Blogs from Baku, Azerbaijan, Asia - page 2

Thursday June 30/Friday July 1 - So Rasim picked me up a little early, at 4:30pm, and then we were away driving towards the petroglyphs. It was quite a ways away, just under an hour or so. On the way there we past some highly secured areas for BP, as they seem to do all the drilling here. There is oil everywhere. When we got there, we found it was closed. Such a bummer - I didn't even realize it would be a place that could close. I figured it was just some drawings in the rocks somewhere. Rasim talked to the guy and said we could come back a bit later and give him a small bribe to get in. So we headed off to the mud volcanoes. Very cool to see actually. Unlike the ... read more

The largest city in the South Caucasus region is a controversial place. On one side there is a huge contrast with the rest of the country in terms of education and living standards. While Baku received huge investments and has a relatively high standard of living, the provinces seem forgotten. On the other side its abundant architectural heritage is selectively evaluated and reconstructed. Neoclassical Fin de Siècle buildings and most of the medieval Old Town are luxuriously refurbished, while typical Caucasian residential buildings with wooden balconies and small vineyards are left to decay. Urbanism Located on the Absheron Peninsula, Baku is surrounded by the Caspian sea to the south, a series of lakes to the north, and hills both east and west. The city center is a compact urban settlement with an orthogonal street grid with ... read more

So we made it to azerbaijan eventually. We're settled in a hostel for the second night now and we're just waiting for a ferry to take us to Kazakhstan. Though it's a little frustrating not being able to leave, it does mean I finally have time to write a long blog post, so here goes ... My last blog was from the west coast of Georgia. Having not had the greatest opinion of Batumi, my opinion of Tbilisi could not be more different. We drove across Georgia on some interesting roads to say the least thanks to our questionable sat nav. Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia and a genuinely great place. We arrived to a welcoming hostel host who showed us the highlights and where we should eat etc. We then went for a meal ... read more

18th May Whilst we cleaned up after breakfast, the guys hauled the rest of the large firewood up onto the roof and secured it with tarps and ropes. We'll definitely need to watch the wires with the added height and rolled the sides up in anticipation of the slow drive back to the main road. Just after 8 we were on the truck and left the park gates, waving goodbye to the park rangers. Only 100 metres or so down the road was a freshwater tap so we attached a hose and filled up the drinking water container under the truck, much to the amusement of the local men who stopped working to watch us. It was a slow and tense drive under the wires but event free and we eventually breathed sighs of relief when ... read more

They looked edible. Like strawberry-laced fondant, the so called candy-cane mountains go best with a bowl of smooth vanilla ice-cream and a dollop of cream. One of the most bizarre and random sites we have ever seen, we were taken back by these bizarre accidental desserts of nature. Today was our last day in Azerbaijan and we were faced with a tough choice. Laze about in the hotel till noon and then meander in the local museum. Or get up real early and drive out to the candy cane mountains - a single sentence in the lonely planet that the majority of travelers probably wouldn't notice. They had grabbed my attention though because we had been hoping to visit a similar type of freak of nature in Turkmenistan. We decided on the latter, so after a ... read more