Hippie Camp at the Caspian Ferry Cargo Port

A sad thing is that there was a sea between us and Kazakhstan. A sea is pretty bad for hitchhiking. (Even though it is possible to hitchhike boats if you are insistent.) We decided to make an exception and pay for a boat, even though it cost as much money as we usually spend in a month. However, thanks to the people we met on the boat, it was actually worth it.

Three days late for the party

The only boats that go from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan are cargo ships. They are surrounded by mystery. You never know when and from which place they leave. The only thing you know is that they leave every three to fourteen days. There is a website, though, that allows you to do some fortune-telling. And there is a magical booth hidden in Baku in which there is a lady who speaks English and who can tell you whether a ship is leaving that day, or not.

We are quite lucky - our gangsters' apartment is very near the booth, and we only need to show up twice before the lady tells us "yep, it's today". To make the quest less simple, you must buy the ticket in Baku on the very day the ship leaves, and then you must go to a different harbor 80 km far. To our question what time the ship is leaving, we get the answer: "probably at midnight or later but you should get there around ten".

At the booth, we meet a tall Norwegian cyclist called Bjorn and two young Dutch guys with a Landrover older than they are. I'm curious what they are up to, so I start actually looking forward to the ferry ride.

It is early, so we have plenty of time to do a TV interview, get lost in Baku, buy a lot of food (the Caravanistan web says most of the boats are crappy and it is hard to buy food there), say goodbye to Nina who is sorry she can't continue with us, notice a shabby guy  roller skating on a highway, do some red tape for the Chinese visa application and hitchhike to Qobustan to have one last beer with our friend Rafael.

We expected there would be only us, the three Europeans we met that morning, and truck drivers on the ship. So we are rather surprised when we arrive to the cargo port and besides a lot of parked trucks, we find a Gypsy camp with a dozen of travelers. They are sitting in a circle on camping chairs among their tents and parked cars and bikes, and it looks like some kind of music festival. (The dude on roller skates that we saw in the morning arrives just after us.)

"You are on time for the ship, but three days late for the party," a German guy wrapped in a blanket greets us. We are offered tea and we shake hands with all the people sitting around. Some of them have been waiting in the port more than three days already.
"How did you get here?" the German goes on.
"By hitchhiking."
He burst out laughing: "So there are people with cars, cyclists, bikers, and now also hitchhikers. We only need someone with a tricycle..."
"Well, at the gate there is a guy who came on roller skates..."

The port is way less gross than we expected. There is a booth with power plugs and coffee, and another booth with a shower. There also is a booth that sells tickets, so it is actually not true that they are sold only in Baku. The Spanish roller skater even bargains the price down.

However, there is no ship.

Or else, there is a ship but nobody knows when it is leaving. It is just quite sure it is not leaving at midnight. Two more backpackers arrive, the boys from the Netherlands share their instant soup, a smiling Italian biker shares her coffee and the guy with roller skates is telling us he actually is on the run because the Spanish government puts drugs in the water to control people's minds. We do some more paperwork for the Chinese visa in the power plug booth (there is a lot of paperwork to be done) and then one of the travelers comes to ask us if we speak Russian - the harbor staff are saying something. We apparently are the only Slavs at the hippie camp and nobody else speaks Russian, so we pretend we actually do speak it. (Vojta says that it's handy because if we get stuck at the sea, we at least will be the last ones to be eaten.)

The harbor people are saying we can start boarding - in a minute, our booth is deserted.

Except that we actually can't board. It reveals that only the trucks are boarding. After several hours, they are all gone and there is only our little group on the huge parking lot.

One by one, people give up and go to sleep. I put my sleeping bag near an Austrian guy's motorbike and fall asleep as well.

At dawn, one of the harbor guards wakes us up - we can finally go on board. The customs officer doesn't even look at my registration paper that was so hard to get. (Whereas the Spanish guy actually has a deportation visa because he didn't have the stupid paper when he was trying to get by train to Russia.)


On the boat, we can't believe our luck: not only it's not a sinking wreck we expected, but we also get a fancy cabin with shower, there is a tank with tea in the common room and it seems that we will get a meal three times a day. And there is a box with a big ax and an iron bar in case of a zombie apocalypse.

It's all so comfy we don't mind that the boat is not moving and we actually are on a houseboat.

