 – 17:40 – Distance: 373 miles – 10°C and windy – cumulative milage: 3134
One of the many monuments to the former president of Turkmenistan, Niyazov, in his golden cape
Heading west at last to the Caspian sea port of Turkmenbashi, we set off with laundered clothes and the prospect of great roads – happy days!
Before leaving the surreal marble clad wonder that is Ashgabat we went in search of the elusive US dollar as we needed these to pay for the ferry crossing. (As a foreigner one is not entitled to pay in local currency.) We failed on this mission but agreed we really ought to be able to find some once we got to Turkmenbashi. We took one last drive through the city to try and absorb the sense of it – it was immaculate, manicured and devoid of shops with very few people other than those cleaning or gardening – but the presence of policemen at regular and frequent intervals made up for the lack of city dwellers.
We followed signs to Turkmenbashy for as long as they lasted (to have any signs at all was remarkable in itself) and then resorted to the map which took us past a small airport, much to the driver’s excitement as it looked to be a military base with Hind helicopter gunships whizzing about. I really did have to put my foot down at this point when repeatedly asked if I would take a photo of the incoming helicopters, purely for professional interest, right in front of a police check point; clearly a bad idea from every aspect, in my opinion. The memory of the mind’s eye would have to suffice.
Our journey to Turkmenbashi was swift and comfortable and we took turns in driving – it was great not to cause curiosity as a female driver, unlike Uzbekistan where I think I might have caused whiplash in certain instances – I hasten to add through looking, not crashing!
We passed Gök Depe (written Geok Tepe in the history books – all part of the Great Game) – the site of a terrible battle between the Turkmen and the Russians in 1880. 6,000 Russian troops defeated 25,000 Turkmen in a siege lasting 23 days with the Russians finally tunnelling under the fortified walls of the town and blowing it to smithereens.
The route follows the Köpetdag Mountains, bordering Iran, before levelling out into the Köpetdag basin. At this point we thought we were about to hit a log jam on the highway, multiple cars ahead were bunched up across the road with hazard lights going, five across and goodness knows how many deep. As we got closer we saw that it was a wedding procession! It looked like the bride was in the centre car, which had a crown-like floral arrangement on the roof, and all the other cars took it in turns to shroud and protect her. Quite terrifying at speed. We managed to get past by squeezing through between the outer cars and the central crash barrier and carried on.
We arrived in Turkmenbashi at 17:40 and made our way to the port after some considerable dithering as there are no signs and there was an enormous amount of construction being carried out both on the roads and the the surrounding infrastructure. By chance we met a guy who worked on one of the ferries – he helped enormously showing us where to go. It was a start.
One of the potential sticking points of our whole adventure was the Caspian sea crossing – we were not allowed into Iran, nor Russia, so the way westward for us was via the sea. The only way for us to cross with the car was to seek passage on a cargo ferry, either from Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan. I had been very concerned about this from the get go of this madcap plan as there is no guarantee of getting aboard nor do the ferries run to a schedule. They simply sail when they are full and then there is the possibility of staying at anchor just outside the port for an indefinite time. People spend days waiting for passage. For foreigners there is the added concern that transit visas are finite, often just three days in total. We had ten days on our visa, with four already used we had less concern on that front.
Murray had tried to quell my concerns by tracking all the ferries that cross from Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan on http://www.marinetraffic.com over the past 6 weeks and creating a spreadsheet to see if there was any pattern to the crossings. He had his mind set on one particular ship working for us, the Bagtyyar, as it was the most reliable and crossed regularly. It just so happened to be in port when we arrived but it was not sailing for two more days. However, there was one other ship that we established was sailing that night. With every hope that we had got lucky we hung around in the grim port waiting area to see if we could get on it. This was the beginning of our trials to make sense of the process and procedure to board a Caspian ferry, it was akin to entering a black hole.
Three or so hours later and with no information forthcoming, other than being told by various young army conscripts to ‘just wait’ (more on those later), we decided to sack it for the night and find a hotel. We were pretty tired and cold and no further forward in trying to work out how to get on the ferry. But we had the mobile number of the ferry worker who had helped us earlier, so in theory we could call to find out if the ship would sail that night, only I had misplaced the piece of paper it was written on ( – eek!).
[Note to others trying this escapade – having entered the port, one needs to buy a ticket to get out of the port. This we only established having driven the kilometre to the barrier and then back again, twice, having had the phrase for purchasing the required ticket written on the said piece of paper. It was a not what we needed after a long day.]
Whitesides on the Road 