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