Planika

The original idea was to climb Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia (2864 m) with my co-workers. But we could not get accommodation in one of the mountain huts below the summit as on this particular weekend every bed was sold out weeks ago. So a two day trip was out of the question. While it is possible to do the Triglav climb in one day, we would have had to to start out much earlier than we did and go much faster. We made it as far as the Planika mountain hut at 2401 m elevation. There we decided to return and go back to be safely back at our car before dark and made plans to make another attempt next year.

It was a perfect September day, sunny and not too hot. The views were spectacular as always.

We were lucky to see an Edelweiss flower, a protected alpine flower.

And we also saw a groundhog, also a rare sighting so I was excited that I caught one on camera.

Tbilisi

Looking back it is as if the only reason we went to Tbilisi was to eat hachapuri, or, as one fellow traveler put it: "Can you eat too much hachapuri?" No, I assured her. Hachapuri is a savory pastry filled with cheese and you can buy it from a roadside stall or order it in a restaurant, you can have it for breakfast, or for lunch, or for dinner, or sometimes for more than one meal in one day. Luckily, there is a Georgian restaurant in Ljubljana, conveniently located just a few minutes walk from where I work and they have hachapuri on their lunch menu so I was able to gradually wean myself off the hachapuri addiction after I returned home.

In Tbilisi we checked out the fortress (yes, it is on top of a hill and yes, I dragged Marko up there for the views but in my defense I didn’t drag him up the other hill with a TV tower and a Ferris wheel). We also strolled in the botanical garden but we decided to skip the museums. Compared to Baku, Tbilisi seems as if it still has a long way to go to become a modern city as there are so many buildings, especially in the old part of the city, that are literally falling apart. Our Lonely Planet guidebook that was published 3 years ago states that Georgia is supposed to be much more developed than Azerbaijan. Well, from what we could tell, since the 3 years from the Lonely planet publish date, Baku was completely cleaned up, the infrastructure (electricity, water, mobile telephone coverage) in even the most remote parts of Azerbaijan has been taken care of. On the other hand Tbilisi is either still a mess or at least mostly under construction. And the roads in remote parts of Georgia... well, if you can call them that.

One of our day trips from Tbilisi was to Gori, the birthplace of Stalin, where we went to see the museum devoted to his life. The information was only in Georgian and Russian so it is not very useful for tourists who do not speak these languages. We can read Cyrillic and so were able to decipher some of the Russian signs at least to get a general idea of what was displayed. It seems the information given is somewhat limited, the impression is that Georgians are not sure whether they should be proud that they claim the birthplace of such a famous man or they should try to suppress those things from his life that they are not proud of. Near Gori is a site with caves from pre-historical dwellings. Another one of those places that is nice to look at while all the tourist facilities including a museum are under construction.

And finally, we made a day trip to Davit Gareja, a monastery that is scattered in caves all over a hill. This was truly impressive, I have never seen anything like it. To see all the caves it was necessary to hike uphill for an hour but it was well worth it.

Our last day in Tbilisi was spent hanging around our hotel and reading. Our flight home was at an inhumanly hour of 4 AM so we just left for the airport in the evening and hung around there as there was no point staying in a hotel room for a couple hours of sleep. One final stop in Istanbul on our way home, a quick trip to the city which was quite deserted early on a Sunday morning, and our trip was over.

Due to limited time we didn’t get a chance to see the Black sea side of Georgia. Or the Caucasus side of Azerbaijan. One thing I can say for sure is that now I have a better understanding of the political situation in that part of the world. The various peoples (Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya, Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan, ...) have nothing in common with each other and it is understandable why they broke free of the Soviet Union as they have nothing in common with Russia either. They each have different cultures, different languages, different religions so it is no wonder they are at each other's throats. 

Caucasus

It took us most of the next day using various means of transport to get to Kazbegi, a town in the Caucasus mountains. We stayed at a homestay with a very nice couple. We did catch glimpses of children and a grandmother but it seemed they were all instructed to stay away from us tourists. They served us a delicious although not extravagant dinner consisting of a vegetable soup, a salad and a typicial Georgian dish, grilled eggplant with walnut sauce. After a good night’s sleep we got up early to go hiking but before that it was breakfast time. I nearly broke down laughing when our hostess brought chicken stew for breakfast. Thinking back to our first morning in Baku when I was sure that we had chicken because we couldn’t explain that we wanted breakfast, I now wondered whether the guy in Baku did understand breakfast after all as chicken is what they typically eat for breakfast? I probably will never know. Anyway, we had a whole day of hiking ahead of us so I just ate the chicken and the rice that came with it.

The hiking route that I chose first passed a church on top of a hill. After traveling in Georgia for some time one notices that there are churches everywhere and the people seem very religious as they cross themselves whenever, wherever they see a church or a cross. There were occasional tourists like us hiking up there but since it was a Sunday there were hordes of local people going up there for religious service. Some of them carried food with them, mostly loaves of bread in plastic grocery bags. I guess it wasn't their lunch but rather something to do with the service.