The engineer thinks that the computer will work well

The sun is shining and there is no need to hurry, so I go to the deck. I am happy. We are going to Kazakhstan, and that is totally and undoubtedly Asia. And it's far, so it's quite an achievement. If our trip gets messed up, we break our leg, go to jail, get plague and cholera or are kidnapped by aliens, it won't be that much of a shame anymore. 

I'm enjoying the wind and I almost fall asleep on an ancient wooden lifeboat. Then the Landrover guys show up: their names are Jimmy and Roger, they have been on the road just since April and they are going to Kyrgyzstan like us. Jimmy says they can take us to the next town after the Kazakh port. It seems that we have just hitched our first ride in Kazakhstan.
 
They then start learning Russian with an audio guide, so I listen to them and learn the sentence: "the engineer thinks that the computer will work well". (What we don't know is that it actually will be handy few days later.)

Before noon the ship finally sets sail. Vojta is sea-sick, so he goes to sleep to our presidential cabin we share with Valentina and Matteo, the Italian bikers, and I have plenty of time to talk with some of the fellow travelers.

Besides those I have already mentioned, there are Carlos and Sergio from Spain that are driving a car to Mongolia, there is Sueli from Belgium who is cycling around the world, then two energetic young backpackers from Switzerland called Mira and Kasha, and two Austrian photographers with a big camper van and a young kid. There are no other hitchhikers. Also the Spanish backpacker travels mostly by buses. He seems to be too scared of government spies to trust anybody who would give him a ride or host him - and drivers are probably too scared of his big dark beard. He apparently thinks somebody is after him even on the ship - he is roaming around with his backpack on and prefers not to sleep in the cabin.

We sit on the deck and talk about our plans. All the travelers except Jimmy, Roger and Johannes - the Austrian biker - continue to Uzbekistan. Vojta is sorry we are not going there too. (Officially, one must register in a hotel every few days; not having the registration papers might be a trouble at the border, and I don't want to risk that.)

Carlos has lived in Czechia for quite a long time and knows a lot about the Czech culture and politics. And he certainly knows more bars in Prague than I do. Bjorn tells us he actually started cycling because he likes eating and he sometimes eats three portions for dinner. I tell Johannes I still miss our Iranian friends, and he tells me I should rather be excited about the new people we will meet in other countries.

It gets dark. The crew is worried that the Spanish with the backpack got lost, so they are looking for him on the deck with flashlights - it probably doesn't help him much to feel safe.

At night, we play cards with some of the sailors. We teach them Bibi salam, an Iranian game we love. They keep losing, laugh like crazy and since then, they greet us "Bibi salam!" every time they see us. They teach Vojta a local game called Durak, "idiot". It will be very useful in Central Asia (not because of the name). 

Occupy the customs

Soon after breakfast, the party is over: we are arriving to the Aktau port. The voyage was actually as long as stated in the schedule, which was something I totally didn't expect.

The Dutch boys agree to also give a ride to the Swiss backpackers, so it seems that the party will go on after all.

The truck drivers get out first, then it's our turn. We get out of the ship and wait. It's hotter than in Azerbaijan and there is strong wind. The harbor seems to be surrounded by nothing but desert - the actual town of Aktau is a bit further. The officers look Asian - this is the first country where Vojta won't pass for a local.

We get some forms to fill and we wait again. And then yet again. Then we finally have our passports stamped but for some reason we are not allowed to leave the port, so we wait still again. The guy with roller skates doesn't care and just leaves. (It was actually a good idea.)

The car owners have to do a lot of red tape, go to three different booths and pay a lot of money. Never before on this trip I've been so happy we didn't have a vehicle. It takes ages and few of the clerks speak English, so Vojta and I use our pseudo-Russian to serve as interpreters. One of the Austrian photographers is losing temper.

At noon, the paperwork seems finally over and we are all free to go.

Except that we aren't. The lunch break has just begun, so there is no way the guards, sitting at the gate, can open the gate for us.

All the cars aligned to drive out have to stop again.

We are sick and tired of the obstructions and we are getting bored, so we set up the hippie camp again. Jimmy and Roger open their car kitchen, we add some food we carry and have a picnic. The guys also take out Frekddie - a small palm-tree that they got as a gift in the Netherlands and that they still carry with them. Kasha discovers a guitar in the Landrover and plays Bella chao - Valentina and I sing with her. The gate guards are staring at us. Vojta digs out his overtone flute. The Swiss girls are then doing some acrobacy on the parking lot. Roger takes out a ball and we start playing soccer, which is immediately forbidden by a grumpy customs lady.

