All over - not quite....

 With the bike sorted with the freight company and airplane tickets bought, we spend a quiet last day in Baku.

We managed to condense everything into our two bags and checked in for the flight. Arriving at the security desk we were told, 'Lady OK go through to flight, man has problems, no flight'. They were pretty insistent too. Paul was not being allowed to exit the country. And then as we hesitated a bit trying to think about what to do and with Francoise not wanting to go past the check point, they started getting a bit pushy - in somewhat less than 30 seconds.

Paul had brought the bike in to Azerbaijan - this seemed to cause some amusement. It had broken down, it was being shipped back to the UK. Here were the details. So Paul rang the personal telephone numbers of the freight company - it is a Saturday afternoon. Oh, yes, sorry, you need  to get Customs to sign you out, as you brought the bike in and are not personally taking it out. Sorry. Customs are closed at the weekend. And Monday is only half a day, as it is the closing ceremony of the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games. And you have to get your (on broken down) motorcycle to the Customs to sign it off. One or two wasted airplane tickets? Paul stays in Baku, Francoise flys home. One bag unloaded from airplane, who knows who has what.

No more photos from Baku. The camera went home with Francoise.

Over and out ( for the time being)

 

We have just learned that despite all the best efforts of our chums in Mottingham, UPS have lost the paperwork for our special clutch parcel and we will not be getting it in time.

So our borrowed time has run out and we will have to abandon this trip in Baku. This is the second time we have failed to cross the Caspian - but we are both healthy, Francoise's back is a bit better, so we need to start planning for another trip in a few years time - third time lucky.

 

Considering the disappointment, Baku has been pleasant and we will look forward to returning in the future. They don't seem to see many Europeans here. Once they have realised we are not Russian and been through a few countries and we say we are from England, then the universal language kicks in, "Chelsea?  Manchester?" Interesting fact - in the early 1900's, over 50% of the world's oil came from Azerbaijan.

 

Thanks  to all who have helped and tried to help us on the way. We have a stack of more unforgettable memories, 'souvenirs' in French even from this short little jaunt and have found some new buddies en route, whom we hope we will see in London some time.

 

 

Back home in London tonight. Not quite the finish point we had worked for, but given time we will try again - third time lucky hopefully.

 

Baku Salvation

So we are hanging around in Baku. Our chums at Warr's Harley Davidson in Mottingham have sent a new clutch via UPS to Baku. Our issue is whether it arrives in time so that we can get it fitted, buy tickets to cross the Caspian Sea, allow some contingency  and get in and out of Turkmenistan by the time our Turkmenistan visa expires on the 25th March. 

In the meantime we are visiting Baku and here is our visitor's guide to Baku.

 

1. Baku has London taxis.

 2. It also has a metro built in Soviet times. It has very deep tunnels and you are not allowed to wear high heels on it. There are not many stop, but it is worth taking even for one stop. Ticket price is @ 10p. Beware Metro maps, there might only be two lines, but the map is often printed the wrong way down and sometimes upside down. 

3. You need to do this because there are no tourist maps in Baku. People don't walk because there are more potholes in the pavements than in the roads.  The kerbs are very high as there is no drainage; it also stops people from parking cars on the kerb.

4. Only people in big black cars go fast, as there are an awful lot of Police about.

 We visited the Old Town a number of times for afternoon tea. The Carpet museum is excellent, the Contemporary Art Museum is wacky, over-crowded with stuff, but lacking a cafe whilst the Heydar Aliyev Centre, a Zaha Building is simply magnificent - shame that they put a pretty grim and grey conference centre next to it. 

The Azeri's are lovely people and incredibly polite and intrigued to see us here - despite Baku currently holding the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games there are not many people here. But we have been leafletted about those blighters from Armenia. The weather is very pleasant with nearly always a cooling wind. We imagine it could get very hot in the summer.

The F1 season is about to descend on Baku; it is a street race with concrete road blocks everywhere, making crossing the road even more difficult. It will be something to watch on TV.

 

Get over it

 

 We did get down the smooth, steep, wet cobblestones. Slowly.

 Now for the ride into Baku. 100m and the clutch doesn't feel right at all. 2km and it hasn't got any better. Oh dear... 

