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Published: July 15th 2008
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Azeri flag
Isn't it pretty? It all changes in Azerbaijan - the weather improves and is bright and hot, and the people all wave and smile!
I bush-camp the first night with some fellow travellers. That evening, a local couple pull up in a car and start talking to us in Russian and broken English. It turns out that they're archaeologists who have been living and working on a bornze-age site, not far away, for over 20 years. They tell us they'll come back the next morning and take us to it.
As promised, they appear at breakfast and we follow them to their site. Not expecting much we were all completely astounded by the dig and the amount of work they had done on it.
Afterwards, they take us to their tiny village for tea. EVERYBODY from the village turns up and hosts a massive tea-party for us! It was all quite bewildering and as special to us as it was to them. We all take photos of each other and laugh and joke, although neither group have any idea what the other is saying. We leave, breathless, and agree that it's experiences like that which make travelling special. Can you imagine
Maiden's Tower
Gruesome legend 20 Azerbaijanis turning up on your doorstep, and you inviting them in for dinner?
From here I take the difficult and dangerous 'Road to Nowhere" to a tiny town in the mountains, called Lahic. The road itself is cut into a shee cliff-face which rises vertically above you and dropps away precipitously below. It was a gut-wrenching drive. Unfortunately, it pours with rain all evening and most of the night, so I don't get to see much of the town.
The next day it's onto Baku, the capital of Azerbaian, stopping to look at some mud-volcanoes (not as exciting as it sounds) and some petroglyphs, over-looking the Caspian Sea (better than you might think!).
I spend two days in Baku, pottering around, looking through the streets of the old town, waiting for a berth on on the trans-aspian ferry to take me to Turkmenistan.
I visit the Maiden's Tower. Legend has it that a wealthy merchant fell in love with his own daughter and proposed to her. She agreed to the marriage, but only if he built her a huge tower, taller than all the surrounding buildings. He built one, but she kept insisiting it be
Arabic arch
Some kind of mausoleum I think? taller. This continued until she was happy with it's height and then threw herself off it to avoid the marriage!
Finally, just before midnight on my 3rd day in Baku, I board the ex-Soviet rust-bucket of a ferry.
The Caspian is actually the world's largest lake. They call it a sea for 3 reasons; firstly, it's big, secondly, it's salt-water, and thirdly, it has sea-lions. Go figure.
The ferry should only take 12 hours to cross, but Turkemnistan is a police state and notorioulsy difficult to get into, so while we sit off-shore for 7 hours, I celebrate someone's Birthday with some travel-buddies and drink half a litre of vodka. Passport control drunk is the only way to go...
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