The Dagestan cruised due west on smooth seas, and I passed the time studying up on Baku’s lodging options, the possible routes to Georgia, and walking around on the ship’s decks. I was the only passenger aboard, so small talk was limited to the few crew who passed by. The cabin next to mine was occupied by the ship’s chief carpenter, an Azeri who everyone called “bossman”. He invited me in for tea, which he served in a small tulip-shaped glass along with a dish of sugar cubes and candies. He plucked a sugar cube from the dish, dipped it in the tea and popped it into his mouth, then sipped the tea through it. I followed his lead, and we sat and talked about…nothing, really. He leafed through my Russian phrasebook and I looked at an Azeri newspaper, catching only a few words that were similar to English.

Around 8am we approached the port of Baku, with the city’s tall buildings shrouded in a thick, grey haze. During the passport check, the officer confirmed that I was on a 5-day visa, and asked if I had plans to go to Armenia. To my response of “No”, he said, “Armenia is terrorist, yes?”. I just shrugged, not wanting to enter into a pointed political discussion with the chubby-faced automaton holding my passport. (At the Azeri embassy in Tashkent, there was a hardcover book with the words “Armenian Terror” splashed across the cover’s montage of bloody corpses.) I’d heard there was plenty of blood on everyone’s hands in the conflict, but these PR efforts tell me that Azerbaijan doth protest too much…

I walked around to where the dock met the ship’s stern, and the scene was not promising: the train rails and most of the wooden supports had been removed from the dock’s approach to the cargo area, so it would be impossible to unload either the train cars or my bike. When I asked when it would be possible to unload the bike, the answer was an iffy 7 o’clock that evening. Given the present pace of the workmen, I had my doubts. The customs staff helped me pass the time by getting through the paperwork for the bike, the fruits of which was a 72-hour temporary vehicle permit. Never mind that I was already on a 5-day transit visa. Leaving the dock area, another officer recorded my passport information in a ledger, and said “$5!” Crap, not this again. He made the mistake of asking for it after handing me back my passport. Greenhorn. I told him to get stuffed.

It was still only around noon, so I took a taxi to a budget hotel, changed into street clothes and walked southwest toward the old city.

12th century Maiden’s Tower, with 5m thick walls and a huge buttress.

The walled old city has been preserved with a bit of a heavy hand, and new apartment blocks and office buildings are being built right up against its stone perimeter.

Within the old city is the Palace of the Shirvanshas (ca. 15th century), a sandstone complex of courtyards, mosques and mausoleums, many displaying soaring domes and intricate stone carving.

The ruins of the palace hamam, with obvious original and restored stonework. Unfortunately some of the ancient toilets had seen recent use.

I took the scenic route back to the hotel, walking along the peaceful oceanfront promenade, treating myself to an overpriced ice cream cone. The cranes in the distance mark the location of the docks and my waiting moto. Back at the hotel I changed back into my riding gear, took a taxi to the docks (the taxi driver got lost, then had a flat tire, then overcharged me), where a lone employee told me to come back the next morning at 11am. No taxis were standing by, so I waited for around 40 minutes, fuming at my naive expectations of bureaucratic competence.

The following day I arrived at the docks 20 minutes early, and was surprised to see my bike unloaded and waiting. Having done paperwork the previous day, I mounted up, idled to the guard shack and waited for the barrier to be raised. The guard (not the one I told to get stuffed) made a phone call, and told me to wait. Another officer with even more stripes on his shoulder came out and requested my paperwork, taking it with him after telling me to wait. And wait I did, for 30…40…60 minutes, my mood growing more foul. I had the necessary documents and insurance, so they could only have been fishing for a bribe. Eventually they realized that this fish wasn’t biting, handed back my documents and said I was free to go.

Still in a dark mood I battled through the downtown Baku traffic (the very worst of any drivers I’d experienced on the trip so far), following the main road south. Outside of town were vast, reeking oil fields on the Caspian shore, and near one of these I was waved over by a group of policemen running radar. “Salaam Aleykum. Passport please. Where are you from?” This guy must have been new too, because he started in with the bribe request after handing back my passport. “Fifity dollars? Sure!”, I said, “I need to go to the next town for an ATM, and I will be back with your money. Bye bye!” The next bribe, at a highway intersection 50 miles later, didn’t go as well. This particular uniformed thief pulled me over and started yelling that I hadn’t stopped at the entrance to the roundabout, and that it would cost me $50. I kept cool asked about the other dozens of cars passing us that were entering and exiting the roundabout without stopping. He changed his story, saying that I was speeding through the roundabout. I didn’t go for it, so he produced a rulebook (written in Azeri, naturally), flipped to the back section and pointed to some line of text with the appropriate dollar figure next to it. I stood my ground and said, “Nyet!”. While this was happening, he was holding heated negotiations with three other drivers he’d pulled over, two truckers and a guy in a beat-up station wagon. He grew tired of me, put my paperwork on the dash of the police BMW, smoked a cigarette and chatted with his partner. Ah, the waiting game. Here he actually had some leverage: with 24 of my 72 hour vehicle permit already burned up, I couldn’t afford to waste too much time with these shenanigans. Having nothing else to do, I decided to take a photo of the car and pretended to make notes in my notebook, making sure they saw me doing it.

