Bio:

Brian is a recovering rock star, procrastinating musician and skater... he is a software monkey by day, planning his next trip around the world by night.

been to: here and there, Italy (born near Venice), US (Seattle, New York, San Francisco, LA, points inbetween), Canada (Whistler, Vancouver, Quebec), France, Monaco, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Italy (again), Greece, Switzerland, Netherlands, Jamaica, UK (Scotland, England), Mexico, Cuba (vamos bien), South Korea, China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Spain (again), Gibraltar, London (again)...

traveling through Asia he picked up a little Mandarin, Tibetan, and Hindi... can say Thank You in 9 languages, but his favorite favorite all time phrase is simply Hello in Tibetan - Tashidelek! (say it with gusto!).

Ya yimnoga guvaryu pa Ruskia, no ya punyumayu nu ochin heracho.

Brian has been married to Kim for 10 years, and they celebrated their 9th anniversary during the first week of the Mongol Rally. They've been everywhere together and can get out of any sticky situation.

Read Brian's Posts:

Aral Sea Pan

Drag around this VR panorama of the Aral Sea @ Muynaq.  I will create a higher rez version when I get home, but for now I’m rationing bandwidth, posting this via satellite from our camp ground in the middle of nowhere Kazakhstan

Photo & Video Update

A new batch of photos just posted to Flickr!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/autarken

And a quick video clip from the Aral Sea!

Wedding Crashers

I couldn’t really say how nice of a town Almaty is since I’ve seen little besides the parking lot of our hotel, but following the the trend that’s been set since Turkmenistan the people have been overwhelmingly nice.

First order of business yesterday was to sort out our tourist “registration”… something you have to do at your hotel or at the OVIR office when you arrive, NOT at the border… an archaic throw back to the soviet era, and I think a weak attempt to track your movement, or at the very least to make traveling a hassle. But the receptionist at our hotel was very helpful and in another broken Russian conversation I was able to arrange for our tourist cards to be registered with our passports yesterday.

With that out of the way Tom took a look at the cars with Justin from Just A Steppe Away and we think they determined the drive shafts on 201 are *not* devastatingly harmed… so we rotated the tires and will carry on as is. We weren’t able to look at the possible exhaust leak on 206, but we did get radiator guards and rally fog lights installed, and changed the oil on both cars. Frustratingly we got 201 wired for lights and verified the electricity is live after the switch… but the lights still don’t seem to work. Maybe we got a bum pair. It’s too bad too because 201 has had it’s passenger side headlight constantly going out. We’ve gone through four H1 bulbs already and I got four more yesterday… At least 206 can lead the way with an extra 55watts each of rally lights blinding any oncoming traffic.

As we were out working on the cars, a wedding party started to assemble at the hotel. We worried for a bit that they might take offense that we had set up a make shift garage in the parking lot next to their reception hall, but on the contrary the guys started coming out and taking to us throughout the evening. They were fascinated by the rally, and the fact that we would come all this way to visit their country. The guests were mostly ethnic Ukrainians and Russians who had all grown up in Kazakhstan and call this their home, but do not call themselves Kazak. They were all dressed pretty sharply and seemed well off compared to most, driving nicer imported cars (mostly Japanese, all original right hand drive!). Throughout the night they would wander out for a smoke break and make conversation with us before heading back into the party… but by the end of the evening they were taking pictures with us and offering us champagne! One of the guys gave me his phone number and kept telling me to call him if we had any trouble with the police… at first we thought maybe he was mafia, but after the 4th offer to help with police I boldly asked him what he did, and he leaned in and whispered that he worked for the national security agency here in Kazakhstan. I’ll reserve some of the details until we exit the country (and posting this over encrypted ssh tunnel… paranoid maybe but I don’t want to draw the wrong kind of attention or get this guy in trouble, and who knows who’s filtering this internet connection), and I really hope I don’t need to call on him for help, but needless to say he was very convincing and I’m sure if we do have trouble with police a call to him will help us out big time.

