At Europe's eastern coast: well over 5000km now!

Hello! After a short period of radio silence, I’m back on the radar, this time in Baku, Azerbaijan. Last time I wrote from Istanbul, some time ago by now, and quite a lot has happened since then. I’ll really try to be a bit more concise than the previous reports, and to have more pictures and movies to speak instead.
First, for those that are interested in tracking my route on the map, I’ll list the cities that I passed on my way from Istanbul to Baku: Istanbul, Bolu, Ankara, Samsun, Trabzon, Batumi, Kutaisi, Tbilisi, Agstafa and of course Baku.

I left Istanbul on the 14th of July. Hitchhiking out of cities is generally the most difficult part of the job. Knowing that, try hitchhiking out of Europe’s biggest metropolis, counting at least 16 million souls, and you might find that it involves taking a one hour bus ride to the edge of the city, being sent away by the police at the spot you might have thought was the best to find a lift, after which you might have to walk several kilometers next to the highway to the nearest resting place for truckers. At said place, you might rip your pants, but you might also find a lift to the next big gas station after a whopping 10 minutes. It will come as no surprise to you that all these things, with an incredible amount of coincidence, happened to me.
For some reason, even though I took a long rest in Istanbul, I was still tired and didn’t feel like hitchhiking at all. At that last gas station I sat down in the grass for a while, thinking what I could do. My plan had been to hitchhike to Samsun that day, or even to Trabzon, although that would have been a bit far. I thought Ankara might be a bit off the route, but at least there would be trains and busses leaving for long distance, just in case I would feel I had had enough of hitchhiking altogether. I found cars there easily, and I even found a last minute place to stay through couchsurfing.
I stayed in Ankara an extra day to evaluate my options, but after a really good night’s sleep the first night, I actually felt confident about hitchhiking again. The day in Ankara had been really nice, meeting many great people, and even though the next morning it was raining, I got picked up within 5 minutes by a truck going all the way to Samsun. An easy day, just what I needed! I just sat back, tried to teach the truck driver some Dutch songs, and enjoyed the view of inland Anatolia. At some point the driver offered me to take the wheel, but I kindly refused, showing him my driver’s license, which is only valid for normal cars.
I have to say, I was rather pleased with myself for this wisdom, as no 15 kilometers later we were stopped by the police, and it turned out there was some kind of problem with the truck. It took us about 2 hours to fix the problem and continue our way to Samsun. Once I arrived there I was received by a very hospitable couchsurfer, Ersan, and I enjoyed an evening with a good dinner, a great view of the Black Sea and a very comfortable bed.
My host brought me to a gas station along the road to Trabzon the next morning, but luck wasn’t on my side. I waited for over an hour, with no one stopping. By then, I was pretty tired of waiting, and when the opportunity to get a change of scenery presented itself I grabbed it with both hands. This opportunity came in the form of 3 Czech hitchhikers who convinced their driver to take me too, in the back of his open pick-up truck. It was really wonderful, even though it lasted for 50km only.
What was less wonderful, however, was my discovery of chewing gum being stuck to my bag. Apparently, some guy, thinking it was too much trouble to throw his chewing gum in the trash can, decided to spit it out in the street. Let me take this opportunity to express my utter disgust of these people! I hate very few things, but this is definitely one of them, and if you ever throw chewing gum on the street, or stick it anywhere else where it shouldn’t be: I hold you personally and all chewing gum throwers collectively responsible for the grief incurred that day.
Ha, that’s better!

