Checkpoint Misery on Road to Vladikavkaz

Roads in the Caucasus have long been regarded as dangerous, with perils ranging from unsafe vehicles to the periodic wars plaguing the region since the 1980s.



I and a journalist colleague decided to put them to the test recently with a bus ride from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Vladikavkaz, the capital of the Russian republic of North Ossetia, and back.



There are no direct flights or rail services so the only way is via Makhachkala, the capital of another north Caucasian republic, Dagestan. Buses, most of them ancient Hungarian Ikaruses, ply the 800 kilometre route between Makhachkala and Vladikavkaz. The journey takes 14 hours. The shorter route from Makhachkala to Vladikavkaz - through Chechnya - is also a more hazardous one.



"No one will risk going via Chechnya at night," said one of the bus drivers. "We prefer making the 800 kilometre detour to taking the shorter road via Chechnya."



"One cannot possibly enjoy riding an old stinking wreck of a bus, sitting for 14 hours on narrow planks in the aisle between the rows of seats," continued the driver, who often goes to Vladikavkaz to see relatives. "But I'd rather suffer all this and reach my destination safe and sound than take the shorter route via Chechnya."



During the long ride, passengers were allowed to smoke in their seats, but each time they approached a checkpoint the driver warned them to put out their cigarettes.



Several checkpoints mark the road from Makhachkala to Vladikavkaz. One of them, Nadterechnyi, is where travellers expect particularly tight control procedures.



Travellers from outside the Russian Federation are viewed with suspicion by officers manning the checkpoint. On this occasion, foreignpassengers, including us, had their documents closely scrutinised.



The checkpoint officers even tried to extract a bribe from us, but could find no fault with our papers, so they gave up the attempt. Another passenger from Dagestan, was not so lucky. Having reached the draft age but not yet having joined up, he was an easy target. He said later he had paid 500 rubles (around 15 US dollars) to be allowed to cross into North Ossetia.



The bus reached Vladikavkaz in the morning. After a two-day stay in the city, we asked how to get home avoiding the tiresome route through Makhachkala. We found out we could go to Minvody and then fly to Baku from there but in Vladikavkaz's main air ticket office we were told the Minvody-Baku flight had been cancelled due to a lack of passengers.



That left us with two alternatives: to travel 800 km back to Makhachkala and from there proceed to Baku or take a 280 km road that runs through Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia, to Chechnya's main city, Grozny, and on to Baku via the Dagestan cities of Khasavyurt, Makhachkala and Derbent.



We opted for the shorter route but hit trouble.



At an Ossetian checkpoint, 30 km from Vladikavkaz, an officer took our documents for examination to a van near the post. He returned to say that I lacked transit papers. We insisted we had presented the passports with the transit papers inside them.



Our driver intervened on our behalf, saying something in Ossetian to the officer. The latter, however, was unbending, having now started to demand that I should fork out 2,500 roubles (around 75 dollars) to be allowed through the post.



Our driver said that transit papers and other documents regularly "get lost" at these posts, leaving no solution but to grease the outstretched palms.



But we refused to pay, demanding that the proper procedure should be followed for someone who failed to produce transit papers.



The officers vainly tried to reason with us, saying that they would have to send me to a police station, and I might then be deported from the Russian Federation. In the end, they called in the police from Prigorodnyi district.



A senior officer arrived in his own car to see us. Having listened to the story, he wrote an order for me to pay a fine of 2,000 roubles, drew up a statement of the case and gave a copy of it to the journalist, saying it would guarantee free passage through other posts.



He also told us that we had a better chance of avoiding problems at checkpoints if we travelled by bus instead of taxi. Heeding the advice, we boarded one bound for Nazran and successfully passed through all the posts on the way to the city, both Ossetian and Ingush.



From Nazran, having spent an hour at the bus station, we travelled - without any stops at checkpoints - to Grozny.



In Grozny, foreigners are viewed as possible spies. A policeman, whom we approached to ask how we could find a bus to Khasavyurt, was very suspicious and asked a lot of questions before deciding that we were harmless. He finally directed us to the bus station.



It took an hour to reach Khasavyurt. From a bus driver, we learnt that the day's last connection to Makhachkala departed at 7 pm. He also told us that people rarely travelled to Makhachkala at night, knowing how unsafe the road was.



We boarded a minibus and arrived in Makhachkala two hours later and were advised by the driver to stay over in the city. "You'd better not set off at night," he said.



In the morning, having spent the night at a hotel, we headed for Derbent. Before long, we were on the Russian-Azeri border, where there was one last snag. We learned that travellers are not allowed to walk from the Russian side of the border to the Azeri checkpoint. A taxi took us - for 150 rubles - across the short stretch of 300 metres to the Azeri side of the border. Baku was now just a step away.