Blogs from Azerbaijan, Asia - page 10

Xinaliq (strictly speaking there should be no dots on the i's but I don't have an Azeri keyboard on the laptop) is a beautiful village in the Caucasus mountains of Northern Azerbaijan. It’s pronounced Hunalug, although Michael took to saying it Honolulu! When we arrived in Xinaliq, it had been snowing the previous night and the white covering on the mountain extended all the way down to the stream at the bottom of the valley. That’s where we were taken to our “guest house”. It wasn’t really a guest house as such because there was no landlady to look after us. We were shown to our rooms and the extra blankets and sleeping bags were pointed out to us. Other than that, we were on our own except for meal times. During the afternoon we explored ... read more

Mark Elliot’s “Trailblazer” guide to Azerbaijan has proved an excellent purchase. How this man managed to travel so extensively around the country beggars belief. I wonder if he knows how grateful people like us are! Between Quba and Xinaliq is what he names the “Cloudcatcher” canyon. Presumably it has another name but we didn’t discover it! We left Quba on Monday morning courtesy of a 4 wheel drive jeep arranged for us by Xeyraddin. The journey took a little over two hours as the road is now tarmac all the way. The weather was pretty dire and we heard it was snowing in Xinaliq. We raced through the wooded areas where many people from Baku have their dacha summer residences. All along the route the scenery would no doubt have been spectacular had we been ab ... read more

A pedestrian promenade runs all along Baku’s Caspian coast close to the city centre. It’s a great place for a stroll and it’s very clean and safe. It takes about an hour to stroll along its length and there’s lots to see and usually something going on. The day we took a wander by the sea there was an oil workers’ exposition taking place. We paused to see a model of an on-land oil drilling station and to read the numerous information boards. As it was all in Azeri, we could only guess what it said! No doubt with an upcoming General Election it was all about Azerbaijan’s success in the oil industry!! An orchestra were busy warming up for a free concert. We waited for about 20 minutes, had a wander to decipher more information ... read more

Tag 50 bis 74 11.200 km von Galway Hallo Leute! Sorry, dass wir Euch so lange seit dem letzten Blog haben warten lassen! In diesen Breiten, wo nicht wirklich viele Touris hinkommen, ist es gar nicht so einfach Internet Cafes zu finden, wo die Computer auch funktionieren… ;-) Wie schon beim letzten Mal geschrieben sind wir also am 5. August von der Tuerkei direkt am Schwarzen Meer entlang nach Georgien eingereist. Die Abfertigung an diesem stark frequentierten Uebergang (angeblich einziger mit Strassenanbindung, aber dazu spaeter mehr...) hat dann auch gut 2,5 Stunden gedauert. Sagte uns der tuerkische Beamte noch ganz optimistisch "Police, Customs, Exit", so standen wir dann bei den Georgiern wie angewurzelt. Nein, nicht in einer Schlange sondern ... etwa wie wenn beim Rugby alle auf einem Haufen liegen, um an den Ball zu kommen. ... read more

Today was the first day we got out of Baku for real, and got to see something different from the buildingboom of the metropol. Our destination was Ganja, the second largest city in Azerbaijan and situated approximately 320 km to the east of Baku. I had previous to my travel heard that the pictures of the present president as well as his father, the former president, are hanging everywhere. I had not seen much of this in Baku and quite thought that people had been exagurating the number of pictures hanging around. But here in Ganja, they hang on every corner, three meters high on every officiel building; Heydar Alijev and his son Ilham shaking hands looking prestitious and important. Except from the tremendous amounts of colourful pictures of presidents, Ganja is a rural town with ... read more