An hour later, the guards are so generous they open the bloody gate. The Dutch guys, Mira, Kasha, Vojta and I squeeze into the Landrover, and we finally delve into the sandy steppe. 

Our Bright Career of Azeri TV Clowns

I was never on TV in my life - before entering Azerbaijan. For some reason, hitchhiking around for three weeks, sleeping in shrubs next to roads and simply being foreigners made us appear in three different shows and have our dirty T-shirts and brilliant observations about the universe broadcasted by three different Azeri TV channels. 

I doubt it is an accident so chances are that if you hitchhike to Azerbaijan too, you might end up on their TV as well - until the world realizes that there is some stuff to see in Azerbaijan besides oil pumps, and tourists flood the country. (And until the Azeri government cancels the stupid registration thing, I would say.)

"We came to Azerbaijan because it was on the way"

We came across our first TV crew in the mountains.

We were driving with a family we had hitched a ride with to a waterfall. Rahib, the father of the family and oil mining engineer, had good English and was talking about how he was doing revolution against the Soviet Union when he was about twelve years old. (He burnt the USSR flag in public and ended up in jail and was about to be sent to Russia for re-education when the independence revolution started, and he became a hero instead.)

We were driving up a narrow, curvy road along a river deeper into the hills. In one of the curves, we suddenly saw a bunch of smartly dressed guys. They were all wearing suits and office shoes and looked as if they had been going to a conference and ended up in the mountains instead, and they had a huge camera. Rahib wanted to know what they were up to, so he stopped and asked them. 

They were making a show about the countryside of the region we were in. They found out Rahib had some foreigners in his car and decided they wanted to have us in their show too. Rahib agreed to become our interpreter. We thought it might be fun, so we didn't run away.

I got a microphone in front of my face, and they asked me why we had come to this region. Hard question. I was not exactly sure what was the name of the region and where its boundaries were. We had seen a red dot in the map, marking a waterfall, and we wanted to find the waterfall and see if we could take a shower in it. I didn't really think this would make the crew particularly happy and I didn't want our friend to be ashamed of us, so I babbled something about mountains.  

Next question: why did we choose Azerbaijan?

I gave up:

"Because we are hitchhiking to Mongolia and Azerbaijan was on the way."

Then it was Vojta's turn. Whereas I was interested first and foremost by people, he was also interested in looking at touristy stuff, so he told something that sounded almost poetic even though it was about a different region. 

Us telling very smart things

After the interview, we were supposed to be filmed as we are looking into the valley, taking pictures and talking. In the valley, there was a river and a rocky wall. Not much to talk about. 

"How long do you think we should be staring at that rock?" Vojta asked.
"I'm not sure. I think I've just seen enough."
And we started just laughing. 

The crew seemed to find it fine, though, and then they took a video of us disappearing with the backpacks over the corner. 

Rahib didn't seem to be mad at us and he took us to the waterfall and invited us for lunch and told us a lot of interesting stuff about Azerbaijan and about oil drilling. So in the end I almost forgot about the TV because I was thinking more about the liberation of the country from the USSR, corruption on all levels of the the society's functioning, young people studying abroad because they didn't generally find Azeri universities good enough, huge gap between the rich and the poor (and completely missing middle-class), and illegal houses built on oil fields.

However, TV reminded us of its existence the very night.

"You have the same president for a very long time"

When Rahib and his family left, we went camping in the hills. We were making fun of our media performance on internet and sending our pictures taken by Rahib's wife to our friends ("You look like experts on something", Atesh commented on it.)

In that very moment, we got a message from a guy we met in the morning while we were hitchhiking: "Are you going back to Xachmaz? My friend, a TV journalist, called me and he wants to make an interview with you."

I was staring at the message for several minutes. WTF? What kind of joke is that? 

After some confusion, it became clear that he wasn't the one making fun of us - the universe was.

We didn't manage to make our acquaintance tell us what on Earth the TV wanted us for but we ended up thinking again that it might be fun. And we had to go through that town anyway and we were too curious to mind sounding like morons on air again. 

