Below is the report of one of the Mongol rally participants. It needs no commenting as most of the information is sadly true. And our big thank you goes to Joe Sabia for sharing his exprience with fellow travelers.
Not so Easy Anymore
Azerbaijan was a total shit hole. Such a drive-through country.
Day 10, July 28th
Five minutes in and I see 18 year olds donning machine guns bigger than their torsos, guarding the gate of entry into quite possibly the most vile country officially recognized by the United Nations. Our first taste of silly bureaucracy trickled in as bribe after bribe was paid to officer after officer, each filling out and stamping mysterious documents that apparently ensured our proper transit through the country. At one point, I found myself at station #3, in the middle of a room of 10 uniformed agents, behind computers screaming at each other, and passing the same pile of documents back and forth in a flurry of stampings and signings. I had no idea what they were doing, but it looked like a promiscuous orgy of inefficiency.
4 hours later the worst corruption witnessed transmogrified itself into the worst roads ever witnessed. 200 miles of sharp, gravelly rocks and deep potholes - all one giant highway festooned with cranes and under construction (putting that oil-money infused GDP to work!). On a side note, I made my first logical deduction about the beauty of women and the quality of roads. As we moved farther and farther East, the worsening of the roads was directly proportional to the plummeting quality a woman's aesthetic beauty. And that seems shallow, sorry.
To preclude our first flat was a stark injection of joy - a delicious restaurant dinner prepared through the use of animal sounds, explaining to the chef our menu choices. And then we got coerced to dance with 9 Azeri men to their silly, corrupt Azeri dances.
Our goal was to go from Baku - Azerbaijan's capital - to Aktau, Kazakhstan. This would be a 500 mile, 24 hour voyage across the Caspian Sea. I had done ample research to know that this ferry departed once every 3-5 days, costing 40 bucks per car. Basically, the ferry was a giant cargo ship, primarily for the transportation of oil resources. Our cars were a peripheral importance, as we were expected to be relegated to whatever space the oil tanks didn't occupy. Oh, and the same ferry line sank three years ago, taking the lives of 100 people. Great.
The ferry port in Baku revealed a denizen of ralliers, all either waiting to go to Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan. The Turkmenistan ferry apparently left once a day. As for us and our passports devoid of Turkmenistan visas, we would have to wait for however long this Kazakhstan ferry would arrive for us. We joined 3 teams waiting for the same ferry. It eventually grew to 4, 5, 6. Then 7, 8. Eventually, 12 teams would reside in a small parking lot, where we sat 200 yards from a port that would be our destined egress.
The parking lot was a veritable prison, with sneering, asshole Azeri port officers as its supply of dickhead wardens. They messed with us, never smiled, nor ever cared about our suck-filled position. Even worse was the port ticketing office that decided to, in an exceptional capitalist exploitation of this year's mongol rally, jack up ticket prices 12x higher than what they were for us "rich" westerners to cough up dough. A $40 ticket was now $500. Teams were absolutely irate by this. We pretty much lost all of our bargaining position due to 2 cranky teams who were willing to pay whatever to get out. In general, Azerbaijan was a weird place. Policy wise, its police officers apparently have to pay $10,000 to buy their jobs, and then pay $500 a month to keep them. That's basically all bribe money that keeps them "employed". The streets of Baku were littered with police officers pulling over cars, demanding money for inconsequential offenses. The cops looked like rotund, fickle children, stamping their feet in tantrums while standing outside each pulled over luxury car. Above them, and throughout the country, were billboards donning Heydar, their supreme 1990’s president.
The nightlife, however, proved to be more fun, as the new rally friendships we made were forged over drunken nights at ex-pat bars. One highlight was going out to a bar and seeing an Azeri guy my age wearing a shirt I really wanted reading, "I'M FROM AZERBAIJAN". Ignoring the irony of an Azeri wearing a shirt like this, I asked him if I could have it. Without one second of hesitation he shrugs "Sure!" and we go in an alley, get shirtless, and switch shirts. I walked away with the shirt I wanted, and he was able to enjoy my red shirt displaying the entire Periodic Table.
Waiting.
Day after day we waited.
What began as an innocent:
"Hey! Waiting for this ferry is all part sorting through the trials of the rally!"
...turned into a bitter:
"Where in God's F***ing name IS THIS F***ING BOAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
We eventually became Tom Hanks' character in the movie Cast Away, carving marks into the parking lot pavement, denoting how many days trapped on this steamrolled island of despair.
After 6 days of waiting, the boat finally arrived. We had to pay 5 more bribes (at this point we just accepted our fate and paid them dutifully). While stamping out of the country, a team we had become friends with had run out of time on their transit visas. The officer said, “Big problem!” (all officials loved saying that to us). All it took was “one phone call to the minister of the interior” and a 40 dollar fee was levied. One last kick-in-the-balls bribe they had to pay.
We drove our cars onto this massive boat called the Mercurie II. After hours and hours the boat finally set sail. We watched with eager - yet cautious - anticipation as we waved Azerbai-bai-bai to one of the most inhospitable, hostile territories on Earth.
Rock the Boat
About 15 different teams were on the boat with us. We had all become very close at this point, having been marooned together. The boat was actually quite enjoyable. Cabins with the quintessential circle window that latched open and closed, as the freshest sea-breeze rushed in, petting us to sleep.
While on the boat, we befriended two very interesting individuals. One of the guys, Noel, was from Wisconsin and he was riding a bicycle from Spain to Singapore. And another guy was from Holland, HITCHHIKING his way to China. Both of them were equally crazy, and they happened to meet each other with all us ralliers on the boat.
After 18 hours, the boat arrived in the port of Aktau, Kazakhstan. We were 3 miles from the shore, and they dropped the anchor. After sitting in port for 12 hours (efficiency breaks down, if you haven’t noticed that already), we were finally let off of the boat on Monday early evening.
All of the drivers were separated from the passengers, as we began the border process. We waited in a dingy room for hours, until one by one, we passed through the border agents. After getting the passport stamped, I moved to another room with two agents wearing swine flu masks. Weird. They looked specifically for any literature. Not contaminants, or glowing pieces of plutonium… but all books and documents. Hilariously, the man, in a thick accent goes:
“Terrorist?”
Paused.
“I mean… Tourist?”
We both shared a laugh as I didn’t answer him and walked away.
The boat’s crew had finally moved the train cargo out of the boat, so we could now go under and drive our cars out. But the ineptitude of the crew didn’t let us down. They started moving in all this NEW train cargo that needed to be sent to Baku. After ten minutes, they realized 18 cars were waiting to get out, and they had to move the train cargo in the opposite direction.
The entire city smelled like nauseating gas. This was Kazakhstan’s chief export. Nauseating gas. As we drove our cars into the border parking lot, they closed the fence on us, separating all drivers from passengers who were still in the border office. They wouldn’t let either party cross into the other party’s territory. One of the dumbest and funniest images to memory is tossing all of our passengers’ sleeping bags over a ten foot fence, so the passengers could properly go to sleep on the floor of that shitty office.
As for us drivers? We had the luxury of sleeping in our cars.