We’ll find out soon as we make our way today from Almaty to Semey. Hoping to hit the Russian border in the next 48 hours and hit really nice pavement until we get to the Mongolian border in the next week or so!

Making Our Last Stan

That “lamb shish” that I “just finished” in my last post?  It was a vile poisoned thing!  Either they rushed it out or the whole kitchen was filthy, because that was the 2nd worst food poisoning incident I’ve had yet.

After finishing that post I heard my name called in the courtyard outside the internet cafe and joined the guys in our convoy, Tom, Boris, Hugh and Will, along with another German, Sebastien, whose birthday was being celebrated, again, because we didn’t make it to Bukhara the night before.  It was after 11pm and Bukhara had completely shut down, but we sat on the steps near a fountain and shared a few drinks and stories… such as Hugh’s work with the UN and a funny German “perfection”-ist trainer who tried to show American NGO aid groups why the houses they built were all wrong… and our favorite funny movies.  After Hugh was slightly harassed by the fuzz and a very drunk Uzbek became convinced Tom was Mike Tyson, we decided to pack it in and finally go to bed.

After sleeping just a few hours I woke up trembling and emptied the contents of my stomach which had turned rancid in my belly and were begging to escape.  I tried to drink some water and go back to sleep, but I couldn’t even keep that down for more than an hour.  At 8am, I woke up Tom, told him I was ill and needed to sleep some more, asking him to figure out our fuel situation.  I tossed for a few hours, and tossed my cookies a few more times (all just water I couldn’t keep down, even with re-hydration salts), and when I finally emerged at noon I was surprised to find Tom was *still* trying to sort out our gas!  The Uzbek fuel shortage was no joke.  By 8am all rations were tapped out already and he had to talk to two different guys to find enough black market gas to get us to the border.  Supposedly the situation was improved nearer to Tashkent, but we did not want to risk it and just wanted to make the border.

Getting such a late start did not help, but finally we were fueled up and on our way after noon.  While Jean & Tom drove in convoy with the CooperTroopers, I fidgeted uncomfortably in the passenger seat.  Boris opened up his pharmacy to me and provided some foul tasting concoction that successfully eased my stomach… but now I found that my muscles, particularly my back, ached, and I could not sleep much in the car.  At least I could stomach water.

We made Samarqand in the early evening, took some photos of Tamerlane’s statue & mausoleum, and grabbed a quick bite to eat.  I was too uncomfortable to join the group for more photos & minaret climbing at the Registan (this one dazzlingly lit and accompanied by music, in stark contrast to Bukhara’s solemn square)… I’m jealous Boris must have gotten some amazing photos!  We pushed on toward the border and stopped in a field just before midnight to camp out again.

New day, new man.  When I woke up again I was feeling completely better.  Whatever nasty bug had gotten into my system had finished excreting it’s toxins and I vanquished them from my body, ready to move on.  With the CooperTroopers and Will heading to Tashkent to pick up their Tajik visas and Pamir highway passes, we split the convoy again and BaatarHero was on its own once more.  We made pretty good time to the border, and had a relatively smooth Kazak border crossing, similar to the Uzbek crossing.  What a pleasant surprise after dealing with such long process & expense in Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.  Another nice surprise were relatively well paved roads in Kazakhstan!

Our drive up to Shymkent was a breeze and before we knew it we were sitting down to dinner at a Kazak barbecue place with live entertainment… well, it was basically 1 guy doing karaoke all night, but beggars can’t be choosers.  Chicken for me this time… very well done.  We crashed at a hotel rather than drive out into the country and camp again, knowing we would need a good shower and breakfast before today’s long drive.