I had a great time with the Czechs. We went swimming in the black sea, and I decided to go with them the next day too. It turned out it was no problem at all to hitchhike with the four of us together, as one car after the other stopped, usually within 10 minutes. The night had been really comfortably spent at the house of the most hospitable Turks you can imagine, and the next day we made it to Georgia without problems. Unfortunately, we got separated after we crossed the border, but I got a message later that they were alright. I continued alone, and after an Azeri guy had helped me find a cheap place to stay for the night, I found it quite easy to hitchhike further in Georgia. Nonetheless, I was somehow again feeling tired of hitchhiking, and when I saw a bus leaving for Tbilisi, I got on it without thinking too much. The price was only 15 LAR, about 7 euro’s and it was still quite far to go to Tbilisi. Before the bus left, however, the thinking bit came in again, and luckily I got off the bus again, excusing myself to the confused bus driver, telling him I really couldn’t go with him because of some weird excuse I already forgot. I said ‘luckily’ because the rest of the day was really great, with two more rides to get to Tbilisi. The first of these was with two young guys my age, who were arguably the worst and most reckless drivers in the country. I would later learn that this style of driving was common in all of the Caucasus, but I hadn’t gotten used to it by then yet, and several times I caught myself holding my breath during a hazardous overtaking maneuver. Our time together was prolonged with about an hour when the police stopped us. I took the opportunity to calm down again, and afterwards the driver seemed to have learned his lesson, as he drove considerably slower the rest of the way. The second ride made up for everything. An older couple picked me up in Kutaisi, took me to dinner at their family’s place in the mountains before driving me to their house in Tbilisi. There we ate more, and I was also served the traditional, homebrewed Georgian Chacha. I can really only advise anyone to drink this if they have a desire to burn their insides away, something that the 70% alcohol in the drink will certainly take care of.
The next day a family friend, who was a bus ticket controller, took me to the city really early, and we didn’t buy any bus tickets for obvious reasons. After he had put me on the bus to the edge of the city I had a really relaxed time hitchhiking through the country side, as I knew I would be picked up by family of friends from my university on the other side of the border, which was only 50km away. The last ride I got in Georgia was by the chef of the Georgian border police, so when I got out of that car, none of the border police bothered me as I walked past them, smiling.
After being picked up on the other side (while already having been offered a ride to Baku with a passing truck) I contacted Nijat and Farhad, my friends from university here. They told me it would be better to take the train from the east of the country, because then I would arrive in the morning and we would have the whole day to do sightseeing in the city. I knew they probably were afraid that hitchhiking in Azerbaijan would be impossible, and they didn’t really believe it was possible here, like many people seem to think about their own country. Not to spoil the plans for the sightseeing, I took the train for these 450km, for which the ticket had to be booked a week in advance if you didn’t have connections anywhere (luckily I did have those…). A few days ago, when we came back from the mountains, near Ganca, not too far from where I had taken the train before, I convinced Nijat to hitchhike back to Baku. And guess what: it worked!! Imagine, who would have thought….

Ever since then, the 20th of July, I have been in Azerbaijan, in various places, but most of the time in Agstafa, Baku, and in the mountains south of Ganca. So far, I’ve done quite a few things here; I’ve driven a really old Renault car somewhere in the countryside, I’ve been to an Azerbaijani wedding (a lot of food, really many people who all look strangely at you since you’re the only person with blue eyes and blond hair there, and really really loud music…), I’ve gone fishing at the river nearby, walked in the mountains, drank tea at shepherds tents, rode donkeys and horses, played domino, played poker with one of the few groups of people that dare to go against the authoritarian government here, ate sheep’s testicles, and hope to go swimming in the Caspian Sea soon (it’s too windy now). I’m visiting my friends from university here, Nijat, who’s place I’m staying at, Farhad and Orhan, and I’m having a really good time. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking for this beautiful, if somewhat strange, country.

In the mean time I am also trying to prepare my trip onwards to Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea. First of all, I need the visa for Kazakhstan, and later on in Almaty I would need to get my Kyrgyz visa too. I went to the Kazakh embassy yesterday to get that one, and it turned out that it was only 30 dollars for a double entry visa, instead of 50 dollars which was the price when Nijat asked on the phone. Also, it turned out I could get the Kyrgyz visa there too, for only 20 dollars! Both are ready tomorrow, so that’s a real stroke of luck there, especially because other travelers had reported on the internet that the Kyrgyz visa would have cost me at least 60 dollars in Almaty, where the people of the embassy would also be a lot less helpful (the lady here was really sweet!).
The second part is the boat trip. As soon as I’ve got my visa I’m going to the harbor to buy my ticket and get my name on the list of passengers. Then it will be a matter of waiting until a ship comes in to take people to Kazakhstan, because now no ships can enter the port because of the strong winds. When I do get on it, I’m taking a lot of supplies, because on the other side it might take a while too before the ship can enter the port, and after a few days on the ship, the crew starts to sell you food and drinks for ridiculously inflated prices.
The third part is crossing Kazakhstan from west to east. In between the Caspian Sea and Almaty in the east is an incredibly big stretch of land, mainly steppes and other very dry, desert like lands. Now, I know it must sound like I’m a big pussy, but I don’t want to get stuck anywhere in the middle. So I was thinking that, since Aqtau is a big port city, and Almaty is a city with a lot of economic activity, there must be cargo trains going from the one to the other. And I could try to ask the driver of one of those to let me go with it. You might call it the if-you-don’t-shoot-you-always-miss strategy…
If that doesn’t work, however, I plan to just take the passenger train across this great divide. The ride is long enough, about 60 hours, and I think it might be a nice intermezzo from Europe to China. I still have about five and a half weeks left to get to Xiamen, so maybe I won’t make it all the way by hitchhiking, simply because I want to stay a bit longer in some places. Next time I can update will probably in a while, when I reach Almaty, I hope this post was enough to give you a bit of an idea of how the trip has been going so far, and will keep you guys satisfied until next time. See you!