On the morning of the 11th, I am woken by the raising of the anchors again… I cant wait to get back on the bike and get some proper exercise.
The port of Elat draws nearer. Elat being some 80kms from Baku… don’t think I’ll be making the backtracking detour for city as it add about 150kms onto my route.
Standing on the back of the ship in the hold, the door is raised in anticipation of parking the ship.(I know all the lingo, I do).
Its strange how we can cover many hundreds of rather banal nautical miles and the clever and exciting bit happens in the last few hundred metres.
We are guided up a tricky looking channel by a marked out route of buoys; red to the left and green to the right. As we draw closer and closer to disembarkation point a bright yellow tug comes to help shove out massive tonnage into position. It’s kind of like an ultimate boys toys game in making it all meet up in the right place. There’s the added challenge in that rail tracks need to line up too. Don’t want those train carriages derailing into the sea as soon as they leave. Looking up at the harbour buildings right next to us I can see where there have been a few previous bodged attempts; chunks of corrugated iron roof are mangled and missing. Oops!
Reverse thrusters on, several thousand tonnes of steel inches its way into a very exactly maneuvered position. It’s fascinating.
Clunk! Everything connects, cables are hooked over bollards and the ship is made secure. The ship’s second mate shakes hands with the port masters across the connection. Well done chaps!
Arrival into customs is a bit odd. An officer makes the most cursory of investigations into my junk. Peering into one pocket full of festering junk reduces the whole procedure to about a minute.
Another officer examines my passport, takes my photo but insists that I don’t need a stamp.
That’s a bit disconcerting. Another officer wants to know where I am going (not Armenia of course) and is slightly dismayed that I am not intending to go to Baku… ‘But that’s our best bit of the country!’
Yeah, well…. probably.
As I understand it, the eastern part of Azerbaijan has been described as being flattish boring desert type terrain whilst it gets more interesting further west and north. Well it certainly doesn’t look particularly exciting from where I’m standing now, though there does seem to be areas of grass and low weedy green plants. I’ve been mostly in desert since landing in the Pamirs, and except for a bit of cultivation in the Wakhan villages and in Dushanbe it’s been a largely grass-free journey.
Speaking of grass; Baku is locally spelt as ‘Baki’ and in the west of the country is a town called Ganja which also has an airport. Fly high with Ganja Airways!
I’m all legally processed and ready to go. I would be enthusiastic, but I feel a bit rotten. Way too much sitting around goggling at my phone and also a residual mild seasickness seems to have stuck with me. Eating some rather suspect lemon wafer biscuits hasn’t helped. They were probably somewhere between 30 to 50 percent vegetable fat.
Within a few hundred yards I am on the road I am to follow for the next 70kms, a straight busy blacktop road that is effectively a motorway. It’s very noisy, but in its favour there’s plenty of safe space for me and the surface is perfect and flat as a pancake.
The surroundings are very similar to many places I have passed through previously and consequently seems rather devoid of character. Some way up the road two men stand on opposite sides of the road both standing with their arms held out. They look like they might be trying to hitch hike in opposite directions but then as I draw nearer I can see the man on my side of the road is holding something… it’s a small white rabbit that he is holding by the tips of its ears between his thumb and forefinger. It looks frightened.
Gross.
Further down the road abandoned drinks cans; an energy drink, called ‘Hell’.
Ho hum.
I stop regularly; clearly after three weeks mostly off the bike, I’ve lost my muscle strength rather a lot though by towards sundown I’m starting to get back into the swing of things.
Tomorrow I need to head into the next town and get registered. Maybe they’ll put a stamp in my passport? Who knows? Not me.
Dec 12th
My 16km detour south to the little town of Shirvan is a somewhat frustrating business.
Not having any idea where I am supposed to go, only the name of the office and a phone number I by chance first encounter big official looking building with the words ‘Pasporti’ and ‘Migratazi’ written into its name.
