Doing the Mongol

Week Two

In Samsun we also caught up with the first rally cars since the Bulgarian/Turk border – the Bharat Express convoy, a 4 car Volkwagon Polo team. Stopping for supplies had us buy some really cheap water in an out of town supermarket. A word of advice against this. It’s the differing mineral content in water from other parts of the world that makes you sick – it’s not ‘dirty’ water at all. But the cheapest water is no doubt the least processed, most local water. Hence a higher mineral content and higher chance of stomach cramps. Which is what I had the next day. Bummer but it sorted itself out eventually. With my retching I could actually taste the minerals again. Probably to be expected with the amount of ground we were covering without any real time to ‘acclimatise’. Trabzon provided late lunch and shortly after we were approaching the Georgian border.

The route was along the coast and we had to stop for the night when we found a beach club with volleyball and little bar. Sans alcohol but a quick run to the nearest town sorted that. The sight of our Mongol Rally stickered car soon attracted other teams passing by and a few teams spent the night watch the sun go down over the Black sea for the last time.

Georgia was a nice place. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, it looked very European. If relatively isolated from continental Europe it did not show it. Their service station toilets could do with a bit of elbow grease mind. Other than that we reached the capital Tbilisi and looked about for cheap accommodation but only got cheap laughs. I can’t recall fully but we were in stitches over some kind of beggar impression I put on in discussions with the good innkeeper who demonstrated the patience of a saint. It’s lost though in that 4am twilight zone of driving for hours semi-conscious. Yes, you probably had to be there. We pulled up for the night on the outskirts of town after getting a taxi to lead the way. Poor show but we were fucked.

Sunrise and whilst kept up most of the night by the distant howling of mongrels a helpful Azeri who had served with the Georgian military in Iraq. He now looked after a cattle herd and looked to work at least a semi-nomadic way of life. A tough cookie no doubt about it. He pointed us in the direction of a well and we bid adieu. Next stop Azerbaijan border.

At first nothing seemed to differ much here beyond the infuriating wait time and inevitable queue disputes prior to leaving Georgia. We soon found it this was due to the subsequent admin/negotiation time at the Azeri side. I say soon, but it was longer than the time it took me to return to Tbilisi and back. I discovered I had to do this when, as the last member of our group to go through border control and as a pedestrian at that due to only one person being allowed to take the car through, the duty guard told me I couldn’t go any further due to my visa having a stamp less than it should. So I was momentarily stuck in Georgia with nothing other than phone and passport. A panicked call later and Bob came running back to hand me my wallet and I hotfooted over to the gaggle of local taximen and quickly negotiated a ride back to Tbilisi for 3 euros.

The Azeri embassy in Georgia was full of rallyers getting visas sorted. ‘T-Man’, a Danish guy with a self-assigned reputation for being crazy and a few others. The thing was we got our visas done on the spot for little more than a small administrative fee and no letter of invitation necessary. The London embassy demanded one that had cost us a hundred quid. Live and learn but I’d definitely recommend getting visas done in neighbouring countries on a rolling basis for future reference. Paying in advance is a) too dear b) extra admin c) inflexible.

Back into the taxi and I soon discovered the drawback of not writing down the agreed price in figures. The taxi believed he was getting 30 Euros. Not a fucking chance I explained and opened the door, and jumped out as he was slowing up during one of his long winded rants in a language I didn’t understand. I started walking working on the assumption that I was half way there so about 18 miles and I’d be at the border off my own bat. He quickly persuaded me to get back in – I had no water – and the argument resumed. This time he phoned the police and I assumed they’d see my side of the story. They didn’t and said 3 Euros was an unbelieveable price. That’s what they offered me I countered and to be honest while I could see their point at the time I was just thinking about getting back to Tbilisi and sorting my visa out of there. Another 10 minutes of staggered negotiation with their ‘superior’ over the phone had succeeded in getting me a seat in the back of the cop car with my hands cuffed. Bugger. A face saving demand that got the fee down to €25 and I figured it was time to cash out. The two bemused police made the cabdriver and me shake hands before bundling us off for the border once more.

Through the Georgian end into No Man’s Land and I rejoined LRDG. The next challenge was finding out what parts of the ridiculously long-winded Azeri vehicle entry process weren’t necessary. The team in front of us through small talk with the guards discovered the fat controller customs man was ripping us off with a commercial transit visa when all we required was a tourist one, thus saving about half the fees. The unthinking nut jobs who we first identified on entering Turkey had proceeded in front of us and couldn’t throw their money at the locals fast enough. More on this later. We were now on the Azerbaijan M1…

I seen my first halal’d cow in Baku. In general Azerbaijan is your typical resource rich state – a generally poor country outside of the capital, and it appears teeming with excess. We headed straight for the port to buy a ferry crossing Caspian into Turkmenistan on it’s eastern shoreline. When getting some supplies down town we found ourselves cut off from the ferry terminal as police shut down the main road. Locals came out of their shops and the city appeared to temporarily shut down. Soon after a presidential cavalcade stormed by and business resumed.