So the next day, we went back to the town of Xachmaz. Our acquaintance kept us asking when we would arrive and we kept telling him we didn't know because we were hitchhiking. We hoped that the TV people would speak English and wouldn't ask us why we came to that region because we had no idea.

Three young guys came, without suits, they spoke English and were actually nice. For some time, they were looking for a restaurant that was fancy enough for the video. Then they were asking us quite a lot about our journey and about hitchhiking, and they were writing everything into a small notebook. They also asked us what we had known about Azerbaijan before coming, so I again had a chance to sound like an idiot because I had known nothing. 

Vojta said: "I knew that you had oil - and only one president for a very long time..."

The journalists then took a short video of us answering several questions (they didn't ask us anymore what we had known about Azerbaijan before arriving there). 

They later sent us the show - I got a cool new name and we got Azeri dubbing so I have no clue what we are saying, which is probably good.

Meet us in the harbour 

For a while, it seemed that we were done with TV for good. We hitchhiked all the way to the Georgian border to meet up with Nina, our Georgian friend. On the way, we got invited home by A., a construction engineer with two smart kids; they all could speak good English and perfect Russian. We met with Nina and went making barbecue on a burning water spring. Nina decided to hitchhike with us back to Baku instead of going home, and we hitched a ride with two mafia guys who then let us stay in their super fancy apartment in downtown Baku.

Barbecue on the burning spring

Flat of the gangsters

...and the view from its window.

On our way back east, we got a message from an unknown Azeri number: a totally strange journalist was asking us to come to his TV. We were not even shocked anymore and were just wondering where the hell he got our number (he saw one of our previous interviews and probably found us fluffy enough to want to film us too, and got our contact from his colleagues). 

In fairytales, things always happen three times, so we decided to make the same mistake for the third time as well. We were rather in a hurry, though, hunting for a cargo ship to Kazakhstan, so we set a meeting at the ticket booth in the harbour (I felt as if we were picky popstars). 

To get to the ticket booth, one must pass grumpy guards at a bar and a special turnstile that is opened by a special person even though the booth is just at the bar. We found there a cyclist from Norway and two Dutch guys with a Landrover who were also trying to get to Kazakhstan. 

The TV crew arrived when I was still buying the tickets, so they had to wait for me. The turnstile person was gone so I ran past the bar even though the grumpy guards were shouting at me. Fortunately they were too lazy to follow me so I managed to join Vojta, Nina and Naila the journalist. 

In the TV company car

For a while, we were sitting with Naila in the park and chatting about hitchhiking and other things (for a moment, also Bjorn the cyclist joined us and I tried to convince him to go with us to TV, but he didn't want). Then, the meeting turned out even fancier than the one before. There even was a car that took us and our backpacks to the TV headquarters. We made quite a long interview with a big camera, so we had a lot of occasions to say stupid things. 

Chat in the park

Later we got this video too and it turned out that we had been making an advert to Azerbaijan. The part where Vojta was complaining about the red tape had been of course cut out. There still was fortunately the part where I had been trying to thank all the friendly and hospitable people we had met in Azerbaijan.

....

The next day we set sail across the Caspian sea, leaving all the Azeri TVs behind, so our TV career was finally over... until we reached Kazakhstan.

Quick and easy way to get deported from Azerbaijan (or maybe not)

Story about a registration (it would make Franz Kafka jealous)

In 2017, getting a visa to Azerbaijan is surprisingly easy for a European. It just takes money and a few clicks online. We had the visa overnight and we believed that as for red tape, that was it. We couldn't be more wrong.

Visa is not the real issue. A so called registration of an address is. It's a true quest for heroes. First, it is hard to find any clear info about what the hell it is, what it is good for and why you need it if you travel throughout the country and don't have, of course, any address.

Stories go about a paper with a stamp you need if you stay in Azerbaijan more than 10 days. If you don't have it, the border guards in their uniforms with shiny buttons will be mean to you, will want your money, deport you to hell, put you to gulag forever or let you be eaten by tigers. Or maybe not. (I just think that the whole thing exists for getting people's money for no reason.)

The most reliable info can be found on the Caravanistan website, a traveler's Holy Bible. It's not much reliable anyway, though, since it mostly shows a collection of travelers' stories whereas the administration can change any time and might or might not be enforced. (Which means that by the time I'm writing this, things might be different again. In a positive way, I hope.)