This isn’t the place and the policeman guarding the place doesn’t understand me, I don’t understand him and even when I show him the little piece of paper informing me of the absolute importance of getting registered, he still doesn’t get it.
Not really wanting to take up my precious time making detours or any other arseing about that I could just as easily do without, I’m getting rather annoyed. I just want to get this little bit of fatuous beurocracy over and done with. Why couldn’t these people have registered me when I got off the boat? It all seems rather dumb.
I abandon the useless policeman and head off a little further down the road. Another building with ‘ Migratazi’ written on it. Maybe it’s the same place.
A group of seven Azeri men all dressed in black leather jackets and black sheepskin coats all crowd round me trying to ask me all the usual questions. Which is even more annoying than usual as none of us have a common language.
Look, I’m really not interested in telling you whether I’m married or not and I don’t feel excited that you like Chelsea football club okay?
Not in the mood for this. I try to calm down. Will you please get that bloody camera out of my dace do I look like I want to do a selfie with you??!
I pedal off down the road until I find ten policemen standing at a crossroads all busy extorting small fines from random passing motorists. I stop and show them my piece of paper. Thank god, one them understands Russian (the instructions are English one side and Russian the other). The nice policeman flags down a white Lada and instructs its driver to escort me to the required destination; I am to follow behind. I hope he goes slow. One white Lada looks much like another white Lada, barring variations in dents and crazy luggage on the roof.
My escort drives nice and slowly and within two kilometres he stops and point me to the right building.
Bolshoi spasiba!
Inside the building a man approaches me and addresses me in slightly crumpled English. Thank heavens! He informs me that I don’t get registered here but at any hotel within ten days of my arrival in the country. He also confirms to me that the border will be open December 25th. This is very useful to know. I thank him and set off up the road.
Some way on I notice that my saddle has got the wobbles again. I stop at a mechanic workshop and borrow a spanner. Interrupted from an outdoor game of dominos, the usual small crowd gathers and ask me the usual questions.
Back up the road, a young horse gives an excited snort when it sees me for the second time. Well that’s nice.
The main road west is good and solid but noisy with traffic. I finally reach a turn off that will take me 50kms north up onto the northern east west road.
Passing through the roadside village I am instantly on mud track that’s more pothole than track. This doesn’t bode well. Once out of the village though the mud track settles into something altogether smoother. As I head further from the main road it becomes quieter and quieter. The track is lovely for cycling on. The landscape feels like a very flat piece of the Scottish Highlands. Great flocks of birds swirl overhead the sound of a thousand birds thrumming and whistling as they swoop past en masse.
Apart from a brief encounter with six vicious farm dogs that look like they would cheerfully chew me up and eat me, this is fabulous.
At a safe enough distance from the crazy farm dogs I camp. It’s almost full moon. What a glorious night.
Dec 13th.
A slow morning, decorating my mudguards with glued on stripy green and black tee shirt material that I found in the road. A shepherd is investigating me. I like meeting shepherds they are always very laid back. These men who spend all of their time walking with their animals tend to demand little from me. Usually the bike will be closely examined and then whatever I am doing, (packing away usually) will be regarded silently as a curious foreign entertainment.
Ahead of me is a ridge of low mountain. I have to go up it. I make very slow progress. My hill climbing muscles haven’t been used since the beginning of Uzbekistan more than a month and a half ago. I manage a measly 18kms today because of this and very sticky mud.
Every time I pass through mud I have top and scrape out my mudguards for ten minutes. It’s very tedious but I have to do it. At one point I was forced to drag my bike out of the squelch with my wheels refusing to turn.
Dec 14th.
I experiment with sleeping in my orange winter wear inside my sleeping bag. I can barely move and it’s not warm. So I wont try that again.
I form a little oven in the mud to cook over. I now learn that damp mud is a major impediment to burning wood. It takes me an hour to cook finely diced potatoes for breakfast. With some added cream cheese it’s worth the effort though.
