Day 12, the Black Pearl, Caspian sea

Oh Naxcivan, why did they trapped you in this lake? You deserve to sail the blue oceans and visit the ports of the world because your beauty should not be hidden...

Naxcivana a 146 mt piece of rust assembled in Jugoslavia god knows how many years ago (how it made it to the Caspain sea is beyond my comprehension). On board there were 86 passengers (mainly truck drivers and other Mongol Rally teams) and a crew of 40 valid seamen. 

(Naxccivan twin brother in the picture below)

We were shown our cabin (2nd class, what else do you pretend if you only pay 590 dollars?) by the old  russian lady in charge of our deck.when she tried to open the tap a brown fluid invaded  the toilet and we understood that this was not going to be a smooth and relaxing cruise.

We left the new port at 8pm but unfortunately it was no time yet to say goodbye to baku as we only moved to the old port to get a few more gigantic lorries on board.

Finally we set sails at 11pm and the 16 hours journey to Turkmenbashi began. I was hit by terrible headache as I smartly spent a good amount of time exploring the ship and taking very unnecessary pictures where the cars and lorries were parked.

The problem was that a lot of lorry drivers were sat in their trucks with the engine on to enjoy the ac so the place was invaded by their toxic fumes combined with the ones from the ship.

We didn't have much sleep during the night. The temperature in the cabin was way to hot and I had to find a bench on the upper deck to get few hours of sleep. I enjoyed the sunrise while drinking green tea with the captain and his crew who let me"drive" for a while and proudly showed me all their equipments and the oil rigs scattered in the Caspian Sea. 

We finally approached the deserty coast of Turkmenistan at 2pm but once again our patience was put to tested. In Turkmenbashi there are no tug boats so when it's windy big ships can not dock and need to wait outside the port. 

This could last hours or days and it's really beyond anyone control. Last year few mongol rally teams spend 48 hours waiting with no food or drinks available on the ship. Again we got lucky as we managed to dock after "just" 6 hours. However another challenge was waiting for us...

Turkmenistan immigration process was the craziest things I have experienced in my life. A burocratic nightmare that seemed to come out straight from Terry Gilliam's mind. We had to go through 15 different steps and it took us and the other teams about 5 hours to have a stamp on our passports and register the car. Don't get me wrong though, weirdly enough I loved every minute of it (the lack of food and sleep in the last 36 hours didn' really help though) and the locals were incredibly friendly, sharing food and fresh water with us and keeping the place running the whole night.

What a sweet feeling to turn the engine on and leave the port. Despite all the problems we made it to Turkmenistan and the Central Asia adventure was finally ready to begin.