Stop at a petrol station and try and ask locals to if they have a truck or transit van and would be willing to take us to Baku. They have no English, us no Azeri. One guy seems to understand but nobody interested. Baku still 300km away and lots of police on the road and none of the vehicles around us looks particularly roadworthy - but they did at least work!

The guy that seemed to understand our predicament told us to ring 156 but our telephones didn't do anything. But his did and there was someone at the other end that understood and we agreed some dollars. In a little bit more than an hour we got a flat bed breakdown truck; it seems that 156 is like the AA.

 

The Harley had been slow- the breakdown truck was slower. The driver offered us cigarettes and we offered him mints in return. He preferred the cigarettes. We all listened  to what seemed to be Azerbaijan fusion Bangla rap. Yes...... 

 We stopped for lunch and managed to communicate that we would have the same as him. Sign language and pencil sketches. Then Baku. The roads were an awful lot better now and we picked up speed and not just down hill. We navigated through Baku with Paul holding his Garmin and hoping the battery did not run out. It took six  hours to get to the Harley dealer. We unloaded the bike and said our bye-byes and thank-yous to the lorry driver, who now had to drive all the way back. Hopefully the tip made it worthwhile for him.

The clutch was stripped down. It was clear that some of the plates were no longer, not only clear but smelled as they were no more too. It was what we thought.

The Harley guys don't have any spares. Ordering some more would take 3 to 4 days for them to come. Our Turkmenistan visa starts on the 16th, tomorrow and only lasts ten days, by which time we need to have got there and got out.

Tuesday morning, the first day of our Turkmenistan visa, we wave good- bye to the rest of our travelling companions rather sadly. It was not just our bike, Jeannot's no longer had a functioning starter, so it was going to be a group push to  get him going every time he stops from now on - and he's aiming for Tibet and then Beijing - all stops to be on the tops of hills for him from now on.

Clearly our trip might be over now; thinking caps on...

 

Not the best of friends

 

Today we rode into Azerbaijan from Georgia. It would have been more direct to come here from Armenia but the two don't get on very well. Its not just that they don't get on....

The Azeris tolerate people coming into their country with Armenian stamps in their passports. They don't tolerate Armenians themselves as they have not un-declared their war with them. So we were advised on certain things so as not to irritate the Azeris at the border crossing.

1. Don't put any Armenian stickers on the motorbike.

2. Don't carry any Armenian money with you.

3. Throw away any Armenian paperwork or receipts or hotel information.

4. Don't buy anything in Armenia and take it into Azerbaijan.

5. Don't wear an 'I love Armenia T-shirt'.

At the border we were asked whether we had been to Armenia and we had to say yes, as it was stamped in our passports. We were asked where we had been and whether we had brought any Armenian goods with us; hope the fridge magnet is well hidden.

One of the bikers was being asked serious questions about the bottle of water he had taken from his Armenian hotel - others more sensibly had decanted their Armenian Cognac into an old whiskey bottle.

The crossing was slow, three hours but uneventful and the guys were quite pleasant and loved the tails on the bike - Francoise could not risk photos. We had been told that we would have 72 hours to get our foreign registered vehicle either out of the country or into the customs zone at Baku, which is clearly the plan. However we seem to have been given a lot more than 72 hours which takes some of the pressure off and our visas give us a few more days too.And then 100 miles of uneventful scenery along very bumpy roads that we think we have just about survived and that then brings us to Shiki, Azerbaijan's second city.

Sheki is a cobble stoned village on a hill. Our hotel is at the top of the hill. The hill is vertiginous at this point. The cobble stones are worn smooth. There is a burst water main at the top of the hill. Francoise walks/ climbs the last 50m. We feel for the bike or more particularly the clutch.

 

Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been far tougher than we thought. We were waiting for the hard stuff after the Caspian, but we have struggled a bit here. The pot/ bomb holes have left their impression on us. Francoise still has a bad back and the unrelenting bad roads are not helping. We are getting wary now; the ones we hit could have put paid to our trip - but they and the others could not only hurt or damage us and the bike, they could easily lead to something far more serious than that. We don't have much trust in the roads any more - yet we won't get very far at 40km/h and the concentration required is quite tiring.
 

And tomorrow morning, we have to go back down those cobblestones...