Thinking we woke up early, we learned at breakfast that we’d lost another hour due to the timezone change, so we dashed out of Shymkent and sped off for Almaty.  The cop who pulled us over for accidentally making an illegal u-turn was nice, and let us off with a warning instead of shaking us down.  This great start to the morning was improved by absolutely stunning views of the country along the M39.  Each border crossing brings about a stark change in geography, from the desert of Turkmenistan to the lush cotton fields of Uzbekistan, to the rolling hills of grass and various crops in Kazakhstan.  We drove east, skirting around the feet of the towering Tian Shan mountains which climb off into Kyrgyzstan, passing herds of cattle and horses.  Big Kazak horses, not like the tiny ponies we expect in Mongolia.  Some of these look domesticated, but many look wild, roaming free along the freeway and crossing the road in their own convoys. It is killing me not having Kim here because I know she would love the landscape and the horses.  We will just have to come back… maybe do the rally again some day?

After passing some tanks on the freeway we were surprised to come up on a bright yellow mini cooper with Superwinch written across the back.  We had run into this team at the Kazak border crossing and thought they were heading North.  It turns out they are, but not directly, first heading East a bit and then turning North before reaching Almaty.  We drove with them for a while, taking turns passing the slow trucks, and then they seemed to disappear.  Not having their phone or a plan to travel with them, we figured they stopped for a bathroom break or something and we continued on into town.  After a few minutes though, a local driver flagged us down to tell us our friends were in trouble, so we turned back to find them along the side of the road with the front right tire completely missing, and all the steering bits turned about in different places.  It turns out one of the steering control arms just bent.  For no particular reason.  They didn’t hit a big pot hole or rough patch of road… it just bent and drove them off the road.  As it happens, they have a spare of EVERYTHING in that car, and they were probably a quarter of the way to repairing it.  They just couldn’t find a bolt, which I happened to stumble upon and hand over.  Glad I could be of some use!  We stayed behind for a bit to make sure they’d be ok, but it was starting to get dark and we wanted to make it to Almaty tonight to reunite with Amy & Yasmin.  They reassured us they were fine, so off we went.

Trying to skirt the Kyrgyz border without actually entering, we had to get off the main road which goes to Bishkek, and took this nasty detour just North of the border which had a ton of construction, pot holes and gravel.  It made the night drag on, but we finally made it past the bad parts by about 11pm and hit really good pavement 200km outside Almaty.  We cruised the rest of the way, and despite some really bad directions from a gas station close to the hotel which sent us 45 minutes in the wrong direction, we finally pulled into the parking lot where Amy & Yasmin were staying at just after 2am.

I whipped out the laptop straight away to have a Skype with Kim as its been days since we could have a real conversation.  The internet connection here is decent and we will take advantage of it to finally catch up on photos & video in the morning.  We’ll probably be in town all day tomorrow fixing up the cars.  They’ve been taking a beating but are still holding together.  We think we have an exhaust leak in one which is robbing us of power and fuel efficiency… despite which I still seem to be averaging 40mpg after our just over 6000 miles.  I’ll have to corroborate the odometer against the map track tomorrow, but we’re now over half way through the trip in both distance and time.  We’re hoping the roads stay better than expected so we can make good time in Kazakhstan and Russia to be reunited with Kim finally in Mongolia.  We are also looking forward to meeting up again with the teams we’ve convoyed with the last few days who have split off in different directions.  There are several arrival parties in Ulaan Baatar, and as we’re swinging through there to pick Kim up before touring Mongolia, we might actually be able to make both of them!

See you all again on the other side of a few hours’ sleep with some photo updates of our progress.

Aral Sea and The Stans

Waking up early and leaving our desert camp ground at Darvaza, we made for the Uzbek border, filling our fuel tanks both internal and external to full, including some extra 5 liter water bottles, as we’d heard about a gas shortage in Uzbekistan. We made the Turkmen exit border at about 4:30pm and into the Uzbek entry by 5:30, just in time to strat processing by the 6pm closing.

Uzbek border guards were friendly and helpful, asked us lots of questions about the rally and America, and especially about my tattoo. One of them asked if I was Yakuza (don’t know how he thought I was Japanese… I was more worried he thought I was a gangster), but he was laughing and joking around mostly.

