Baku

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Baku

A little rain and fog to start, but a nice backroad ride in the morning. We passed an accident scene with a dead cow and a crunched Lada off the side of the road. There were lots of officials and spectators. We got to drive through more herds of cows and a huge flock of sheep. Everyone was driving way off on the shoulder to get through. The sheepherder was keeping the sheep in the middle of the road.

Later we got to drive over a couple of passes and valleys with 10MPH truck traffic. The final run into Baku looked and felt like Wyoming, barren with a big cross wind. Baku had very heavy traffic in town, but most of the drivers were nice ad let us cut between and in front of them. Fortunately, I had an experienced London motorcyclist leading me through because on my own it would have taken at least twice as long.

We got to Baku a little before 2, and managed to get a spot on the railroad ferry for Wednesday night. We left the hotel at 4PM, got on the ferry about 8PM, and left at about 10PM. Unfortunately we didn't get to see much of Baku. There are some nice new buildings, built with oil money, but that was a different part of town. We could see some of them from the ferry.

The ferry ride was not nearly as bad as in previous years, but it was really basic. Its main job is to haul rail cars across the Caspian Sea.

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