Pots and bombs - Armenia to Georgia

 Our view on Armenia had improved overnight thanks to a good meal in a good restaurant - funny that. Nonetheless we found it a strange place from the inhospitable and bleak border crossing, not somewhere you would be promoted to, if you were in that line of work to the very European Yerevan. We suppose it is still trying to come to terms with its post Soviet identity. Most of Armenia is high with an average altitude greater than 1500m - maybe these were some of the bleak parts, but the Alps and Pyrenees have never struck us as being bleak. We were told that the money comes  from copper and other minerals. They spend a lot of it on the war with Azerbaijan in 1994 when they 'liberated' the Nagorno- Karabakh region, which Stalin had assigned to Azerbaijan. The Azeris still have a bit of it, but not the bit that contains the gold mines. It is still a live conflict with rounds being regularly fired off across the current borders. Although intrigued, our route didn't take us there and we would have needed  additional visas and probably a different sort of insurance too.

So we set off positively from Yerevan and even though it started off positively sunny on the way to see another historic monastery, this one perched on a hill overlooking a lake - Armenia's 'coast', it was positively cold. Well it was near enough at 2,000 m again and one wonders if it ever gets warm here - we are nearly summer after all and we were the only ones taking coffee in somewhere that could easily seat 200, but how they would ever serve them we could not imagine.

From there we headed North again and the roads started deteriorating. It became quite stressful and Francoise jarred her back again. We stopped for a breather.

 

They were repairing the roads occasion but the progress seemed to be slow; a kettle for the tar pot not being the best possible solution. We then tried three times to find the evening's hotel. On the first attempt we got within 12km only to find the the continuation was a dirt road. We then did a 30km loop to find that we were ending up pretty close to where the aforementioned dirt road started. So we then did a further 30km loop to be faced with 8km of bad, very bad, road works.

We never got an answer out of our teddy mascot, but Francoise was hurting; the bike was developing rattles and noises that were only adding to Paul's stress levels, so the mascot might have been the only one that was OK with the day. There was also a coach load of Austrian tourists at the hotel, to see we cannot imagine what - they had been ferried in by mini-buses and Lada's as the coach had refused to go through the road works,  so service at dinner was positively slow too. Need to get the towels out on the chairs before breakfast in the morning.

So we left via the same roadworks and the border and having done it once with all the plant working, it was not too difficult to do it again. Though Paul is worrying about the bike. 

It was then straight to the border and past one of those copper mines/ smelters which could probably have doubled as the Orc production plant from Lord of the Rings. Bye-bye, and probably not 'au-revoir', Armenia. Border back into Georgia was pretty uneventful and slightly more hospitable than where we had come in. Then a relatively straight forward run to the wine growing region of Georgia as our next staging post - straightforward as long as we ignore the inside corners on the hairpin bends....

On the way we stopped for a Georgian kebab, which was one of the highlights of the day and a cyclist - from Leeds but living in Tbilisi for five years - started chatting to us and asked us how we found the roads. Bomb holes, not pot holes was the way he described them.

 

Georgia on your mind, Nothing Day and Blood, Peace and Apricots

Georgia on your mind, Nothing Day and Blood, Peace and Apricots

So we leave Turkey for Georgia. We really want to go to Armenia, but you don't seem to be able to get into Armenia from Turkey - something to do more than likely with the Armenian genocide/ holocaust round about WW1, understandable really as the Turks don't seem to have admitted it yet, according to the Armenians.

So we would get to Armenia by going through Georgia - a short day's  ride. Well, more mountain passes and wind across treeless plateaus - hence the name windswept we think, leaning the bike into the wind for kilometres on end just to go in a straight line. No trees so we don't think it was just today that it was windy. This place is Dickensian bleak on steroids, Shivering Heights. We were cold, there was wind and dampness and plenty of snow around, though we didn't get snowed on. Highest pass was 2,550m and there were potholes and slippy roads too. We had more hail and it hurts with an open face helmet. The wind did not abate till we came down to the border crossing, where we now had trees and even some sunshine. But the Turkish side of the border was pretty crappy and lost in some other time. There were no issues though.

