The Merkuri 2 sank two years ago killing nearly all its passengers. We were booked onto its sister ship the Merkuri 1. “Yes, this an older boat but don’t worry, the Merkuri 2 was caught in a storm and we don’t have storms too often,” we were assured as we boarded. “What about the storm last night?” I replied to the student navigator who spoke good English. “All the boats stayed in port last night, that’s the best thing to do”. No argument there. But the fact that all the boats had stayed in port for the storm meant there was now a bit of a queue in the shipping route that crossed the Caspian Sea through the forest of oil rigs. What could have been a 12 hour crossing from Baku to Turkmenbashi turned out to be a 44 hour ordeal.

 

Perhaps ‘ordeal’ is too harsh a word to use. The crossing we had heard described as ‘pretty wild’ was in fact very comfy. The boat wasn’t a cargo ship or oil tanker as we had expected, it was as much of a ferry as any other ferry I’ve been on. And it wasn’t in much worse a state than some of the old boats that criss-cross between the Scottish Hebrides.

 

We set off on a flat calm day which turned into a magical clear night lit by a 3D milky way and fires from passing oil rigs reflecting on the smooth, black, oil like sea. Dawn revealed the coast of Turkmenistan but it was there we stopped and had to wait some 16 hours while the boats in front of us unloaded their cargo. Add to that the 5 hours waiting for customs and 4 hours waiting for an engine problem back at the Baku end, plus a further 2 hours to dock and a 3 hour customs queue at the Turkmenbashi end and I suppose you have something closer to an ‘ordeal’. (The 86 year old lady who had sung to us while we were waiting at sea revealed at Turkmenbashi customs that her passport was 20 years out of date! She said she was going home to Turkmenistan to die. They eventually let her through.)

 

So when we finally crossed into Turkmenistan at 2.30am, after 44 hours of waiting, we weren’t thinking about what we’d say if they had found out that I made documentaries and Helen did human rights work or if the government guide would question us when he met us on arrival. All we wanted was to find a bed.

 

In the end nobody asked us anything, they didn’t confiscate my video camera or microphones, they didn’t even open our bags. They simply checked our papers then waved us through to meet our guide.

 

27 year old Alan greeted us with a grin, explained that long queues were caused by stupid officials and promptly drove us to an apartment with a big bed and said to ring him once we had slept for as long as we needed.

 

Turkmenbashi was small, well kept (no sign of the kind of poverty of small towns in Azerbaijan) and full of police. The president was in town visiting his summer house so police stood at every street corner. We went for a swim. Like Madonna and Guy Ritchie we splashed around in the sea while our sunglasses wearing duo of guide and driver sat looking on from the air conditioned car.

 

As we set off on the 7 hour drive to Ashgabat Alan explained the photo rules - no police, soldiers, factories, train stations, industrial sites or administrative buildings. He went on to tell us that despite the government's claim to a population of 6 million there were actually only about  4 million people in the country. We asked about his job . He said he hadn’t been a guide for long. Until recently Judo had been his life. He had been third in the world for a while. I proudly told him that I too had been a judo champion, I had been third in Scotland for several years as a teenager - as usual this claim to fame failed to impress.

 

Alan performed his Islamic prayers as best he could sitting in the passenger seat of the BMW then fell asleep. The driver kept the car at a fearless 180km per hour only slowing down for the police check points every 100km. He gave a friendly wave to the guys in uniform, they all seemed to know him and waved back.  I fell asleep too.

 

JL