Broken Baku

Well, I'd been warned that the Baku-Kabul flight is often cancelled and mine was! It's been a frustrating travel adventure the last day or so. From the "better" airport outside Moscow (I'd flown in to the "worse" one), I'd catch my Azerbaijan Airlines flight to Baku. There I'd spend 5 hours and then catch the final flight to Kabul. My flight in Moscow left at 11:25 PM and we arrived in Baku at 3 AM--the Kabul flight was scheduled for 8 AM. So I was anticipating 5 hours of idle time in the airport--these 5 would soon grow to 14!

Because I was already leary of AZAL people after my experience in Moscow, I was on edge when directed to a fellow who was supposed to sort me out at immigration control. He started asking me for my visa--I didn't think I would need a visa since I wouldn't be leaving the airport, only connecting. Then he asked me about whether I paid for having heavy luggage in Moscow. I said yes, and he asked me for the receipt, saying "this is for me." I kept the receipt so that I would get reimbursed for it, not to give it to an immigration official! And why would he care about the weight of my luggage? Looking back, it seems clear that since AZAL is state-owned, he just wanted to make sure that they'd gotten some money out of me one way or another.

So I didn't have to go through immigration control, but instead up in an elevator to the international connections waiting area. This consisted of many red metal benches, two duty free shops, a really insufficient cafe, and a constant, irregular beeping from some broken metal detector.

I sat down and set to finish "The Places In Between" by Rory Stewart about his walk across Afghanistan two weeks after the fall of the Taliban. Several of us were sitting there waiting for this immigration official to come back with our tickets--he'd taken my tickets (all the rest of them) and my overweight baggage receipt and disappeared to who-knows-where. I was a bit uneasy that he had all my tickets and uneasy about losing my receipt and whether he would try to make me pay for a visa... He came back with my boarding pass without issue, except when I asked for a copy of my receipt he said, "There is not time." Right, 3AM to 8AM just isn't enough time to make a photocopy.

So I finished the book and then made my way through the Duty Free shops. I noticed a group of about 20-30 people in uniforms of some kind that said "security" something on the patch. They were raiding the duty free like it was a giveaway and I noticed they had British accents. More on this later.

We're called to board the plane and there are about 25 or so of us who file through the security stuff and then onto a bus to take us to the plane. After a brief false start when we line up to walk up the stairs to the plane, we eventually get on and get seated. Once we're seated, another group starts to board. But you notice that several of the guys are "escorting" the others--walking them along while holding onto their arm. Like prisoners or something--but no one is in cuffs. These guys all file in to fill the seats behind us. OK, so this is CON AIR--there's going to be an uprising and I'll have to beat someone with my accounting text book.

But no. We sit and sit and sit. Finally, they announce the flight is cancelled and we're to go back to the terminal to wait. One of the big security guys indicates to us to remain seated and the "prisoners" or whatever get escorted off the plane first and return to the terminal in their own bus before the rest of us follow.

Back in the terminal, they keep us in the small area that comes after the metal detector--no food, no beverages, no bathroom in this small area. Eventually we're allowed to go out into the larger waiting area so we can have access to the duty free, insufficient cafe, and bathrooms. I notice that the large group I'd seen before sitting together is composed of the "prisoners" who had been escorted onto the plane earlier. We wait. And wait. And wait. Noon...one...two...

In the bus out to the plane I'd met an American guy who was 25 years in the Army and now a construction contractor in Afghanistan. Vince is a real down-to-earth, affable guy splitting his time between Arizona and a Russian wife who lives outside Moscow. Vince is connected--he knows pretty well the guy who speaks both Russian and English and who seems to be spearheading a sort of movement by the jilted passengers to fight for some rights. Sergei is former USSR military (25 years) now working for a telecom in Afghanistan, so his cell phone is being constantly requested by people trying to provide flight updates to their people in Kabul. Finally, Scott is a Canadian journalist who has spent lots of time in Iraq and Azerbaijan--he's looking to go to the south of Afghanistan for an interview--not easy these days!