After the border we split up our convoy, with Just A Steppe Away saving fuel and heading straight for Bukhara. Romanda from 3 Blondes and a Beater joined us along with team CooperTroopers in their little 1 liter Daihatsu and we headed north towards Muynaq. Our “quick” stop at a market for water turned into a 45 minute ordeal as the whole town showed up to take photos of us on their cell phones. We were all a curiosity and pretty popular, but nobody more so than Tom. In both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, everybody asks where we’re from and we say “America, Canada, Germany, Australia”, listing the nationalities of everybody in the convoy, but they inquire about Tom’s heritage and when he admits India they light up with smiles and say they love India… “Namaste!”. It’s hilarious. We’re all getting a big kick out of it. And Tom’s face is on more Uzbek cell phones than we can count. We finally pulled out of town and found a quiet camp spot in a field a klick or so off the road.

We didn’t even wait for the sun to break camp early and set out for Muynaq. We also wanted to get to Bukhara on the 15th to rejoin Romanda with her team… plus we have to make progress as our visas expire on the 18th. But first we just had to see the Aral Sea, or lack thereof. Unfortunately I’m at a slow internet cafe in Bukhara now, and there isn’t enough line of site for the satellite to work here, so you don’t get video or photos quite yet… but I can’t wait to upload this stuff. The devastation caused by the draining of the Amu Darya river for irrigation is amazing. As we drove north from Darvaza, we started seeing the lush green cotton fields grow more abundant and in this northwestern corner of Uzbekistan it is all green and marshy (with accompanying mosquitos) despite the arid desert environment. Then as you pull off the road at Muynaq the desert just opens up, and there is a cliff at least a hundred feet high where the sea port used to be and the dead sea bed drops off below. At the bottom are 10 rusty ships amidst sand dunes and sea shells and it’s hard to belief that as recently as the 1970’s they were floating up in the harbor of this fishing village. Words really can’t describe it, so you’ll just have to wait for the photos, but Darvaza and Muynaq are competing for most amazing sites on the rally so far… and actually some of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

As we drove south towards Bukhara the cotton fields began to disappear, though as we crossed the Amy Darya, now barely a few hundred feet across where it used to be miles wide, you could see the irrigation canals streaming off either side off into the distance where they feed farms in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. There are resevoirs where kids are playing, unaware of the barren landscape just a few hundred kilometers to their north.

The drive to Bukhara was another brutal day of rough roads, and we quickly began to realize the scope of the gas shortage here. Every gas station you see looks deserted… and the stations that do have attendants tell you they are empty. Every once in a while some shifty guy will approach you leaving the station and tell you he can sell you his gas for twice the price, but it’s stored in 5 liter jerry cans and nobody knows how much of it is really water. We begged off all these early offers hoping we could find a bigger city before Bukhara, but nothing materialized. We made it within 250 klicks of Bukhara before we were too tired to keep driving on horrible roads, and pulled off into the desert to camp. Pitching tents and sleeping on the sand made for a pretty comfortable night’s sleep, and we wook up again at dawn to push on for Bukhara. The road conditions improved and we made good time, but the needle on our fuel tank crawled towards E and the light came on pretty quickly.

We finally found a station that had a line up of Uzbek cars, but when we pulled in they insisted they had no gas. Incredulous, we decided to wait them out and see if they started pumping for a local. Stubbornly, the attendants and owner left the station. We thought the locals might be angry with us, but they made conversation… also insisted there was no gas (we wondered and asked what they were doing there though, without much explaination), and took more photos with Tom. We finally gave an and putter on towards Bukhara. There was another station along the way where a tanker truck was supposedly showing up at 1pm, and it had a half mile long queue of cars in front. Not waiting for that, we coasted into town on fumes and were refused gas at another station that WAS pumping petrol for people, but apparently only for Uzbek firms with prepaid invoices. We are now parked at our hotel and will be hooking up some black market gas from some guy’s house in the morning… probably paying too much, but at this point we need full tanks to make the border and get to Almaty to pick up Amy & Yasmin.