Today is a bit crap. The scenery is lovely. The roads are almost totally empty so it’s a total surprise to find a small town nestling between the mountains. It reminds me of Norway. Just smaller mountains.
Up on top the mud is impossible to avoid. Progress is very slow. I change my planned route and head towards the shortest available route to asfalti.
Running out of steam, my potato breakfast having been burnt up, I climb very very slowly a set of hairpins to the village that will take me back out onto lovely noisy tarmac.
I stop and buy hot a hot corncob from likely looking gentlemen sitting round a roadside brazier. They look like they could do with chocolate biscuits so I give the ones I had just bought. Chai happens.
By now it is snowing. The hot corn is a vital strategy for me now. Get some internal body heat otherwise this and camping is going to be horrible.
Pacing myself at an average of 27kms a day to reach the border on time my mudstuck hill climbing non progress gets remedied by a nice long tarmac descent. My wheels are free and fast. My poncho flaps wildly and I have to alternate which eye I look out of because the snow trying to peck my eyes out.
The light is fading and I figure that I will stop wherever this particular descent ends… and so it that I find myself camped under a concrete road bridge, out of the snow but not the wind. The ground is rock hard and pegs wont go in. With a liberal pinning down with rocks my tent is now windproof.
I settle into my usual sleeping bags configuration wearing all my socks and finish reading Narrow Escape a book by Marie Brown, about the ups and downs of life on a narrowboat in Cambridgeshire, England in the depths of winter. I’m glad it’s not just me then that’s out in this.
I sleep very very soundly…
Dec 15th.
What a day.
I set off along the main highway getting friendly supportive toots from passing drivers. It’s snowing a lot. A blizzard I guess you’d call it. I’m okay. I’m togged up, so far I’m warm. I’m sweaty, which I understand is not so great. Dimly recall some Canadian swearing that sweat will freeze once you stop and then it will kill you. Oh per-lease, not again…
I stop for breakfast munchies and get ushered into a cafe for almost certainly the most dreadful cup of coffee I have ever tasted in my life. I’m no connoisseur but this is barely drinkable. Anyhow; it’s hot and that is what really counts right now.
Tootling off down the road I’m doing fine. I stop in Samaxi for further provisions. I’m expecting to be out of way of shops for the next 50kms so I’d better get stocked up. Sausage bread and cheese and a bit of fruit.
After shopping I pump up my tyres a little. They seem a little sluggish. 100 metres down the road my rear tyre explodes with a loud bang. The snow has gone almost to sleet. Fortunately I have burst right next to a bus stop shelter. I stand and stare at the bike for five minutes thinking just how much I am not really looking forwards to mending a puncture on a frozen bike covered in shitty gritty icy sludge. Actually I’m thinking ill be needing to take the wheel out and replace the whole tube with a bang like that.
There’s no way out but to just to simply do it. When I was at a training school in Norway for aid workers I would regularly get the heeby jeebys at many of the challenges thrown my way. I eventually was forced to realise that moaning and whining at things didn’t make them better and rarely would it win me any sympathy. My teacher, a sports freak who permanently wore a sweat band on his head would just say ‘ Oh yah, it is better just to simply do it yah?!’
So. Here goes. Just simply doing it yah?!
Off comes the wheel. I scrape off as much of the ice sludge as possible with my finger. Don’t really want any of that going back inside with the new tube. I become aware that seven women have now turned up waiting for the bus and I am taking up most of the available space. They don’t seem to mind.
I replace the tube with an emergency tube which also has a puncture. I pump it up and of course it goes down immediately. Finding the hole is almost impossible against a background noise of cars continually hissing past. My only option is to put the thing in my mouth and find the hole with my tongue. Do I look ridiculous? Probably. I find the hole, dry it, apply a patch and replace the wheel. I pump it up. It goes down again.