There also is a web portal where you could get the registration done according to legends. Maybe. It didn't work when we were trying to use it - or it was maybe so slow that it would take the whole 10 days to get registered, and when we started trying, it was too late to wait ages to see if we would get through in the end. It may work now.

　
Properly follow proper protocols

The Caravanistan website said that if the online portal failed, the magical paper could be bought at any post office for an indeterminate amount of money depending on how corrupt the post person was and how valiant the traveler was. You can register any address - if you camp, you can register an address of a random hotel you don't actually use.

This video quite faithfully illustrates the procedure:

So on a hot, sunny Thursday, four days before the feared 10-days deadline, we set off to the main Baku post office. It took us some time to find it because our map application pointed us a different place than where the address really was.

When we finally reached it, the post people told us they no longer did the registrations there. They sent us to a place called "ASAN Xidmet" since that's where the registrations were done. (Spoiler: they weren't.)

We found a bus, put our backpacks in it, drove across half of Baku and arrived to the second office. The office people told us they did not do the registrations there and sent us to a third office. (We had already spent for hours on the quest, so I was swearing at them in Czech that they were idiots. It didn't help.)

We found a bus, put our backpacks in it, drove across half of Baku and arrived to the third office (I think it was the main immigration office). The office people told us they did not register hotel addresses in there because only hotels themselves could do it. We needed to either bring an ID card of our host or go to a hotel. I felt like shitting mushroom clouds.

It was now clear we would spend at least the whole day on the bloody registration - if we would ever get it. We could hitchhike back to Rafael, beg him for his ID card and try to register in Qobustan. We would probably just have Monday to do it and if it failed, we would be at mercy of the customs officers with shiny buttons. Or we could change our plans completely and run to Kazakhstan before the 10 days deadline - except that we only had 3 days left and the boats were setting off with no schedule every 3 days to two weeks. So the outcome would be the same.

Or we could compromise the idea of punk traveling and never paying for a place to sleep, and to buy a hotel to be registered there.

Vain capitulation

Eventually, we surrendered and decided to to buy the paper in a hotel. We googled the cheapest hotel in Baku and faced an outstanding moron of a receptionist. Not only he had no idea about the registration, but also was exceptionally unable to understand any kind of explanation or stick to a topic and seemed to speak no language whatsoever (not even Rafael on the phone managed to get the message across in Azeri). After a lot of offtopic and the receptionist's effort to persuade us to stay for a week without getting the paper at all, we gave up and went away.

In an expensive hotel nextdoors, the clerk seemed to have a dim idea and told us - in a rather unclear way - that he would maybe do it for us if we bought a room in the hotel, but didn't know how long it would take and seemed not to know how to actually do it.

We gave up again and walked couple of more kilometers to another, a bit cheaper hotel (that was still way too expensive for a stupid registration). The first glimpse of hope appeared - finally, the receptionist seemed to know what we were talking about. He told us he would give us the paper if we buy three days (not necessarily in a row) in the hotel (it was 120 Manats, as far as I remember).

We are still not sure whether it was a rule of the Immigration Office or whether the guy knew we had no other option left, and took advantage of it. We will probably never know. (And I still don't know how ordinary tourists who stay in a different hotel every day are supposed to get registered.)

The asphalt pond

Eventually, we decided to give the guy the money, and got stuck in Baku for three days. (Most of the time, I was drinking Russian beer, writing my blog and was pissed that this time, I had completely lost the fight with the red tape aimed to control and limit travelers.) We also walked to an asphalt pond in the suburbs and Vojta bathed his arms in the asphalt, and we found an oil field which was apparently very strategic and very much forbidden to enter except that there was a village on it and people had the oil pumps in their gardens. We also found out that Baku was a very rich and modern city with real architecture - not with the Middle Eastern aesthetics I just don't understand and find utterly kitchy, or with a lot of Soviet concrete, but like real urbanism with things that look good and fit together).



Oil fields on the outskirts of Baku

Downtown Baku

The reception guy kept his word. We got our Holy Grail, one of the bloody papers on Monday, and the other e-mailed on Tuesday when we had been already gone. They looked like random letters from the Immigration Office, without any stamp, with a number code.

...

