I flew into Baku yesterday evening with my bicycle carefully disassembled and boxed.  My aim to find a boat across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenbashi, the main port of Turkmenistan.  Baku glitters at night – a sparling testament to abundant inexpensive power.  Elaborately shaped and illuminated buildings soar skywards.  My taxi speeds unnervingly fast through heavy traffic – a lot of big black darkened windows 4WDs.  We slowdown on getting to the Old City – an intricate maze of steep heavily cobbled lanes through Medieval fortifications and homes.  Many converted into ‘boutique' hotels and tourist eateries. My internet searches had elicited a maze of different advice on how to find out about ships sailing to Turkmenistan.   Most counselled phoning to ask about sailings, which depart not from Baku but from the new port of Alat 50 miles south.  I needed a SIM card. After a sleepless night, Mansoor at the hotel desk, happy to practice his English, offered to take me to a mobile shop.  The unsmiling attendant accepted payment and then spent an hour frowning at his screen as he keyed in every single detail from my passport, before telling me that – as it was my second  visit to Azerbaijan, I needed to register my mobile – at a Post Office.  The unsmiling attendant at the Post Office needed only half an hour to key in my passport details – before informing me that to register I needed a custom's declaration, which could be obtained at the airport, only.  I gave up.     The seemingly most credible site ([Wikivoyage / Carivanistan.com])  ad suggested that [shipping office] operates from a container near the sea front – helpfully marked on a map.  The sea front – a wide promenade of gardens and coffee shops – in front of grand new buildings, some neoclassical others determinedly modern.  The [seaport] container was nowhere  to be found on what was now a construction site.  Most enquiries of passers-by (using Google Translate) elicited blanks stares and shrugs – but I was eventually directed to the apparent HQ of [ ].  The two unsmiling men at reception similarly stared at me as if bemused by my question.  But one began ringing around – and after following several leads, eventually was put through to Liman of [ ] – who spoke English and was passed to me.  Yes there was a ship departing that day – come to the Alat Ferry Terminal before 4 o'clock.  It was already early afternoon, no way I could bike to Alat by 4m.  But – with no phone, I figured the only way to find out about sailings was to go to Alat anyway. Assembling my bike in a cramped hotel room (smelling of sewers) took a while , so I didn’t set off until 4.30.  I  wheeled the bike – now with 15kg of panniers – for perhaps a couple of kms up & down the steep cobble – then on to the six-lane highway south down the coast.  I tried to ride along smaller side roads where I could – but there weren't many, so for most of the ride I hugged the highway hard shoulder – fast cars and giant lorries thundering past, often with a loud horn blast.  One time I did follow a side road for a few miles – it petered out the wrong side of the highway.  Impossible to ggetmy bike across six lanes of heavy traffic with double crash barriers down the middle.  I disconsolately headed back hoping the find a junction before too long – when I spied a pedestrian tunnel opening.  I headed down steep broken stairs – tottering to carry my bike ungainly overweight with panniers – into the pitch-black tunnel below.  Lurching off the bottom step – my feet splashed into six inches of stagnant water on the flooded tunnel floor.  I waded grimly over – the rest of the ride with squelchingly wet shoes. Dusk had now fallen.  I cycled the last hour or so in the dark – my bike a Christmas tree of lights. Good to get to the [Sports] Hotel, the only one I could find in Alat, out of my sopping footgear and into a hot shower.  My room (also smelling of sewers) the floor above the gym – juddering to heavy metal music and black-clad men admiring each other pumping iron.  But I slept.   I woke feeling rather less than fit & ready to go – legs stiff and knees complaining about yesterday's ride.  A text from Liman told me there was a ship today – and to come to the Port Office by 13.00. I gingerly cycled the 6km to the Port, stopping en route to buy provisions for the crossing – which could take 17- 24 hours.  A mile-long queue of articulated lorries led to the port.  At the Port gates, one of the security guards – keen to practice his English – directed me to the portacabin ticket office – closed – and then talked long and yearningly of the well-remunerated time he had worked for BP on rigs in the Caspian Sea.  An hour or so later, two men opened the office – and explained (unsmilingly) the ticket choice US$120 basic, $150 for a cabin, $180 for a delux cabin.  I opted for $150 – and was directed to the next door portacabin bank to change that into Azeri Manat.  The ticket attendants then laboriously fed the wad of Azeri notes into the bank cash-point – painfully keyed in all my passport details into their screen, and issued the ticket! Almost in parallel, a pretty young Australian girl (for whom the security guard quickly abandoned me) was undergoing the same procedure to get a passage to [ ], the Kazakhstan port further north on the eastern Caspian shore.  Lucy was 22, slim, petite, blond, blue-eyed and with a ready smile – travelling the world alone with her rucksack – intending to get to China to meet a friend.  She had had a few encounters with lecherous men – but seemed happily unfazed by the potential perils awaiting her. We were directed to capacious jerry-built waiting rooms – peopled almost entirely by black-clad lorry drivers (just about all Azeri men dress in black).  A couple greeted me cheerily –  and with a very few words of English and lots of gesticulations – told me the ship – the Bagtyyar – was due to depart at 5pm.  I began reading Colin Thubron's 1994 ‘The Lost Heart of Asia', his account of travelling through Central Asia after the break-up of the Soviet Union.  Thubron has a fantastic, unique way with words – but clearly found Uzbekistan a dismal place, the people in thrall to imagined better past times (something I feel more likely to stem from Thubron's fertile imagination than anyone else's). 5pm came and went.  At 7.30 we were directed outside, and stood around in the colder-by-the-minute sea breeze.  Half an hour or so later, a couple of half trucks rolled up.  The lorry drivers' bags & cases were piled into one, some two dozen drivers into another.  A further half hour wait – then off they sped, weaving through hundreds of lorries and containers – me peddling frantically behind – to the jerry-built Customs hall.  Where we stood around waiting a further hour, before being ushered though randomly thorough security checks and passport control, and up precipitous gangplank stairs onto The Bagtyyar.  My cabin – rudimentary and unclean.  Now nearly 10pm, I asked if we would set off shortly.  Departure 6am tomorrow – I was told through Google Translate