By this time a number of young men and boys are enjoying the spectacle of the crazy tourist messing about with his defunct velociped. I repeat the process but without needing to take the wheel out. Sure enough, the patch hasn’t taken properly. Clearly my idea of what constitutes ‘dry’ is a little wide of reality at the moment. I reglue the patch and slap another on top just to be certain. Job done. A very decent chap is helping me, intelligently and wisely. I say this because sometimes people like to just leap in uninvited and ‘do stuff’ which is more of a hindrance than anything else. I set off up the road. 50 metres later the tyre goes down again. At this point one of the younger boys thinks it’s a good idea to throw snowballs at me. I may have to kill him if he does it again. The helpful chap tells me there’s a bicycle repair shop just up the road. When we get there bicycle repairman says ‘Nyet’. For what reason I have no idea. Possibly it’s his lunch hour.
There’s nothing for it but to start all over again.
Finding a vaguely dry spot next to someone’s garage I start all over again. This time I have a new crowd of middle-aged men, all sporting the Azeri uniform of black casual jackets and black flat caps. Fending off one chap who’s far too eager to dig his screwdriver into my tyre it’s an otherwise convivial event with chai fruit and something deep fried potatoey and hot being brought out to fuel me. Most welcome. At the end of it one chap tries to offer me money which as usual I decline.
500 metres up the road the tyre goes bang again. Great.
I wheel into the cover of a petrol station. The manager comes to check me out and to offer assistance. ‘I speak a little English, is everything okay?’.
By now I feel no inclination towards cheery banter. ‘I am not happy. My tyre had burst three times today’.
Actually I feel quite close to despairing of the whole situation. The nice manager chap tells me I can buy a new tube at the bicycle shop. I stare blankly, not feeling up to negotiating my way round finding the shop and having to probably repeatedly explain myself. Fortunately manager man senses this and arranges a taxi that happens to be fueling up to do it for me. I go with him and after visiting the first shop and being redirected no less than four times we eventually find some tubes. Except they are 26 inch and not 28s. Oh well, they will stretch wont they?
Upon our return, the tubes don’t really stretch as much as I would have hoped for and getting them in along with the old tube cut open and wrapped round it for extra protection proves to be difficult. Between me and manager man we succeed in finally getting the wheel back together. I cant help thinking to myself that if this tube goes pop as well I am going to have one hell of a job redoing this by myself. And lets face it; my track record so far today has been rubbish.
Two cups of chai later in the petrol station’s cafe and I’m off down the road to a motel about two kilometres away. My daily 27kms that I am supposed to be doing is kyboshed yet again, but my patience has been stretched too far today. Enough effort; time for some pampering. Anyway I need to get this registration thing done
One thing I am discovering is just how much freezing snow slush messes with my bike. I had locked my bike when I had gone in the taxi, only to find that it wouldn’t unlock when I got back. I couldn’t get the wheel out without opening the brake calipers and they had become welded solid with ice too.
Cycling off down the road somewhat precariously on an icy slushy road my rear wheel is now making an intermittent scraping sound. It’s probably because of the extra tubing inside the tyre. I am obliged to recall other cyclists tales I had read that went along the lines of ‘ yeah well, my tyre ripped open and my tube got totally destroyed, and the local replacement that I had bought was no use cos it was really poor quality. The next place I was likely to get ‘real’ bike parts was 700km away and so I was forced to ride bumpitty bump all the way with a rear wheel held together with crumbling gaffer tape, the tube filled with lots of string and with no brakes.’
That kind of story. Shit happens.
On the advice of a blog I had read, I had planned my route to go more north at the edge of mountainness in the name of having a more interesting journey. Now I think I need to head back down to the flat boring plain where I hope there is less snow. I can but try. It’s going to add an extra 73kms on the Azerbaijan end of things but I think I just need to steer clear of unnecessary difficulty if at all possible.
My motel is twice the price that I was advised it would be (its actually 22 quid) but at least I get to relax. I suspect the shower might be less than wonderful but a nice warm bed will be nice. Hmmmm!
