The Mountains of Qabala

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From the new bus station in Baku you can find public transport to almost anywhere in Azerbaijan. You have the choice of bus, taxi or the marshrutka minibus. We took the latter for the four and a half hour trip to Qabala stopping halfway for a comfort break in Shamakhi.

It wasn't as uncomfortable as we had feared and we had a good view out of the window. It's just a shame the scenery for the first couple of hours was so boring! When we got to Shamakhi we noticed an old Russian plane in a field, presumably a memorial of some kind, and we intend to return to get a closer look in the future.

After Shamakhi the scenery was better as the landscape turned green. We were now in the arable zone where most of Azerbaijan's fruit and vegetables are grown these days. It wasn't exactly obvious when we reached Qabala but the driver was quite astute and when we'd gone 10 minutes past the "city" centre he suggested we got off! We walked back and found the Hotel Qabala who gave us a room for 50 AZN (£40) including breakfast. The room was spacious, clean, modern and comfortable which meant it was pretty good for the price!!!!

Qabala is quite a small place but, as there is no word for "town" in Azerbaijani, it is a "city"! We were there on the day all the high school kids graduated from school. They were all over the place. We met some cute local kids near the war memorial and thousands of staring teenagers in the park which we walked through to get to the River Damiraparanchay, which means the iron has been washed away, or something like that! It probably explains the black/grey colour of the water. It was quite a nice place to get a view of the Russian military Radio Listening Station! Not sure we were really supposed to take photos of it but what the hell!!!!!

In the evening we found a courtyard cafe a short walk from the centre. They were really friendly and fed us with kebabs, salads and hot chickpeas as the sun set and the temperature dropped. The beer wasn't bad either. Afterwards we went to a local tea house where we were treated to a pot of tea by some local men. Generous to the core! We were very appreciative of the gesture.

The next morning we had a nice breakfast then checked out of the hotel. We found a taxi driver to take us out to the nearby village of Bum. Yes, you heard, Bum! He had no idea why we wanted to go there, and we were pleasantly surprised to find a lovely memorial, as seen in the picture at the top of this blog. An elderly man came over to us and explained to Trish in Russian that it was from the Second World War. We kind of gathered that anyway but it was nice of him.

Our bemused taxi driver was very good, stopping to allow Russ to photograph the village sign. When we got out of the taxi a few miles North of Qabala Russ explained to him what "bum" meant in English. the driver nearly wet himself!!!!!!

We were dropped off outside the luxurious Qafqaz resort. From there we walked upriver towards the village of Laza. It was a very pleasant walk but we were in for a shock as we approached the village. There was a whistle from a hilltop and we thought some local kids were waving at us. We waved back! It soon became apparent though that the kids were in fact soldiers and that they wanted to talk to us! In a mixture of broken Azerbiajani, Russian and English we were told to follow them to their headquarters to see their boss. It seems that Laza is the customs post for people travelling overland into Dagestan, something which is forbidden for foreigners! They wanted to know who we knew in Laza and why we were there. We were not detained for too long but it made for an interesting war story! It's just a good job they didn't want to see what photos we had on the camera!!

On our release we meandered through the village and stopped to watch some old men playing nard, the Azeri form of backgammon. Russ watched but was unable to fathom the rules exactly, as it's so different to the game we know. The men seemed upset that we didn't play but we didn't want to outstay our welcome!!

Walking back towards Qabala we stopped at a riverside restaurant for lunch before enquiring about a taxi at the deluxe resort. One of the guards gave us a lift to the bus station so we paid him the going rate which he seemed to appreciate. At the bus station we had just missed a marshrutka back to Baku. Fortunately two guys were waiting for a shared taxi and they had already negotiated a price better than we could hope to achieve. That was very helpful.

Unfortunately even a Mercedes is not overly comfortable when there are 3 of you in the back for 4 hours! Again we stopped in Shamakhi, this time at the restaurant which keeps a bear in a cage to attract visitors. It was quite a sad scene really. The Sunday night traffic back in Baku was an absolute nightmare and the final few miles took the best part of an hour. Nonetheless we were home, exhausted but happy!

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