Plan B: Taking a Cargo Ferry Across the Caspian Sea

I didn’t make a lot of plans before setting off on this trip – in fact I didn’t make any – but I had a lot of ideas.

One of them (my ideas, I mean) was to travel up into Russia from Kazakhstan. Visa policies in Central Asia have loosened up lately. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are even visa-free for many nationalities – something the officer at airport immigration in Bishkek seemed unaware of since he demanded to see mine. But when I told him I didn’t need one he just shrugged, stamped my passport and waved me past.

Russia is another story and I’d read conflicting reports about whether it’s actually possible to pick up a Russian visa on the road.  I thought I’d give it a go so I dropped by the Russian Embassy in Tashkent with my application, photos, and the addresses of some hotels I’d pretend to stay at, ready to hand over.

At the Embassy a police officer pulled me to the front of the line. A little drawer in the wall under a tinted window slid open and the officer indicated that I should drop my passport in. The drawer snapped shut and my passport disappeared into the Russian Embassy.

A speaker crackled to life and a voice asked me for my residency permit. Since I haven’t moved to Uzbekistan, I tried pointing out that I’d read about travellers receiving their visa at this very Embassy. The voice was not convinced and the drawer screetched open again. My passport lay forlorn at the bottom – in other words, a big fat ‘nyet’.

But Russia seemed awfully far away so I put it out of my mind and went back to my Silk Road-tripping.

When I reached western Uzbekistan, I was literally running out of space on the map. It was time to move to Plan B – or at least, to make a Plan B.

I opened a map and stared at the blue outline of the Caspian Sea and the countries on the other side of it. Azerbaijan’s prohibitive visa process had kept me away years ago when I was travelling ‘in the neighbourhood’. But things had changed in 2017 and the new e-visa procedure is fast and easy. I thought ‘why not?’

Of course there are plenty of ways to get to Azerbaijan. Flying, like a normal person, comes to mind for starters. But it’s also possible to cross the Caspian on old cargo ships that ply routes between Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. And even more than actually visiting Azerbaijan, I wanted to cross the sea.

But first, I had to get to Kazakhstan.

I left Uzbekistan early one morning on a thirty hour train trip into western Kazakhstan. Travelling on old Soviet rolling stock trains takes time and patience.

There were painfully long halts on both sides of the border when officials from each country took it in turns to board and check passports and search luggage.

I watched out the window as the train clanked along in the vast and unchanging emptiness of the Kazakh steppe.

Vendors roamed the aisle from time to time selling food and huge stacks of clothing.

I woke from a nap to a lot of shouting and a minor scuffle between the conductor and a passenger. Things like this don’t really seem that weird anymore so I sat calmly back in my bunk and watched. Via my translator app I asked a man next to me what was happening and waited with interest as he typed rapidly on his phone. But when he handed me the phone it was playing what appeared to be his own wedding video. When that finished up and I’d congratulated him, he asked for my phone number.

I’ve noticed that stupid questions from men and requests to be in touch on social media  despite a complete and total language barrier are often a standard part of the solo female traveller experience. From an immigration official who asked me pertinent questions like the English word for the beautiful colour of my eyes; to men approaching me, WhatsApp at the ready in restaurants (and in one notable case, in a public bathroom); and right on up to two invitations to dinner and a disco from the train conductor himself during this very journey.

But other passengers kindly offered me chai, and asked my name and nationality – I heard the news travel down the aisle. Apparently convinced the world would eat me up and spit me out, a sweet old man took me under his wing. As I made my bed he was right there, tucking the sheets under the sides of my bunk. He showed me how to put the pillow into the case. He demonstrated that I should drink some water and spit it out the window. As I climbed into my upper-level bunk, he made a stirrup of his hands and hoisted my feet up behind me.

Finally I disembarked in Aktau, a dusty port-city on the edge of nowhere, and stretched my legs in Kazakhstan.

Crossing the Caspian is anything but a straightforward process. I’m not talking about passenger ferries following a schedule, or booze-cruises with a spa deck and terrible live music provided by bands who failed miserably on land. These are cargo ships that cross when they’re full, taking with them any passengers who have the stamina to wait around in total uncertainty in Aktau hoping for a ride.

Searching travellers’ forums I’d found various office addresses, phone numbers, and vague hints about people in the city who might sell tickets and I started asking around. After two days it quickly became apparent that I was in Aktau for the long haul. Ever budget-conscious,  I badgered the front desk at my hotel into letting me move into the basement, where I knew there were cheaper rooms. Sure enough the basement was under construction and seemed to be partially lived in by staff.  It reminded me a lot of the ‘sanatorium’ I’d stayed in in Nukus but it was cheap. Part of the hallway ceiling fell down in the night but that seemed like the least of my problems.

The day after I moved to the basement, a series of phone calls placed by the front desk receptionist (who clearly wanted me to leave) unearthed a man named Hamid who came to the hotel and sold me a ticket on vessel called the ‘Professor Gul’.

Hamid had sold tickets to three other travellers and we arrived at a distant port outside town together, to be greeted with shifty looks and reticent behaviour from the port crew. After an eight hour wait in the customs office the reason for this became clear – the Professor Gul was loaded with an unidentified ‘dangerous cargo’ and wouldn’t be taking passengers after all. My fellow travellers Matt, Sherry, Nico and I returned to Aktau in defeat at 3 am.

Basing ourselves at a truckstop hotel we spent the next week pacing the seafront; pestering port and management office employees over the phone and in person; and obsessively tracking the Professor Gul’s nautical position online.

On my very first day in Aktau I’d found a restaurant called Italiano, with good pizza and great wifi and we went there – Every. Single. Day.

We watched Borat and we drank vodka. We drank vodka and we watched Groundhog Day – after all, the story of the same day repeating itself again and again seemed only fitting. Until one evening when Nico ran into the living room at the truckstop, disrupting our Harry Potter marathon to announce that the Professor Gul had sailed out of Baku and was expected in Aktau port the following night.

The next morning we rushed to the ferry office and waited tensely til Julia (who we’d all met several times and who by now seemed as invested in getting rid of us as we were in departing Aktau) hung up the phone and triumphantly proclaimed ‘Bilety! (tickets)’. Our ship had come in.

And so a week to the day I’d arrived in Aktau I went to the port – again – with my fellow castaways (but not before one last pizza and attempt at saying goodbye to the bewildered staff at Italiano).

Waiting was second-nature to us by now. We patiently lurked around the port til the cargo was loaded and we could board the Professor around midnight and settle into our shared cabin.

Professor Gul’s engines rumbled to life around 3 am and we edged out of the port.

The trip to Baku took around 32 hours. That gave us plenty of time to explore the Professor Gul.

We went onto the bridge, and we climbed up into the radar tower on the top deck.

On Wednesday morning I watched from the deck as the Professor docked.

It was a plan I’d hatched one day on a whim; a single step on this journey that was more than a week in the offing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from travelling, it’s that the very best plans are the ones you didn’t make in the first place.

Read More

For more of my adventures (and misadventures) in Kazakhstan, check out the rest of my stories from the road.