Roll on tomorrow… In a more continuous kind of way hopefully.
Dec 16th.
I woke up to discover that the slightly annoying scraping sound on my tyre as I rode to the motel was not ice slush trapped in my mudguard but a stray metal grommet that was supposed to be keeping the lighting cable attached neatly but not very helpfully to the underside of the mudguard. Basically it had bust and had dug a hole in the rear tyre sufficient to make it rip open and reveal the inner tube. Lovely. I spend too much time swapping tyres around until it all seems to fit. Takes ages.
It seems the management are not able to register me as they previously had said they could, and when I ask them for a hot shower I have no option but to bathe cold. I won’t be coming here again.
I am anxious. I really really don’t want my tyre to burst any more. Not only will it be hard to mend it, but I am also conscious of how much time it is wasting.
Pedalling tentatively down the road, the roadside trees look beautiful bedecked in snow but beyond that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to see. A deep dense fog abounds, reducing visibility to about 30 metres. I may be passing through the most scenic parts of the country, but it means nothing whatsoever. I can’t see anything but a semi -slushy road and occasional buildings and shacks.
The road turns south. I fall from my bike and get attacked by six dogs. Three of them seem to be out to kill. Screaming at them repeatedly is ultimately quite therapeutic for venting my frustrations. I am very scared. I can’t escape them. Eventually their supposed owner turns up, shouting at me. He gets no quarter from me; if I can’t ride safely down a road because of the way he handles his animals, well he can go fuck himself too. I am only saved when a passing van driver sees what is happening and chaperones me on my way. Without him I don’t know what would have happened.
Some way on in the blundering fog I get beckoned for chai from a roadside shack. Chai is just the job and I spend a worthwhile hour having an utterly incomprehensible conversation with a very decent chap. His dogs are nice. He seems to be telling me that the weather where I am heading is much nicer, but I can’t work out whether he means in the next 100 kms or whether he means Istanbul. Oh well.
After chai the road seems to drop and drop and drop in a series of tricky slushy hairpins that just go on forever. Not being able to see further than 30 metres makes it seem a little like being in a very white ghost train or something, vanishing into a murky fog-bound abyss.
Riding ever so slowly with my brakes permanently full on and my feet scraping along the ground, I not only can’t afford to lose control but I also get rather cold through lack of pedalling. My beard gets totally iced up.
Eventually I reach the town of Aghsu at the bottom and head for the first cafe I see. I beeline straight for the wood burner in the middle of the seating, noting on the way in my crazy iceman cometh reflection in the glass door.
My gloves and hat are wet. The occupants immediately assessing my primary needs ply me with a free sharma toasted panini thing and several cups of chai. Sanity gradually returns.
A young chap named Mehmat speaks reasonable English and is able to buffer all inquisitiveness.
He offers to put me up for the night, which sounds great. It’s only 3.30pm and I am supposing that I might have been able to put in a few extra kms before dark, but the offer of a free dry night in is too good to pass up. Added bonus is that he seems like a thoroughly straight forward decent chap too.
I follow his friends car that he is taking his ride home in a few kms outside the town and soon we are there.
Expecting to backtrack 4kms up the seemingly infinite icy hairpins and past nasty dogs again in order to get to his house, I had been a bit dubious about his offer. Thankfully due to a little wonkiness in his English, ‘up’ actually means ‘down’, and getting to his ‘house’ is easy and involves only different rather less scary dogs at his home.
Mehmet is a concrete quality control supervisor. To which I an only respond with a slightly non-plussed ‘Oh!’. I guess because it’s so way out from where my head has been for so long.
His accommodation is a series of low oblong buildings which he shares with about ten other project managers. Azerbaijan has an ongoing program to extensively construct canal ways through the country. He shows me two electrified steel vats with bubbling boiling water steaming out of them. At the bottom, dozens of 8 inch cubes of concrete are getting jacuzzified.
