Musado Hotel Baku

... perfect English, having he told us, recently returned from several years at London School of Economics! His mate then led us in his Merc at breakneck speed dodging the racing Porches and Ferrari's to a small hotel where we booked in and immediately demolished the mini-bars in both rooms. Off to bed at around 3 in the morning and hopefully ready to crack-on to Georgia in the morning.<br><br>Cheers, Rick.

... to stop her sliding off the oily deck into the sea. Fantastic. I have met a Russian lorry driver called Alexander, who has taught me to play Kazio. He thinks the crossing will take 3 days. I hope he's wrong but he has apparently done this journey many times.

... lost on the metro, but eventually got back to the Gordons. They had a few friends over and we spent all evening outside chatting and barbequeing. It was fantastic and we will all be reluctant to leave the land of real food, showers and beds.

... follows, mainly in low gear. Arrive at the flat top of the hill, which seems to have been flattened by bulldozer, with an earth berm all round. It is all hardened mud, but reasonably flat for camping. The drivers turn around for quick exit near the edge, a long way from the mud volcanoes, and warn us about hot mud, unstable ground, snakes and scorpions. It is MP's turn to cook, along with Jerri and Natalya, so DP has to pitch ...

... I used the Monday to get my Chinese visa, paying an extra $30 to get it processed in one day. Sweet. Tuesday I applied for the India visa and was told to pick it up on Friday afternoon. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were spent doing bike maintenance,(see photo) and cleaning my panniers. It must have been the trip to the India embassy that induced the fear of catching Delhi belly in my stomach and it acted accordingly. I produced a weeks supply of brown spray paint ...

... sogu af konu soldans nokkurs sem stjornadi herlidi i styrjoldum a valdatima theirra hjonanna, konan sko, og hun tekur daemi um ad rikidaemi theirra hafi verid mikid thvi thau attu mikid af bornum. Atthyrnda stjarnarn er hvarvetna, hun er samsett af 2 trihyrningum sem takna karl og konu, sameiningu og frjosemi. Thetta snyst um vidhald tegunaarinnar eins og alltaf. Rautt er litur nys lifs og brudarkjolar voru ...

... power. The power requires fuel for the generator which is not always available. We lucked out in meeting Dara Lipton, a Peace Corps volunteered placed in Suriname for two years. She has just had three months of language training in Okanisi - one of the many native tongues of the Maroon people in the Interior. Following that she was placed in the Village of Baku and has been there one short month to date. We met her randomly while she was in Paramaribo to see the doctor ...

... to explore the old city of Baku. It had the feeling that many old towns of Europe have, the cool alleys, the cobblestone streets, the little cafes. Again this was a refreshing change to step into a modern city. There were plenty of guards about, but none of them seemed interested in bothering tourists and not once did our bus get stopped for our passport check. I may be harping on about this but if you had spent a week in Absurdistan you would understand ...

... had obviously become bored with their teams unsuccessful World Cup Qualifying campaign thus far (only being able to draw with "sh  it football teams" (the Azeri manager's words, not ours) like Wales and Northern Ireland in their previous two international home games).    Which left tickets still being sold on the day of the game.   We picked up a couple of tickets with a ...

... ancient Silk Road and Indian traders left their mark, praying here and even erecting the symbol of Shiva on the top of the temple. The shear oddity of it was interesting enough to keep me staring into the fire, imagining what took place at this site, for an hour. -- The land of corruption On the way back to the city, my taxi driver lost his way and reached a dead end. He looked around, asked a few locals and decided it best to reverse down a one way street for 1km to meet up with ...