Our luxurious accomodation on the ferry across the Caspian Sea, from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan
The ferries coming in all day have been really quite good looking – painted white and kept clean. Our ferry by contrast is possibly painted rust coloured, or more likely a complete rust bucket. It’s called the Professor Gül, and happens to be mentioned in a book I’m currently reading (The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia). The author used the same ship to cross the Caspian Sea and describes how it is designed for river use, as the sides are too high and is therefore prone to rolling in high seas…
We board the boat at about 1am once all the oil tankers have gone on board. As we’re not allowed to leave any luggage on the truck this involves passing over a very flimsy gangplank with a very heavy bag. Once I get to the first ‘ship-style door’ (welded metal with a foot high top and bottom to keep the water out) I bang my head on it really hard. This seems to happen at every door I get to, even when I duck by bending double.
The lower levels of the boat are understandably a bit messy, but once we get to the upper decks it turns out to be a typical passenger ferry, with overnight accommodation and seating for about 500. The Turkmen government only allows 11 people on at one time though, hence the very long wait. At least we can get a room easily and end up with a three berth with bunk beds and a large window that opens directly to the sea.
After a while we all go up to sit on deck and wait until 3am but as the boat hasn’t moved yet we give up and go to bed.
I wake up at about 8am to discover we finally set sail at 5am. Wandering about by myself it turns out the crew have disappeared so I’ve pretty much got the ship to myself for about 4 hours until anyone else wakes up. Follwoing a few twitsy corridors I managed to make my way onto the deserted bridge and can’t figure out how to set course for Iran. It’s also disappointing to find that boats don’t actually have a ‘Ramming Speed!’ setting.
As the sun rises higher and it starts to warm up I my way to the very front of the boat and have a flicker of temptation to spread my arms and shout ‘I’m the king of the world’ like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.
We’ve all bought food for the boat, mostly bread, meat and cheese, but in the 36 hour wait at the ferry terminal the fresh goods have gone a bit rancid so we’re left with crisps and chocolate (so not all bad). The crossing can take anywhere from 12 to 72 hours depending on the weather, so I try to ration my food. Unsuccessfully it turns out, as I fail to resist the temptation and rapidly eat half of it for breakfast.
Having explored the ship there’s not much to do other than reading and eating
- Look at some oil rigs off the starboard side – see, I’ve learnt some nautical terms
- Eating & reading
- Head up to the top deck to find some leaky toxic oil drums. Decide to not mention this to anyone else.
- Look at some oil rigs off the port side
- Reading & eating. Run out of books
6pm the next day:
Land ho! after only 13 hours so we climb onto the top observation deck and watch the approaching lights of Baku harbour. An hour later they’re still approaching so we wander downstairs where it’s a bit warmer, but after two hours we finally pull into port.
Spending another 2 hours getting through customs really doesn’t feel too much of a chore after 41 hours waiting in the ferry terminal and 15 hours on a boat, but it’s great to finally get to the hotel in Baku and a proper bed and shower.