As I am parking my bike next to one of the vats he warns me ‘ Don’t touch the vats! You will get electrocuted!’. Thanking him for the warning, I park a little more carefully. I’m a bit done with dicing with death, to be honest.
Inside I am sat down, offered more chai whilst watching the Turkish version of the Jeremy Kyle show on a vast flat screen telly; a couple with plasticky ‘perfect looks’ sit on chairs opposite each other. She looks hurt and he looks shamefaced. Family members stand up and berate him with wild hand gestures. Now the couple are both sobbing quietly to themselves. Cue the dramatic violins… err… why do people air their family laundry on television? Money I guess. Oh, the price of vanity…!
Dinner is ready… a meal of boiled potatoes and boiled eggs. Basic but tasty. Out comes the vodka… I refuse twice and cave in. I cant remember the last time I drank vodka. Because it was a very long time ago; not because of the quantity that I might have drunk.
Edges dissolve a little, Mehmet declares his fraternal love for me, and our discussion (along with his 60-odd year old line manager) turns to the subject of Azerbaijan’s war-torn recent history .
Having previously offered a toast of ‘Perestroika!’ I am told of the invasion of the country in 1990 by Russia under the orders of Mikhail Gorbachev. Whereby 138 were killed in Baku and over 800 injured in an attempt to quell rising unrest towards the Armenians during the dissolution of Communism. Oops. I didn’t know…
Also the on-going hatred of the Armenians. Fighting over the small but minerally rich region of Nargorno-Karabakh that runs between the two tiny countrys, the Azerbaijan’s tell of an Armenian genocide in their country.
Our vodka tots, chased with a green absinthe that looks like washing up liquid, is also followed with tidbits of cured carp (deliciously salty like fish bacon) and an unnamed green vegetable delicacy that they say grows only in the disputed region, which seems to be pickled stinging nettle tops and is really rather good.
With the central heating on full whack in Mehmet’s room, my normally damp sinuses dry to a crisp instantly and is a sure-fire recipe for me to get ill. So many times I have spent time camping out in winter, and I somehow somebody decides that I not only need to sleep in their house, but they are going to turn the heating up extra, just for me, because I must be so cold. It’s a flawed logic that makes me ill, every single time. And then they say ‘ See! Told you camping out in this weather is no good for you!’.
Like Josie Dew the sort of famous global cyclist, I too have a total dread of central heating. Open wood fires I love but not this.
I vaguely sleep, waking regularly to drink water to combat to combined dehydrating effects of the central heating and vodka.
At 2am I wake shaking with terror. Possibly it’s the effects of vodka on my normally teetotal system, or maybe it’s because I now find myself in a safe environment but suddenly the full shock of the dog attacks hits me. Images of snarling mouthed evil intent stares me in the face. I replay ‘Life On Earth’ footage of a stricken gazelle being surrounded, bayed at, nipped and then finally being torn apart. I am the gazelle. I am shaking all over. Lying with barely a thin bedsheet I try to protect myself. There is nowhere to hide, nothing I can protect myself with.
I try playing snooker on my phone which works temporarily. I look forward into my projected journey. Turkey has a bad reputation with cyclists because of its dogs (and its rock throwing children). When I had encountered the second pack of dogs, I had slipped off my bike because of slushy ice and they had surrounded me almost instantly. Even after I had quickly got myself up, a heavy overladen bike on ice does not have the makings of a quick getaway vehicle.
What does the rest of my cycle trip hold for me? The thought of even encountering dogs again fills me with dread. And of course, I will encounter dogs over and over again; it’s an absolute certainty. Suddenly what had seemed like a fun and healthy way to spend a chunk of my life now seems like deciding to cross a 7000km minefield.
I move out of Mehmet’s room and onto the sofa in the more tolerable TV and dining room. I think I must have managed an hours sleep in there somewhere.
Its 7am, it’s shipping out time.