It was nice to arrive in Bukhara in the afternoon. A decent lunch was available and we were able to meander around the Registan and the Ark, relaxing a bit and taking lots of photos. I was anxious to see the Ark, including the Zindon or Sia Chat “bug pit” where British officers Stodart and Connolly were tortured by the Uzbek Emir before execution. The bug pit was closed but we wandered around the outside at sunset and slowly made our way back to the hotel for some excellent night photography.

I just finished a lamb shish kabob dinner and am ready to sleep in a bed again before getting up and pressing on to Samarqand tomorrow.

Next post hopefully with photos & video!

Stuck In The Sand

We are in the middle of the desert in Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, hunting for the ghost ships of the Aral Sea near Muynaq. For the first time some locals just gave us some bad directions and we took a wrong turn into the desert. So far Uzbekistan has been very welcoming, but we decided to pull out a wimpy get out of jail free card and fire up Google Earth and the GPS to know exactly where we need to go. Oh yeah, Jean scraped something (non-essential) off the bottom of car 206, and Tom just got 201 stuck in the sand. Team Cooper Trooper is pulling him out now while I look up the GPS coordinates so we can find these ships…. Ah, Tom just got unstuck! Gotta go!

Salam Alaykum Turkmenistan

There is a glow a few kilometers to our East. It’s an unmistakable warm orange-red glow of fire, but this fire never goes out. It’s been burning for the past 40 years or so.

We are in Darvaza, Turkmenistan, camped out in the middle of the desert after returning from the flaming gas pit that’s been on fire since the Russians were drilling for gas here. A sinkhole opened up and swallowed up some of their equipment in the process. They attempted to burn off some of the “waste gas” that was bubbling on top of the crater, and it has been on fire ever since.

Video shot with VadoHD provided by eKit

Standing at the edge of the crater, hot blasts of air hit your face and twisters spin up out of nowhere as this place creates its own micro-climate. The blasts of air are not unlike the conditions while driving through the desert. With no air-con we have to drive with the windows down, if for no other reason than to prevent the windows from acting as lenses refracting the sun into the car.

Other than the 110 degree heat we have been loving driving through Turkmenistan. Our ferry from Baku crossed relatively quickly, but we had to wait a day outside the port for room to open up for us to dock. All told: 31 hours at sea. Let us know who won the pool at the Microsoft Office team. The border guards at port were *really* nice. I may not have mentioned this yet, but the Turkmen Consulate in Baku was really nice and helpful as well, which gave us hope that was definitely not misplaced. The guard processing our visas asked who was in charge of our group, which turned out to be me, he called me “Chief” and said I looked like an actor. After we figured out he meant “Lost” when he was talking about the “teleserial ‘Staying Alive’” he laughed and said he thought I was Matthew Fox. One of the members of our group had a misprinted passport number on the invitation, clearly a typo, and the guard joked that he wouldn’t let him in… but then said “bad joke, sorry” and we all laughed. No shake downs, just a lot of forms in triplicate, all very official and time consuming. Clearing immigration and customs: 6 hours. It was 7 am before we found a place to stay, camping out on the beach with a bunch of Turkmen families. We grabbed just a few hours sleep and woke up by taking a bath in the Caspian, cool and refreshing.

Driving to Ashgabat took ALL day, on paved roads that had been melted in the heat and driven on hard by big trucks, turning the blacktop into waves of tar that rolled our cars across the desert at a max 80kph clip. We were pulled over 4 times again, but the cops here are friendly and really just want to say Hi and ask about the rally. They shook our hands instead of our wallets, and sent us on our way. Nice change of pace. Azerbaijan, you could follow this example. We are like celebrities here, *everybody* can tell we are foreign and the cars draw a *lot* of attention, even from hundreds of meters away cars flash their lights at us, and everybody stares and waves.

