Tbilisi, Georgia. We're in Dodo's courtyard, supping on coffee and getting ready to hit the road again, when the unmanned Mr Wazzboobleyoid suddenly starts blinking its hazard lights at us. It's our Space Odyssey moment. The machines have started thinking for themselves.
This is its first step on the road to becoming a fully sentient being. We stand outside and hatch a plan to disable the electronics, but Mr Wazzboobleyoid sees our lips moving in the rear view mirror. 'I can't allow that, Dave,' it says. And then it refuses to start for an hour.
It's like we're destined never to get any momentum on this trip. We're stuck in the courtyard, a bit weary from Jeff's birthday do last night, and the car won't budge. Steve's got the Haynes manual out, and Dodo's translating between us and the 12-year-old mechanic who lives next door. We drain the battery trying to get Mr W going, and no-one can work out the problem.
Suddenly Steve remembers a nugget of wisdom given us by the pottery team three weeks back at the Goodwood campsite: the Punto has a weird button in the front footwell that acts as a safety feature to cut the fuel supply in the event of a crash. Sometimes it malfunctions and blocks your fuel off randomly. We try that. It's not that. Turns out Jeff hadn't put the electronics panel back in properly after fiddling with the hazards. Boom. She starts immediately and we're back on. Mr W has been tamed. Almost. Every now and again she displays ominous glimmers of consciousness by randomly blinking her hazards at passing Georgians. Setting us up for a sequel maybe.
And so, after a few problems orienting ourselves on roads that bear no signage, to the border with Azerbaijan. Holy shit. This is the point at which we realise we may have shot our bolt too soon with the overuse of the phrases 'weird' and 'mental'. Half-way into our six-hour wait to get into the country, parked in the twilight on a narrow dirt track leading to a gated compound manned by young soldiers with Ak47s, we're all strung out on how mad everything suddenly looks. 'And we're not even in weird yet,' says Jeff. 'We're just waiting to get in.'
Before that we'd been split up - Steve went one way with the car. Jeff and I herded into a long cattleshed-type structure, from which we emerged an hour later thinking that, aside from urgently needing the loo, it was a relatively smooth entry into the country. We meet up with Steve again. He sits in the car looking serious. 'That was just leaving Georgia,' he says. Ah. 'Entering Azerbaijan is over there. And it takes fucking hours.'
We pee into bottles in the back of the car.
Steve has some more bad news for us. In our time apart he's met with a couple of guys driving a Mercedes camper, Ollie from England and his Dutch mate Ernest. Ollie tried to drive Ernest's van in a couple of days ago, while Ernest was in Iran, but he got told to sod off back to Georgia because he wasn't the registered owner. Several hours wasted just to be told to turn around.
This is a potentially big problem. One of my documents from back in the UK has a typo on it. One of those things which, several months ago back in England in the midst of an admin circus, was easily dismissed by saying 'oh it'll be all right'. So on one paper I'm no longer David Waller, but David Waur. It's small enough to probably be ok, but if the Azerbaijanis want to be dicks about it they will be.
We drive across no-man's land, and join a queue of cars on this little track leading to the compound. And wait. Things don't move. Time passes. All the while my sun-hit head has started to mull this typo issue and all the possible permutations. We may have to turn around. Which probably means end of trip. And we may not be able to get it back into Georgia. Which means a huge pain in the arse. And all because of my laidback/slack/clueless attitude back in the UK. An armed soldier pulls the gate opens. One car goes in. The gate shuts.
Time passes. The others are quiet, and my mindstate gradually deteriorates. I'm going to hate myself if that one ridiculous detail means the boys' trip is finished. The worst thing - even if we get through Azerbaijan, we still have six more borders to go. And that includes the Russians, who are bastards. Three letters.
Time passes.
All around us it's chaos. Impatient drivers are caning down the outside, in the exit road, blocking the traffic out and getting shouted at by soldiers into god-awful acts of reversing back up the slope.
Time passes.
Eventually we get to the front. Jeff is out chatting to the police kids. They're nice blokes. It's one guy's birthday. When the chief is away they ask for cigarettes and food. Jeff gives them sweets. There's something weird about giving an armed man sweets. It's like giving a kid with a lollypop a gun. They're happy to take them.
