We had heard rumours that a ferry from Baku to Turkmenistan was due imminently. We had to decide what was the best thing to do. Drive through the night in the hope we could catch the ferry or take it easy & see some of Azerbaijan.
We decided to drive through the night. There was also less of a chance of being pulled over by the police at night.
The first thing we noticed as we drove out of the border crossing was how much cleaner Azerbaijan was compared to Turkey & Georgia. And the roads were very straight & long. Our first road was a tree lined 120km of normal road. Made a nice change to the twisty mountain roads of Turkey & the big wide roads of Georgia. The oddity was all the trees were painted white on their trunks but no paint on the road. We later found out it was to protect the trees from something. Guess they used all the paint up.
Driving on these strange roads in the dark was interesting. Especially when the large HGV trucks are heading towards you as they don’t have a clue what side of the road they on. We didn’t have a clue at times, it was so dark.
We decided to pull off the road & stopped behind a bus stop at some point to try & get an hours sleep. I think it was the first time during the whole trip we felt slightly exposed & vulnerable. Up till now we had managed to avoid being pulled over by the police but both thought we may be pushing our luck so carried on.
A bit further down the road we pulled over to make a coffee outside what looked like an office industrial area. It was pitch dark so we could just about see what we were doing when a local walked around the car. We tried to chat with him but between our tired ramblings & a lack of the local language we didn’t get very far. Next a car pulled up, stopped to look at us & Minty, then drove off. Then another car arrived, did the same thing & drove away after a few minutes. This happened about 5 times, all being driven by men on their own. Now we did feel vulnerable so decided to throw the coffee & jump back in the car & carry on to Baku.
We passed a couple of the cars who we saw earlier parked on the side of the road. We were a little spooked so maybe we were over reacting a bit but were happier when we turned off the road & started to climb up a hill to where we could see the sun rising. An hour or so later we started to descend & we were entering the city of Baku, hoping we could find the ferry port.
Bizarre to think we only took 3 normal roads to cross an entire country.