When we later arrived to the Alat cargo port to get on the boat to Kazakhstan, the customs officer didn't ask for the registration at all.

So the whole ordeal had been useless.

We met a guy there, though, who was just being deported for not having the paper when he had been trying to cross a land border (they had told him he could either pay several hundreds of Euro or to get deported and be banned from entering Azerbaijan for several following years, and he had chosen the latter). I also still don't know whether just Baku Post Office changed its rules in May 2017 or whether the registration is no longer possible at any post office.

So the registration requirement remains as mysterious as at the beginning. If you are a traveler who doesn't use hotels, the only advice I can give you is this: get some alcohol and a lot of patience, read the updates at the Caravanistan site, possibly get an Azeri friend who will lend you their ID card, and start doing the registration on the first day you arrive (even if you are trying to do it online).

Burning water, petroglyphs and our first friend in Azerbaijan

We always stay in every country longer than expected but it took us more than two weeks to leave Iran. We were just hitchhiking around and saying goodbye to our new friends, and we always stayed with them longer than planned.

Missing Iran

We went to the mountains with Azad, were observing tadpoles and were making nerdy jokes about eating them. We also saw his workshop and met Samir. We visited again Tahmineh and her family. (When we arrived, we only found her parents at home, so we were trying to help them in the garden - they didn't let us much - and succeeded to have almost something like a conversation in Farsi with them.) I got a real haircut from her sister, so I got rid of the horrible mullet that was growing on my head. Tahmineh was even planning to hitchhike with us to another city, but then she changed her mind because she was afraid her parents wouldn't like it. We went to see Amir and were driving with him around the city at night. And we visited Atesh and stayed with him almost a week instead of a day. We were talking about philosophical stuff, playing cards and he was poking fun at us all the time (he seemed to had lost his polite inhibitions, and he was trolling both of us the same way he was trolling other friends). He also convinced us to go with him and his friends to a trip to the countryside. We climbed up a castle and on the way down we were sitting on a cliff, staring into the valley, singing songs and talking about traveling, and I knew I would miss these talks so bad and I would miss his poking fun at me.

The Zahak castle

Eventually we hitchhike north, camp on an Iranian field for the last time, are offered our last Iranian tea and cross to Azerbaijan.

I get rid of my hijab just after the Iranian booth. I'm happy it is not annoying me and sticking to my neck anymore. Behind the border, there is Latin alphabet, Soviet-style statues and Soviet-style buildings and cars. It feels familiar. People have gold teeth - that's familiar from my childhood as well.

We withdraw some money and start walking along the road. Vojta wants to buy a lighter.

He gets one for free.

In another shop, we get ice-creams for free. "Welcome to Azerbaijan," the shop keeper says. The khareji power seems to be working here too. (I realize how mean I am, and I start rather being grateful that people keep being nice to us.)

We get to a spot where there is a big red star on our map, marking an interesting place. There is a water spring you can put on fire.

Yanar bulaq

We ignite the gas coming through the water a couple of times, fill our water bottles and hitch a ride to Lankaran, the first bigger town after the border. We realize how lucky we have been - there is civilization and houses everywhere, not a single field along the road. It would be hard to find a hitchhiking spot here.

When we get to the city, it's raining. We hide under some trees and stay there until the shower stops, like in any normal country. Nobody comes to invite us for tea in the meantime. We are not in Iran anymore.

We find a camping spot, put up the tent and eat a sausage with bread. It feels like our journey is restarting again after a long break. In Iran, it didn't feel like a hitchhiking trip. It felt more like a one long party in Wonderland. I realize it's been a long time since we've last camped two nights in a row. In Iran, we camped maybe just ten nights out of almost two months - the other nights we just got invited. I miss Iran. I miss Tahmineh. I miss Atesh. I realize how weird it is - I got used to missing my boyfriend and my friends and family back in Czechia, but missing Iran is new.

Tea with guards in the middle of nowhere

In the morning, we buy internet (we are not supposed to have it without an Azeri ID card but the shopkeeper uses his ID instead). Then we keep hitchhiking north with a dim plan to find the Chinese embassy in Baku to get the Chinese visa and some kind of Azeri registration we need.

We are surprised people not always understand the concept of hitchhiking or the Russian word for it, "avtostop". But it's quite easy to explain them in pseudo-Russian, and the word "pa putky" sometimes works.