In the breakfast room in another building, workers gather reluctantantly hunched in sheepskin coats, flat caps and mustachioed. Cigarettes and chai for breakfast followed by chunks of bread with oblongs of unyieldingly hard butter and very salty cheese. Poring over our respective GPS maps on our phones, I am recommended not to cycle off on my planned direct route to the Georgian border. It’s deemed too empty. (Looking myself days before, I had wondered if it was such a great route). Instead a safer but longer route is declared better. More villages and towns. Less rural. More traffic. Fewer insane dogs maybe; they can give me a lift in their van some of the way.
I have been offered lifts before whilst cycling and I have always politely refused the offers; after all I wouldn’t be cycling all the way back to Europe would I? And that, it would seem, is what is so very important.
Right now it’s bloody cold and I’m scared of dogs. I get in. It’s incredible how quickly you can get to places when you have a petrol engine under you.
After a speedy 15kms, we wave our goodbyes. The road I am on leads to the bigger main road. I cycle off down a dead-straight dead flat tarmac road surrounded by sandy coloured washed out roadside reeds, the occasional ghostly tree crown and dense white-out fog.
Cycling feels effortful. Almost no sleep, under-pumped tyres (I was sick of them exploding every ten minutes) and a general sense of having the wind knocked out of my sails, I wasn’t moving very fast. The added anonymity of the scenery added to a sense that I actually wasn’t going anywhere at all. Maybe I’m caught in a dreamcloud.
A chaihana rolls toward me out of the pale morning gloom. An enthusiastic young man tries to engage in some cheery banter, but it soon becomes apparent that I’m not really capable of cheery anything just now. Sorry chum. Instead he gives me chocolates. I smile a faded thank you, drink my chai and promptly fall asleep where I sit.
My main road junction is at Kurdemir another 5kms down the invisible road.
At Kurdemir when I look at my map I realise that there’s a train station. And it goes to the Georgian border.
Fuckit.
Resolve renewed, I pass (and am duty-bound to photograph) the amusingly named ‘Bolluq Market’. Wending my way through a slightly grimy but interesting market next to the railway I finally find the Vakshall (station). It is ominously empty. Maybe there are no trains today.
I am met, somewhat eerily, by a cheery bald man who looks a little like Herbert Lom (the gibbering cackling eye-twitching boss of Inspector Cleauseau in the Pink Panther films). Approaching me from seemingly nowhere in the vast and empty waiting hall, he extends a friendly handshake and asks me in lovely, beautiful English ‘Hello, you speak English you would like to buy a train ticket?’.
‘ Yes! Yes! I would!’ Clearly I am trying to stifle some kind of orgasm.
The station is a wonder of Soviet-era err.. Sovietness. Mosaic murals glorifying the Workers Struggle, battered rolling stock stamped in Cyrillic. Men in enormous fur hats scuttle around outside, hands clasped together in their fur-frilled sleeves, slightly stooped and purposeful looking. A young policeman investigates me, more out of a slightly bored and friendly curiosity than anything else.
I have an hour to wait for my train. Deciding not to go to the border, but halfway to the city of Ganja. As a person that likes to take photos of products with silly names, I am duty bound to visit a place called ‘Ganja’.
In previous travels I have been to ‘Hell’ (in Norway), ‘Paradise’ in Newfoundland Canada and Gloucestershire England and I have even been to me; ‘Richard’ somewhere in the south of France.
Not so long ago somebody was recommending people to put their name into Google maps and see what comes up. I found a small dirt farm track lined with cottonwood trees in Georgia, USA called Richard Terry Road. It’s about half a mile long. I haven’t been there yet.
Somehow hoisting my bike several feet directly upwards and onto the platform-less train myself and two guards get me boarded. A prim stewardess tuts at my still partly ice-encrusted bike even though I had spent a good twenty minutes tapping rubbing and brushing the stuff off with a toothbrush.
