Met an Azeri man Ismail, and his girlfriend. He showed us around the old town and introduced us to “compote” – a chilled fruit drink, and regaled us with Bollywood songs!

From here the plan is to leave on a ferry bound for Turkmenbashi (capital of Turkmenistan) tomorrow where roumer has it that Internet doesn’t work. Which means we might be in radio silence for a while (Yes! You do get a temporary reprieve. You may dance your happy dance, we won’t be offended). But these are unsubstantiated roumers, so we shall wait and see. (Too bad if you danced already)

Getting on the ferry is funny business. The ferries are mainly for cargo – cars and passengers are add ons. So they set sail once they have “enough load” + weather conditions. We went by the port today and found 6 other teams who had been waiting for 3 days for the ferry to get enough load to set sail. Today, apparently the ferry was “too full” and would only let 4 cars get on with just the driver! Once you’re on the ferry, though the journey is only 18hrs, (plus loading and unloading time), it may be a few days before the boat can dock – depending how full the dock is + weather.
There are no reservations or tickets doled out until a couple of hours before you start loading. Once you enter the port, your car can’t exit. So we will need to time this strategically.

We are up to 45.6/200 kids, thanks to a couple of generous donors. Please share and help us send 200 kids in rural
India to school. http://happyharriet.co