Information for Aktau, Kazakhstan (2 comments)
This post contains as much information about the visa and the ferry process as possible that I promised cyclists and backpackers who are are heading from East to West along a similar route to us.
Anna, Ruben, Leon, Peter and James. I hope your travels are going well and this information makes your stay here in Aktau a little less frustrating as you too will wait for the illusive ferry.
(if anyone has Peter’s email please send a link for this post to him)
Azerbaijan Consulate in Aktau, Kazakhstan
Aktau to Baku Ferry Ticket Information
Other random Aktau notes:
There is an internet cafe on the 5th District side of the road (See the lonely planet map). It costs 350 Tenge an hour and is actually fast. They are open from 9-10pm every day. Tom found another one further from the city that is 24 hours and only costs 300 Tenge. Go all the way down the main road to the roundabout and take a right. It is located at the end of the block on the left side and is called Internet King. (11th District)
There is a decent supermarket opposite the WW11 memorial which is on the main street. It is called Ardager.
We have been unable to locate any bike shops as we are lacking in tube patches due to a spate of flat tires by all 3 of us.
I follow your trip…My name is Fabio and I live in Italy. Exscuse me for my little English.
I read your information because I will go to Uzbekistan in motorcycle and I will come back to crossing Mar Caspio for Azerbaijan,than Georgia.Thank a lot for your information.
I hope that in september there will be a ferry….
Good lucky
Fabio
Hello,
First of all, thanks a lot for doing the effort of putting this on the internet. It was the only info we could find (same story for some french cyclists we met along the way).
So here our small contribution, only a update really (we took the bote in june 2010), as most of the information given here is still very accurate:
1) The Azeri visum:
For our Azeri visum (we were Belgians and French), no LOI was needed. It takes three days to get the visum (a transit 5-day visum costs 20 dollar, a tourist 30-day costs 60 euro). If you ask nicely, you can come to pick up the visum the day the boat arrives, in the case it would arrive earlier.
2) The time between the boats was 14 days (we only arrived at day 10, so we were quite lucky)
3) The boat has become very expensive: 17 100 Tenge for one person (the cheapest ticket, being a shared room with 4 persons). Once on the boat, the room-lady tried to convince us to buy a more expensive, but nicer room (the room we got was very warm, no window, dirty matrasses), but when she found out we were not willing to pay for an upgrade (and when one of our travel companions went to ask for sheets), she gave us a room upgrade for free (we also explained to her that we allready payed quite a lot for the ticket, maybe that helped too). The ferry went swift, and one day later, we allready arrived in Baku.
melanie and Bert