 

One of the first things we saw after crossing into Georgia was a renovated castle on the top of a rock with a cross on a hill next to it with Christ crucified. This is a different country. Kars, our last place in Turkey was totally dry - we are not sure how a town can be without alcohol when it is not the rule of the country, but that is the way it was. We are really not sure how Turkey is going to end up. But Georgia is a wine producing country. But so is Turkey......

 

Perhaps it was because we had Georgia on our mind, perhaps it was because the sun was coming out, perhaps it was because we were trying to get to our destination in order to see some more caves - this time a monastery.

Who knows, but we had pot holes and twistys and traffic and Paul managed to deal with it all reasonably well. But then he didn't, and he hit a shortly spaced string of three potholes after trying to overtake a lorry and having to move back in line. Francoise got thrown up in the air and back against the top box. Francoise with jarred back, top box with damaged hinge. Hopefully both repairable. We were lucky. So we calmed down a bit and got to the destination a little bit later and saw the monastery from down below rather than visiting it.

Nothing Day 

The top box was 'repaired' with a couple of second hand screws Paul had brought with him. Unlikely to find Imperial threads in Georgia, without getting into where we actually were in Georgia. Questionable how long the repair will last but rest of bike seems OK. Francoise is on Nurofen and had a bad night. So everything to look forward to with a new day....

 

Road to border with Armenia gets worse. We are over 2,000m and redefining potholes. We do well, but we become even slower. We can have a smile nonetheless at the price of petrol in Georgia, which seems to be less than 50p a litre. If we thought the Turkey side of the Turkey-Georgia border was grim, then we clearly were not prepared for the Georgia-Armenia border. This is one of the grimmest most godforsaken places we have been and being at an altitude of over 2,000m, the weather was blowing in from all directions.

It never takes long for a country to get rid of you in comparison to letting you in. Armenia were certainly not encouraging us and it took over three hours to get through passports, pay $30 dollars Customs fee, take the receipt to the man who filled in the log by hand who wanted to know where and when the motorcycle was made etc and what sort it was, take his bit of paper to the man who gave us another piece of paper to say we could bring it past the stop barrier where it could then be inspected and then we could take the bike to the kiosk where the man would sell us insurance for $20. In Georgia there simply was no insurance, one was 'self- insured.'

 

By this time the very black clouds hanging over Georgia were now over the border control point and after clearing all the officialdom we set off on the @150km ride to Armenia's capital of Yerevan. The road was very boring, potholed - though more had been repaired than in Georgia, but you could not rely on it. We had wind and hail and we were very glad to get to Yerevan. The 150km had taken us three and a half hours, so it made for a long day. The only smile was from getting flashed by a speed camera, though if our average speed was @40km/h we must have been going very slow indeed in parts to warrant a speed flashing.

We arrived tired in Yerevan in our waterproofs. We had come down over a 1,000m and it was now 28 deg C.

Blood, Peace and Apricots.

On our day off we had a guide to show us round Yerevan. Our hotel was near Republic Square, so we had seen that the night before along with the illuminated musical fountains that seem obligatory in this part of the world. The Las Vegas Bellagio it isn't.

 We then visited the Cascades Contemporary art museum which was a very ambitious building indeed - the sort of thing Paul tried numerous times to get built but very rarely succeeded - but this wasn't finished, as there were column rebar cages swaying in the air, where construction had stopped. At the end of the Soviet era. In 1991.















We then visited the Genocide museum and were shocked at the pretty rubbish construction and external upkeep of a building that was so important. The guide, who was quite clearly very proud indeed of their country and city, was then reduced to pointing out the metro stations, there is only one line and also foreign embassies. And the Charles Aznavour, famous Armenian, Centre - soon to be memorial one would have thought, he is 94 years old.

Our guide told us many thing about the Armenian National this that and the other and all the symbolism in every thing. She also mentioned that the red, blue and orange stripes of the flag represented the blood that had been lost, the colour of universal peace and aprocots, the national fruit.

We don't get Armenia. It was so poor and desolate where we crossed the border and yet Yerevan is very expensive and cosmopolitan and in some ways is a bit like Madrid in feeling. So much money here - so absolutely the opposite in the country with shepherds living in bricked-up Lada's. With nothing else in Yerevan apart from a Cathedral to see, we took to car spotting - and buying more Nurofen......