Time passes.
And then we're in. Steve and Jeff go off to the fairly swift pedestrian entrance. David Waur has to drive the car in, and then sign up for the festival of red tape. First up a pee in a proper toilet, which turns out to be a big brick room full of shit and flies, and an elevated squatter toilet with no door. Or cubicle. Rough.
I'm directed to the cabins, praying that the typo isn't going to screw us up. Luckily the dreadlocked Ernest is there too - we queue together and get to know each other, which proves to be a laugh. It's nice to share this kind of thing. Across the compound we see Steve, Jeff and Ollie - they're through and are now leaning on the barred fence, waiting for us.
By now it's pitch black. A bloke walks through the pedestrian entrance carrying a car door. That makes no sense. Then, from outside compound there's a gut-wrenching scraping sound.A coach driver fails to see a little black car parked next to it. This place is madness. Wads of notes slip into military hands.
Ernest and I get in to our first cabin, bare walls, one bare light bulb, one desk. On the far side the moustached captain ploughs on with filling and stamping my entry forms. Next to me is his young protege, whose face has yet to have the spark beaten out of it by a life of ball-shrinking bureaucracy. He's holding my travel document. I watch his eyes scan the name at the top. David Waur. Then back to my passport. David Waller. Here it comes. He doesn't know what to do. Uhm, he holds it up to his boss. He looks at it. He looks at me. Mistake I say, ready to show him six forms of ID with my address on it to prove it's the same me.
He looks at me. Then he waves the problem away and gets back to stamping.
Ozzy fucking Idealez. The relief is intense.
Ernest and I are in there for hours. Given some papers, asked for some dollars, sent to the cabin next door. Given more papers, asked for more dollars, sent back. Sit down. Ernest has the right idea - he's using his basic grasp of Turkish to talk to get on the officials' level and talk to them as people. They're nice enough blokes, it's just that they're stuck in a shit system. One guy tells me to stand up, then he flops into my seat. We ask him what time he finishes. He writes it down. 9am. It's 10pm now.
While all this is going on, Steve Jeff and Ollie are still outside, still leaning on the gate. They've got to endure all the same waiting, but none of the knowing what's going on. I don't know what's going on either, but at least I get to experience the weirdness directly. Plus I know the typo isn't an issue. After what seems like an age, I'm given the all clear. Yes. And told to head to passport control. No.
I get in the car, drive it towards the gate, and a guy takes my passport and recently-filled forms into another cabin to stamp them. A senior-looking cop comes over. I get out the car. He looks at the roofrack, where our instruments sit hidden by tarpaulin. He motions for me to unpack it. I protest, saying it's just guitars. He walks towards the front of the car whistling. And then singing. 'Mo-nnn-eey'. How much? '$20'. $20 and I drive? 'Yes.' Right now that seems sweet to me. I pay up, jump in the car and make the best drive I've done in a long time - about 10 yards through an open gate and away from admin. Back to my boys.
We head up the road to a roadside cafe and join Ollie and Ernest for a round of teas and a Snickers. Fucking hell. The others pick up on a buzz that Ernest and I have. It may be a ball-ache, but there's a genuine kick that comes from turning into a piece of cattle and enduring a process entirely at the whim of self-serving corrupt officials, and emerging from the other end unscathed.
What an introduction to a country. It's now past midnight. Down an arrow-straight pot-hole of a dirt track, in utter darkness, following Ernest and Ollie. The plan is to find a restaurant and ask if we can camp outside. That way we've got permission and security.
After an hour or more they pull off into the grounds of Restauran Palid, a bungalow surrounded by trees. It's 1am. The owner ambles over. Handshakes. Azerbaijani hellos. He's happy for us to camp. We set up, then round the night off in his version of a restaurant: sitting round a table in one of their big bland rectangular private dining rooms, eating strips of salty cheese and huge chunks of sublime meat, and toasting an amazing day with an Azerbaijani pint.
We are now officially in weird.
No comments:
Post a Comment