Later in the afternoon, the AZAL people walk around pretending to do things and the activist passengers fight to get food and shelter paid for. They refuse to pay for us to go to a hotel and there isn't much in the way of food available in the terminal (remember, the cafe is insufficient). I could not believe my eyes when I see some AZAL people roll out a couple big cardboard boxes filled with in-flight meals to serve us! It was surreal--I suppose this food from our airplane was going to go bad, so they thought they'd try to satisfy one demand by giving it to us... I was too late for one of the containers of the hot food, but didn't miss it too much--I'm not sure I want to mess with AZAL meat products! One of the AZAL people also carted off a box of the meals to take to the "prisoners."

Eventually, we discovered the flight was cancelled for the day due to weather in Kabul (but many in our group were calling people in Kabul who said the weather was fine). We suspect there was a mechanical issue with the plane and that's why they cancelled it. Once the flight cancellation was officially announced, we had to wait still more time while the AZAL people sorted out how to handle our checked luggage, immigration process, and etcetera. But the guards for the "prisoners" probably wanted to get back to their homes--so that's what they did! The "prisoners/detanees/taleban/al qaeda/terrorists" were now free to roam the terminal at their leisure! It was pretty amazing how the guards bugged out and now suddenly these guys were just hanging out--several bought some booze and smokes in the duty free and started a little card game!

Finally, we got a deal on a hotel ($50 a night), got through customs (now I had to buy a $40 visa since I was leaving the airport--and don't forget about the $11 for the passport sized photos), and got ourselves collected in a group "outside the wire" at about 4PM. Sergei, the extremely helpful Russian, put together a package deal with a mini-bus taxi driver to get us all to the hotel. So we marched together to go get in the mini-bus, walking right past all the other taxi drivers who were hoping to land some customers. We were paying 5 menat each to get to the hotel and get back to the airport the next morning--lots of the taxi drivers were trying to charge 30 menat just to get to the hotel! So, Sergei had found us a great deal. So great, in fact, that one of the taxi drivers came over to the mini-bus yelling and started opening the back of it like he would take out some of our luggage. Turns out, he was the brother of the guy about to drive us--so our driver hops out of the mini-bus and tries to calm down his brother as well as some official managing the taxi queue. They walk back over to the van and the brother ends up getting into the van to drive us off--but I'm not sure I want this guy driving angry!

Despite the back door of the van flinging open in traffic at one point, we arrived at the hotel fine, paid the lovely Azari hotel staff, and then I crashed hard. I was supposed to meet Vince and Scott to get some dinner, but once my head touched the pillow, it wouldn't come back off. I slept from about 5 PM to about 4 AM when I did some cals, updated email and the blog, then did some serious damage to the hotel's surprisingly good breakfast buffet.

However, that day (yesterday-Thursday) the weather in Kabul was indeed bad (independently confirmed) and so we went to the airport from 7 AM to 2PM before returning to the hotel again. While we were at the airport, some of the Russian businessmen decided they would give up and catch a flight back to Moscow. So they broke out the brandy, champagne, and chocolates they'd bought to bring to Kabul and we had an impromptu party--not at the insufficient cafe in the terminal, but an overpriced one "outside the wire."



There was a Russian woman and her three kids travelling on our flight into Kabul as well. Apparently there is an American school here in Kabul where 300-400 kids go. I spoke in English with the middle girl and later got a shot of her watching Charlie Chaplin (which was on a loop throughout the airport our entire time there).

That night I didn't manage to stay up and go take some photos of Baku, but I did get up to go to dinner, which was a British place. I had chicken curry, the other guys has fish & chips and a meat pie. The oil industry in Azerbaijan is booming--you can see oil wells all over the place on both land and out in the Caspian sea. British Petroleum is big here, and so there are several British bars and restaurants.

On our way, we walked through a street market. I hadn't seen any street markets in Moscow--no cheap, "normal people" stores at all, really. Only high fashion places. So I was keen to find some inexpensive souveniers--I ended up with a flask bearing soviet-era symbols and text. Likely made in China, but Azerbaijan is a former soviet republic, so I thought it was kind of cool.