Ashgabat was this strange place, somebody said aptly a combination of Las Vegas and Pyongyang. There are hundreds of fancy looking buildings, but not enough traffic to justify their existence, and inside many of them are empty or downtrodden. We stayed at what looked like a really fancy hotel – inside it reeked and the carpeting had gaps with concrete below… the power was inconsistent and destroyed one of my adapters. We were pretty anxious to leave the city and head for Darvaza after getting some supplies… an exercise which took 4 hours because there are no ATM’s and the banks are extremely slow to process a cash advance. The other thing that doesn’t seem to work is my cell phone. It’s not compatible with any network here, and nobody will sell me a pre-paid SIM since I’m not Turkmen. So, no updates from eKit until we make it to Uzbekistan I think.

We hooked up with several other rally teams at a gas station on the way out of town, joined the caravan north, and finally found our way to the gas crater at about 10:30pm, brilliantly lit up in the dark and clearly visible from miles away.

I’m sure I’m probably forgetting something, but my video has just finished uploading and we are on the satellite again, rationing our data. I’ll let the video speak for itself and our next transmission will probably come to you from Uzbekistan

Cruising The Caspian

I’m sitting on a rusty old cargo ship on the east coast of the Caspian Sea, waiting for a spot to open up at port for us to dock, watching the sun set. After a few technical difficulties I’ve finally got the sat-modem working.

We’re rationing the data, so I’m keeping this short…

Tom’s description of Azerbaijan pretty much echos the feelings I was having… but we did have a much better time in Baku, having dinner with a helpful family friend of Justin’s who also helped us arrange our ferry departure yesterday. The whole procedure was a little hectic but the boat finally did leave at about 7:30pm… and sure enough about 12 hours later we arrived just off the coast of Turkmenbashi.

As they were venting sea water over the deck just outside our room, and bathing themselves in it, I took up a conversation with the crew and found out there are 25 students on board from the maritime academy, and I talked to their teacher a bit. The crew told me we would dock “maybe tonight”… but that was hours ago. The port is “busy”. I strolled around the boat taking photos, and some crew took interest in the photos. I took their picture and showed it to them, and they asked me to give them a copy on their laptop… I also showed them our Turkey pictures, the guy I was talking to, Vadim, said he wanted to got to Turkey and took copies of several of our photos. We exchanged email addresses so I could send him pictures of “Amreeka”. They speak English pretty well, but it’s been a good opportunity to practice Russian more as well.

It’s been really hot, over 100 degrees, and we’re all tired, can’t wait to be off the boat and make our way to Turkmenbashi and then on to the gates of hell. I don’t have cell service on the boat, but a few of the Just A Steppe Away team do, and they’ve been getting facebook/email updates… apparently they know somebody in the Microsoft Office group, and a pool has been started taking bets on when we’ll be off the boat… whoever placed their bet for 1 hour was throwing their money away… whoever said 5 days has a cruel sense of humor. To all MS peeps out there Tom says “Hi” and there better be a Media Devices pool bigger than the Office group’s pool (we’ll gladly take a percentage of the winnings!).

Going on 26 hours since we boarded…

Photos!

Finally, we got some photos up on Flickr. When I get more time I’ll add more tags & frame them on the site w/some comments, but we have to run to Turkmen Consulate. For now, enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/autarken/tags/baatarhero/

Azerbaijersy Part 1

Our attempt to wake up early and get out of Tbilisi this morning was met with the usual struggle to coordinate 6 people and 3 cars, but after getting some Georgian Lari and a delicious little breakfast in a charming area of downtown Tbilisi, we were off about 11am and on our way to the border. We actually made good time and were at the border by 12:30… but we immediately lost another hour due to another time zone change. This border crossing put Georgia’s & Turkey’s to complete shame. We queued up for a couple hours, inching our way to the holding pen where drivers were separated from passengers who had to move along to Azerbaijan and wait for us. Justin had already paid for his road tax, but had to wait for Jean and I as they wanted to process all the rally teams together. This is when the real struggle began.