The train, my first since the horribly overcrowded and smoke-filled Chinese ones, is laarvely. A warm double seat and table to myself, a Turkish sitcom on the overhead telly and mile upon mile of fairly featureless cold but increasing ice-free looking plains roll past. I am still feeling guilty that I have reneged on my intention to cycle all the way back to Europe (I guess so people can tell me just how amazing I am). Only cycling bits of it isn’t going to earn me any ‘amazing!’ points. What a failure.
I start to think that maybe it actually really doesn’t matter.
Bearing in mind my limited allowable time in Azerbaijan (15 days from the date of entry but I must get registered within ten or face a death sentence or a smacked bottom or something) it’s satisfying and reassuring to find my 180km five days of visually unspectacular cycling wiped off my things to do list in the space of a measly two hours. Cycling it in the allotted time would have been a major stretch.
Ganja city is very modern and right now I find that refreshing. It occurs to me that after 3500kms, a lot of it rocky and scrubby, and filled largely with drifting clouds of sheep and the occasional donkey, a city with handbag shops and Gucci shoe shops and allsorts is more interesting than I might have previously ever imagined.
Pushing on up a long straight high street past the Ganja Medical Centre, Ganja Taxis and the Ganja Youth Project amongst everything else, I am still tired. A chap stops me for the usual investigations. His brother joins him. Spotting us, a man shouts from the other side of the road and weaving through the heavy cross-town traffic comes and joins the melee. Someone else joins the arm-waving ‘Hooi!’-calling group. Well. A psychedelically decorated and heavily loaded bike being pushed by someone that apparently looks like Santa Claus in a day-glow orange jump suit is not going to get very far without drawing attention. It’s clearly my own fault.
I’m tired. I want to find a nice fluffy bed and make joyful zed-filled communion with it.
‘ Come with me and have chai!’
‘No thank you, really you’re very kind.’
‘ You like Chelsea football club?’
‘Look thank you really, but I’m absolutely knackered mate’
‘ You want cake?! I have very good Azerbaijan cake!’
‘Cake? Ooooooooooooh alright then. Just one.’
After sitting in my new friends long narrow clothes shop in a den filled with boys shorts and mature ladies bras dangling over my head, I am finally glazing over, even after cake (very good it was too).
I say my goodbyes and aim for the hostel of choice. Which when I get there seems to have turned into a furniture shop. Maybe I could sleep on one of its lovely sofas.
Another alleged hostel just up the road is locked with no lights on. GNNNUURR! I want to go to bed!
I end up at the My Way Hotel. 23 quid a night (yikes!) But I really really can’t be arsed to find anywhere else. It’s very nice (and so it should be at that price). My room is all burgundy rococo swirls and full of fluffy silky licorice allsorts cushions.
G’night. Bleeauur!
In the morning communication cross-wires leave me totally uncertain as to where I stand as regards having been officially registered or not. Bugger it. I’m getting the train to Georgia.
I had made no preparations to come to Azerbaijan and as a result relied totally on the scraps of English that anyone might be able to throw me.
At the train station the ticket counter guy after unsuccessfully trying to fob me off to the other ticket counter guy (who fobbed me right back again) is getting exasperated trying to explain to me what I already know, except that he doesn’t understand that I do understand. Yes I know the train goes at 5.10 tomorrow morning. Can you please stop giving yourself a shitfit for five minutes and just sell me a ticket please? Then finally he decides that bicycles are not allowed on trains, which is curious because hang on, didn’t I arrive here yesterday by just those very means? I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s all just too hard for him.
A helpful bystander comes to the rescue. I love it when that happens. With his broken biscuits English my new saviour accompanies me to a taxi 3 kms away, me on my soggy tired wheels and him in a taxi. When we meet up again, he co-ordinates me, via a genuine real live university English teacher into a cab with two others whereupon we pile on down the road to another kind of freedom.
Tbilisi is only 200kms away, the landscape nothing I haven’t seen before, excepting the amusingly named ‘ Turd Petrol Station’. If I keep zipping along at this rate I will be in Holland by next Friday.
Richard Terry 