BAKU PORT HUB
The old harbour is the Boulevard; the working port moved 70 km south to Alat — the Caspian end of the Middle Corridor, up to 500,000 TEU on paper, ferries to Aktau, Kuryk and Turkmenbashi, and a free economic zone beside the berths.
Baku International Sea Trade Port at Alat is where the Middle Corridor meets the sea: ferries from Aktau (18–20 hours) and Kuryk (under 24) in Kazakhstan and Turkmenbashi (~17 hours) in Turkmenistan land railcars, ro-ro and containers at berths built for a 25-million-tonne, 500,000-TEU future; the dedicated container terminal is being scaled from 150,000 to 260,000 TEU. About 80% of the ferry terminal’s work is transit; the M1 to Russia, M2 to Georgia and M3 to Iran all meet at the port, and the Alat Free Economic Zone beside it is building the country’s manufacturing bet. Corridor container trains are targeted at 600 a year in 2025–26, 1,000 in 2027 and 2,000 by 2029.
The Caspian has no cruise circuit and Baku has no cruise terminal; what exists is the freighter-with-cabins culture of the Aktau and Turkmenbashi ferries — passengers and cars accepted, no schedule, sailings every three to five days when weather and freight align, roughly 16–30 hours across. It is one of the great travel stories of the region and a terrible way to keep an appointment. In the city itself, the “port” is the six-kilometre Boulevard — piers, the carpet museum, the Venice canals — scenery inherited from the harbour that moved south.
THE TIO READ
If you ship: book the Alat crossing through a forwarder and plan buffer days around autumn storms — the Caspian closes berths, not calendars. If you travel: treat the Aktau ferry as an expedition with a cabin, never as a connection. The Boulevard, meanwhile, is the finest free attraction in the Caucasus.
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