In cities, there is a lot of big squares with only few people compared to Iran. There are soviet-style statues of the president and his family members everywhere. There also is a striking difference among the cars we pass - we can either see 40 years old Ladas that barely have all four wheels, or brand new luxury offroads I would never be able to buy. There seem to be no normal cars. Also people seem to be either awfully rich, or just poor. Nothing in between.

Aliyev the Great

I try to speak Russian and I mix it with Croatian, Polish and also Farsi hopelessly.

A driver gives us home-made pirogi. A Turk who lives in Azerbaijan tells us this country is a harsher dictatorship than Iran. We have tea with a guy who was among the soldiers sent to occupy Czechoslovakia by the USSR government during his military service in his youth - he probably still believes that he was helping our country, as the official Russian propaganda then was saying. We meet two Austrian cyclists on their way south. We have our first beer in a couple of months with them and we get drunk with one pint. I realize I have got my arms and my head sunburnt ("Do you need more signs to start believing in God and wearing a hijab?", an Iranian friend is laughing at me through Whatsapp).

We don't know what we want to do in Azerbaijan, so we randomly hitchhike to a town called Qobustan - our map shows some rock carvings in there. Our driver brings us directly to the gate in the fence that surrounds the area. It's in the middle of nowhere and there is a booth with two guards. They say that it is closed today and that we can camp near their booth.

We are not in a hurry, so we put up our tent on the steppe. There is a water tap and a toilet nearby - all we need.

The cops also let us cook a meal and charge phones in their booth (the electric installation would make a Czech safety technician faint) and they insist on sharing their dinner with us. They don't let me take picture of them because it is forbidden to take pictures of people in uniforms and round hats but they are very friendly. They keep giving us tea the entire evening and we have a conversation in a mishmash of Russian, Turkish and English.

We are slowly getting used to being in a new country even though I still put Farsi words in my Russian and Vojta just keeps speaking Farsi to everyone.

Toilet in the steppe

Mud volcanoes, Rafael and troubles with the Chinese visa

In the morning we hear somebody calling at us from his car. It's one of the museum staff. He mistook us for his French acquaintances, but he doesn't mind and offers us a ride directly to the museum. So we go with him.

He tells us his name is Rafael ("like one of the Ninja Turtles"). He shows us all the petroglyphs - they are bettre visible and more diverse than I expected, and he seems to love them and know a lot about them. He also presents us his colleagues. For some time, we are sitting on the top of the hill with him and Leyla, his relative who also works at the museum (she has an elegant hat and a thick Oxford dictionary in her hands). We are looking at the sea and the Qobustan prison (what a nice scenery) and talking about life. Leyla's plan is pretty clear. She wants to earn money and buy a house - and she says it's not that usual in Azerbaijan; people just look for a rich husband. She also mentions the conflict between Azerbaijan Armenia. She doesn't like Armenia much - the blame is mostly theirs.

Petroglyphs of Qobustan

Raphael and his colleagues then agree to call the Chinese embassy in Baku for us to ask about visa requirements in a better Russian than ours. The Chinese tell us to go stuff ourselves - no visa for foreigners in Baku. The Fortress China seems to be fortified really well - Baku was the only glimpse of hope in the whole Caucasus and Central Asia. We will have to try going through a Czech agency then, using our spare passports that we left at home.

It also means that we don't need to hurry to Baku anymore, and Rafael offers us to meet up again after work.



A music stone

In the meantime, we visit the actual museum (it is very modern and except for a large poster glorifying the president and his family it has no Soviet feeling). We then hitchhike 10 kilometers back south to see mud volcanoes Rafael suggested us. We are already quite confident about hitchhiking - it's quick and easy, almost like in Turkey. The difference is that we need to tell we travel without money, and one in two cars that stop agrees to take us for free.

We hike a curvy path from the main road to the hills and we find the volcanoes. There really is mud in them and it bubbles. I'm wondering whether it is possible to drown in it.

Rafael comes for us with his car. (It's a Lada that holds together by magic. Our friend starts it by joining two cables, usually opens the trunk with a screw driver and doesn't lock it.)

He brings us home, shows us his kids and a little pet goose, his family offers us a delicious soup and then we look at photos.

We now know somebody in Azerbaijan. We are not complete strangers anymore.

 

 

Rafael's goose (R.I.P.)