You can’t truly call yourself an idiot until you’ve tried to sleep through a six hour thunderstorm in nothing but bivvi bag as thick as a binliner.

I am an idiot.

That was my first night in Azbaijian. Not the best introduction. Everything I owned was wet. I really want my tent back. My house. My humble abode. The fact that I’m carrying it around with a set of knackered poles is just a painful daily reminder.

The next morning we biked to Seki, the first town after camp, and saw the aftermath; streets flooded, branches chucked around. It gave me flashbacks of my painfully shit nights ‘sleep’.

A quick rundown on Azerbaijan then. It’s essentially Turkey-lite. The language is pretty much the same, it’s just as expensive, there’s not so much crap everywhere, Azeri blokes are all trying to look like a tanned Ian Rush, and they do this thing to get your attention, kind of like a hiss, like they’re trying shoo a cat, which I found unbelievably rude. Huge plus point though – they’re ridiculously friendly, your arm will ache from waving.

Skirting along the Causacus mountains as long as we could.

This road came after 30km of rubble. Slicker than spit.

There are two ways to Baku from Georgia — the northern crossing, which we took, and the southern crossing, which by accounts from other cyclists we met is extremely flat desert. Our way skirted along the Causacus mountains until the last day, and seemed a lot more interesting, we had winding roads through woodland, some stretches even reminded me of back home. That might’ve been because it was overcast though, nothing to get homesick about.

A big map of the Silk Road. I thought I’d take a picture incase we got lost.

The last few mountains before desert.

This lush motel also included our own personal waterfall. A man could suffocate in such luxury.

Baku is also known as ‘The City of Winds’. Bet you didn’t know that. I didn’t. Soon found out though, with huge crosswinds once we got within 50km. We met some other French cyclists, Andaji and Camille, who were heading towards Kyrgyzstan then flying to India, at a much more steady pace, so we left them to it and decided to meet up when we got to Baku.

A splash of patriotism towards the desert, courtesy of Frenchman Alex Duaurin.

I’d heard plenty of bad things about Baku. A horrible, soulless city rich with oil money. It’s half true, it is rich with oil money, but there’s plenty of parks and green spaces, some of the centre looks like an identikit city shopping area, but a lot of cities do. The old town is nice and chilled, and has some hilarious street carpet merchants with quality sales pitches —

‘Just look at them…’ in an amazed tone, as though every fibre of the magical carpet that he’s shifting has addled his mind with its beauty.

Alex Duaurin, the cycling Frenchman, was already there, the fourth time I’ve bumped into him, before he was heading south to Iran. On the second day another cyclist turned up in our hostel, Steve of www.cyclingthe6.com. He’s been cycling every continent over the last six years. He was on his way back to the UK on the last stretch, including a bikepacking trip in Georgia and a family holiday in Spain. The guy will have some serious adjusting to do. I asked him what his plan was when he gets back —

‘Pitch my tent up in my mum’s back garden.’ Sounds like a decent option to be honest, I’ll probably do the same.

Our hostel soon filled up with more cyclists, the French couple arrived, and Ivan, a Ukrainian who lived near Brighton who had taken some time out to cycle Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran, except he’d been held up slightly because the Iranian embassy’s printer had ran out of ink. Yep, that’s right, the ludicrous world of picking up visas on the road.

We had no idea how long we’d be in Baku, the plan was to catch the ferry to Aktau. Recently the rules have changed; vehicles board in Baku, foot passengers, including cyclists, board in Alat, 70km south. The problem with this is that you can only buy tickets a few hours before departure, and there isn’t really a schedule, which means you have no chance of biking there, leaving the option of hitching a ride. So in other words, there was a massive fuckabout brewing, but we had no idea when it’d hit.

We managed to pick up our Uzbek visas in one day as we’d got ourselves some Letters of Invitations, saving us about a week of kicking our heels around, but it was by no means easy, the embassy is in the arse-end of nowhere, and you have to pay them at the bank in the centre of town, before heading back for the official stamp. You also have to bear in mind that the little old Uzbek man likes to have three hours lunch break, and he’s only there three days a week.

The next morning we gave the ferry ticket office a quick call to see if anything was happening.

Jackpot.

There was a ferry that day, leaving at 1pm. Problem was, it was already half ten. We needed to get our shit together, fast. Miguel, our hostel owner sorted us a taxi that could take our bikes and ourselves to the ticket office, buy our tickets, then high-tail it to Alat in time for blast-off.

What actually turned up at half eleven was a knackered old Lada driven by Tuco from Breaking Bad.

‘He wants the bikes on top, do you think they’ll be alright?’ Fredrik asked.

‘Yeah, that’s alright, I’ve done that before.’ Steve piped in.

On the roof they went, tied up extremely fucking tightly, and we jumped in the Lada.

The only problem was, Tuco hadn’t a clue where this ticket office was, and drove around asking people for the best part of an hour. We thought we had it at one point, turns out it was the Baku loading point, then after an hour we found it, again in the middle of nowhere. Tuco came into his own here – I did the very English thing and stood at the back of the queue patiently, then he ran in, grabbed mine and Fredrik’s passports, barged to the front, gave it a load of Azeri and bang. Tickets done.

Ever seen a Lada go like the clappers down a motorway with two bikes strapped the the top? I’ll go one better – I’ve been in one. People in cars drove up beside us and made hand gestures pointing to the bikes, promptly waved away by Tuco, but it didn’t soothe my fears of seeing The Tangerine Dream backflipping off the back into a triple pike with twist down the motorway.

Fortunately there’s no such story to tell, we got there, untied the bikes and paid Tuco his hard-earned. If anything the drive improved my bike; the bottle cage grips my bottle like a dream now.

We went through the passport and visa checks, Fredrik got the usual Armenia interrogation, they prodded our bags for a minute and we were on board.

Bikes on boats.

The Alat – Aktau ferry isn’t pretty. This ain’t no cruise. There’s space for four passengers, us, an empty bed, and a shifty Russian bloke who looked like Steve Buscemi. A quick trip to the john and I thought —

‘Now’s not the time to get the shits.’

I got the shits.

The ferry leaving Alat.

Have some pipes.

In case of emergency, stand in a confused manner and wait for a shooting star to parachute towards earth.