We were hot and had already been waiting for hours to get to this point. Jean and I queued up at a little office door with several pushy Azeri & Georgian men, all waiting to get our car documents processed. One of the agents looked like Barry Corbin’s character from War Games, and one of the men waiting was Azerbaijan’s version of Luke Perry. We had fun with the celeb look alike game for a while, but eventually we were just restless to get into the booth. This was very much like waiting to get into the Russian consulate. A few men snaked past us which was frustrating because the agent moved SO SLOW to process everything. Eventually we were ushered in together but a few other men still tried to cut in… at this point the agent got very angry at them, and for about 5 minutes there was a lot of screaming and shouting while Jean and I watched the agent assert his authority. He ended up chasing these guys out of the office and was replaced by a new agent who seemed no less surly. This new guy pushed us around a bit, and when we tried to make sure everything was correct he got even more stern. I don’t know if he was illiterate or what, but he could not spell my name correctly, and shh’d me when I asked about it. I gave him my address, that was entered wrong. Then he insisted we get a 3 day transit visa even though we already had our 30 day tourist visa. Eventually an agent who spoke English came in and explained the cars could only get a 3 day transit visa due to being Right Hand Drive. Now, granted, we want to be in this country no longer than necessary to get on the ferry in Baku, but if there are any issues a 3 day transit visa might not be long enough. We tried to negotiate and give the soft offer for bribes “is there a special fee we can pay for a longer visa??”… but he didn’t bite at all. 3 days, that’s it. Then he demanded we have a document that authorized Jean to drive the car since it was registered in my name. I offered to write a contract right there that gave authorization, but he wouldn’t have it. He tried to suggest we go back to London to get “official” document, and in 2 seconds the issue magically was dropped (and never brought up again).

About another hour to get our Azerbaijan insurance, my passport was confiscated for 30 minutes, the car was “inspected” with a very brief look inside… the agent thought my laptop might be a gun but took my word that it wasn’t, and finally after about 5 hours we were through the gates!

We had originally hoped to make Baku in the evening, but it was already 6pm! Uggh. We got on the M1 “motorway”, and followed the flow of traffic, but were immediately pulled over for “speeding” (at 55 miles an hour). After the crazy driving in Georgia, we could not believe it. The cops shook down Justin & the girls in the other car as Tom & I sat waiting for the bribing to begin… but the cops took off and left us alone. We were having trouble getting food and gas since there was nowhere to get local currency, nobody would accept credit cards and nobody wanted to exchange any cash (Georgian, US or Euros)… eventually we found a guy who would take our dollars. A few more hours drive at a slower pace, stop for a quick bite and a gas fill up, and all of the sudden it was getting dark. I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of camping given the inhospitable welcome we had received so far and the lack of what looked like any kind of public place to sleep. Given the good roads and our experience from the night before, I insisted we push on towards Baku. But after another police check point the road worsened considerably, and we all started to worry about more pot holes and punctured tires.

We were arriving in Ganja, probably Azerbaijan’s second biggest city, when in front of us appeared an oasis… a hotel, and not just any hotel, a large hotel that was likely to accept a credit card and have a free room. I joked over the radio that looked like a Ramada… but low and behold it was. The rooms were pricey, but given our other options this was really our best choice. I explained to the reception that we were doing this for a charitable cause and they did knock 20% off the room rate right away.

So here we are, in a really clean room with awesome facilities and internet awaiting our updates! I’m getting some photos & our progress map uploaded, and catching a few zzz’s before we get up and start over again on our way to Baku. Once we make the ferry we’ll probably be out of touch (no cell, internet or satellite service while the boat is moving, we are guessing) for a day or two, but hopefully we can make it to Turkmenistan with no visa problems and not too much of wallets skinned.

Until then, Da Svedonya!