So that’s what owning the road feels like.

There we met a tailback of 20 or so teams with more en route later that day. Some had been there for 4 days. Rumours abounded about when they’d bother to shift the ferry. The price was also a deep bone of contention – About £210 quid for our car. We argued but what could we do? We had just scrapped into the passenger list and no more. But other teams did not help – offering bribes before any was asked for, and then we watched open mouthed as the guards who were rained with ‘presents’ then expected similar off everyone else. It was going to be a long day on this ferry which on the outside didn’t look like much at all.

More worringly, the crew demanded our passports before boarding. No sail prior to this happening. True to form, they already had some teams documents already. We protested but knew once they had some they expected all before any movement. The crooked Turkmen authorities would then have all bargaining chips once we landed on the other side.

First though a few days on board the Azeri QEII. I won’t go into this much other than to say I’ve never slept on a floating shithole before. Still by this stage we had built up a large supply of alcohol and after falling asleep below deck due to exhaustion we got up on top to swap stories and swig vodka with the rest of the teams.

A common complaint from some of the more er, ‘Scottish-minded’ teams was about the glue bags who seemingly ran around with fistfulls of dollars to hand out to any local who looked at them kind of funny. We formed a cabal and decided once in Turkmenbashi all that would stop and we’d out-wait and out-thrain the inevitable unofficial taxes and charges to come.

One guy decided he’d act as intermediary between ourselves and the local border police, who claimed not to speak much English. Makes sense we thought but as the hours passed we still appeared not to have made much progress. Names were called forward one by one and the long-winded multi-stage paperwork system was introduced. At each stage it seemed more money was demanded. One no-hoper paid the same bribe 3 teams before he caught on. In the end they were asking about £200 odd quid from Team LRDG. We told them no fucking chance and walked up to the head bugler to see what was happening. No sense coming from him, he tried the bad cop routine against a guy from another team and the resistance faded.

To point out the complete ballacks that we as a group made of that situation, 500 kilometres away at the Iranian border teams were piling through with payments of a few quid. As the Iranian election trouble was still not dead, most of these people where not UK nationals (We being denied visas as a result of being blamed for pretty much every Iranian ill since the dawn of time). So to top it all, the episode in Turkmenbashi port was purely a Brit disaster.

Because Carry On Across the Caspian it most definitely was.

I think there’s definitely something worth investigating there. The closer your average Brit gets to the Kyber Pass the more infantile our collective decision making process becomes. And so it was in this pathetic Retreat from Kabul manner that we left the port. Team LRDG decided to hang back in the town and let the thundering herd charge on.

Turkmenbashi was a strange place. But then so was Turkmenistan. Gas was dirt cheap (although we paid the tax saved prior to entering) but cash machines are a luxury. We headed West to the edge of the spit that we seen jutting out into the sea while still on the ferry on reports that a hotel out there would have one. On this spit, effectively out in the middle of nowhere and beyond a lagoon smelling entirely of human shit, were about 7 brand new 5 star hotels. At 30 bucks a night. Our visas ran for 5 days and we regretfully decided it would be a bad idea to stay on a night. The air con and swimming pools would have to wait.

Instead onwards. Once actually on Turkmen soil everyone seemed friendly enough. The road blocks were pretty novel mind:

And our American friends Arbitrary Itinerary decided to breakdown en route to Ashgabat. A quick stop off in a friendly little village called Baharden sorted it out.

Ashgabat itself was a Dubai for KGB mafia. No ATMs, cash (dollar) is king. Expats seemed either to have no legit business there or were diplomatic staff on expenses. Half the city seemed to be made up of hotels. We heard rumours of fines for having dirty vehicles in the city so we thought it prudent to at least make the number plate visible prior to entering the city limits. Even so on our way through the downtown an unmarked car sped up alongside us, took our picture and happily enquired ‘will the car get us to the border?’. The guy was maybe 30s, clean shaven and looked sharp enough. The other rumour was that there is secret police everywhere here. We assumed those suspicions to be true.

Having said that we spent our team in the capital living it up at the Grand Turkmen. There was a rooftop bar whose sole bartender seemed glad of the company we provided and allowed us to sup away at the unlimited supplies of wodka carryout you tend to have whilst travelling in Central Asia. As the night drew on the ex-pats piled in and when their hooker entourage decided to have a fight to the finish with some death by karaoke we decided to grab some room service. They might have ran off to kill the chickens themselves but the prices were pretty good.