After 10 more minutes, he relented. “How much, then?”, he asked. I reached into my pocket, hoping I’d remembered to separate my large bills from the small ones. A 10 manat bill (from memory, worth about US$13) was first in the wad (damn), and when he saw it his eyebrows went up, indicating that I’d soon be a free man. Too bad I’d parked so far from the police car, because I made the DR kick up a hell of a rooster tail of gravel when I left the scene.

The next bribe came from a completely different angle, this time trying to guilt me into giving money. A policeman at a bridge flagged me down and invited me in to the guardhouse for tea…my first thought was How much is this going to cost? After tea and bread and light chatter, out came the vodka for a shot each. Then a call home to his wife. “Oh, by the way, I have a sick baby at home. Can I have some money?” I told him that the last cop got all of my spending money for the day. He showed exaggerated disgust with his corrupt brethren, put a beat up skillet on the hot plate and cracked an egg into it. We ate it with more bread and tea. Then let me handle his Kalashnikov (but only after removing the magazine…), poured one more round of vodka, and asked for money again. It was both pathetic and offensive, and I really just wanted to get out of there before the vodka bottle made an encore appearance. I put some single manat bills on the table and headed out, trying not to notice the disappointed way he looked at my offering. He tried to give a friendly goodbye, but I just mounted up and roared away, lofting a low, sloppy wheelie.

I managed to clock some uneventful miles into late afternoon, and stopped at a roadside cafe for dinner. I was ravenous, and not in the mood to decipher a menu, so asked the cook/waiter if there was shashlyk or kebab available. He said, “How about one of each?” My man! He must have heard my stomach growling, because he laid out a delicious feast.

Halfway through my meal, a family of four sat down at a nearby table, and eventually they said hello. We chatted as much as we could, but within a few minutes I was eating again, and the family was eating and occasionally talking to the cook. When they got up to leave, the father smiled and said, “Welcome to Azerbaijan! Today Azerbaijan buys your dinner!” His wife and two small children were beaming proudly all the while and I thanked them using the the only Azeri words I could remember (which fortunately happened to be “Thank you very much”).  After they left, their kind gesture really fell on me like an anvil, remembering the proud papa, smiling wife and grinning children, and I felt my eyes growing a little wet with…relief? I think it was relief (that it’s not a nation of greedy jerks), mixed with sadness that this normal family, and likely most families in Azerbaijan, deals with corrupt police every day, and probably much corruption in other aspects of their daily lives, but they still manage to give a traveler a warm and proud welcome to their country. (After this last episode, I stopped stopping for checkpoints [traffic police are another matter]. I would pretend to fiddle with my tankbag, or something on my handlebars, and I would hear them whistle and shout, but they never gave chase.)

On the last day, I was baffled to see solitary policemen stationed every kilometer or so along the side of the road, standing at attention, without an apparent mission or purpose. After an hour, I was directed to a side road along with dozens of other motorists. Word soon came round that the president’s convoy would be rolling through. For an hour I chatted with drivers, a local herdsman, an Iranian youth (who made a joke of Iranians being arch-enemies of Americans), and other drivers, answering the usual questions about the bike. Finally an SUV roared by, then another, and finally the convoy of SUVs and sedans flew by doing a buck thirty (MPH, not KPH!) and no one seemed to care much. Everyone watched with no fanfare, the Iranian tapped his temple and rolled his eyes, we said goodbye and scrambled back to our vehicles.

At the border, the passport stampers were out to lunch so there was quite a queue. The guard in charge pointed at my bike, then touched his tongue, indicating that I could move up in exchange for a few dollars. (Either that, or he wanted to taste my bike.) I said No Thanks, enjoying the light breeze and the sunshine, and being dead tired of people with badges looking to separate me from my cash.