After reaching the church we continued on the trail that led to a ridge from where we could see the Gergeti glacier and that was our final destination at 2940m altitude. The trail continues on to a hut from where it would be possible to climb mount Kazbek (5047m) but we were not equipped for high altitude climbing and anyway I tend to like to stay away from snow and ice. We had beautiful views of the Caucasus and eventually returned on the trail back to the village. 

We met a couple of tourists on our way down who were still going up and they asked us how much longer to go and what is there to see up there and is it worth it. Marko answered them with a very cryptic “Well, you can see a glacier”. Now, knowing Marko, I will venture into providing some subtitles for that statement. In translation it could mean “Well, if you are the kind of person who enjoys huffing and puffing uphill for hours just so that you get somewhere from where you can see a pile of snow then you will probably like it up there. But if you are like me then don’t bother, I only went because my wife who is a hiking maniac dragged me up there.” I have no further comment.

The next day I managed to persuade Marko to go on a shorter hike but only after I absolutely promised that we wouldn’t go see any more glaciers. I chose a shorter hike that led to a view of the multi-peaked mountain Chaukhi (with a little snow visible – but that doesn’t really count as a glacier, does it?). Anyway, the clouds covered the multi-peaks so there were no views but it was just a nice hike up a valley with some jumping over streams and it was beautiful.

For the rest of the day we hung around our homestay reading. I finally got around to reading a novel I bought in Baku, Ali and Nino. It gives an interesting perspective on a mixed marriage between a Muslim Azerbaijani man and a Christian Georgian woman. Appropriate reading for our trip, to get some more impressions of the local culture.

Our trip was winding down and our last destination was Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia. We planned to stay there for several days and take day trips to some other sights in the vicinity. So the next morning we packed our stuff to go to the minibus but our host offered to drive us along with another English tourist to Tbilisi.

On to Georgia

The next morning we said good bye to Azerbaijan and headed for Georgia. One taxi to the bus station, one minibus to Balakan, another minibus to Zaqatala and one taxi to the border crossing. As the taxi neared the border we saw a huge monument proclaiming Azerbaijan and as we approached closer we saw that it is under construction. The next time we come that way there will be a grand border crossing, but for now we had to settle for an old dirt road, full of waiting cars and trucks. Since we were on foot we walked ahead and were let through the gate. There were other local people also crossing on foot and many of them stood waiting to get their passports stamped. The border official motioned us ahead of the queue, it seems that tourists get preferential treatment. He stamped our passports and we were on our way. The border itself is a river so we had to cross a bridge but at that time of the year the riverbed was completely dry. 

On the Georgian side the border official took our passports and went into his office to type something on his computer. Slovenian citizens don’t need a visa to enter Georgia, but it took some time for him to figure that out. When he finally did, he stamped our passports, no questions asked, and we stepped into Georgia. A new country, with a new language and on top of that, new writing. While we could at least read signs in Azerbaijan it was going to be tougher in Georgia. All the signs were in the Georgian alphabet and only occasionally was there a sign in Russian Cyrillic.We took a taxi to the nearest town of Lagodekhi. We wanted to spend the night at a nature reserve just outside of Lagodekhi, but once again we were stuck with a taxi driver who didn’t understand “nature reserve” and needless to say we had no idea how to say it in Russian. So we just asked him to take us to a hotel, the only one in Lagodekhi. It was one of those monstrous hotels from the Soviet era, deteriorating and up to that point in our travels we managed to avoid them. I never figured out why these hotels operate at all, it is obvious that no one does any maintenance whatsoever and they have very few guests. I nosed around a little and I believe that only 3 rooms were taken the night we were there, including ours. The lady at the reception had other business in addition to giving out the rooms in the hotel, it looked like she was selling lottery tickets or something so she was probably not too busy with the reception work.

Our room had seen better times and I am sure it was a very nice hotel when it was first built. But now none of the drains worked and we didn’t dare touch the air conditioner, it was one of those old models that was mounted on top of the balcony door and it looked very tired. In fact, the whole balcony was crumbling and I very carefully avoided leaning on the balcony railing just in case it fell down. On the other hand there were fresh sheets and towels in the room and there was soap and toilet paper in the bathroom. OK, the toilet paper was there probably since the Soviet times, the paper was stiff and grayish and I thought it better to leave it alone and rather use my own.

The region around Lagodekhi is famous for a number of old churches and monasteries and we hired a taxi to give us a tour. It was a hot day once again and we were tired so we just looked at the places with mild interest. But the driver was determined to show us every single one of them and he drove us around until dark. I was quite disappointed because all the places we saw were under construction as it seems the whole country is being renovated. It was difficult to see anything under the scaffolding, between the bulldozers, and some of the construction that was going on was quite noisy. It was new to me that women must wear skirts in churches, but not to worry, tourists were handed wraparound skirts to put on so we could go inside. No photography inside though.

We were tired of the heat and dust and we made plans to head into the mountainous region of the Caucasus for a few days where it should be cooler. When Marko saw mention of a glacier he was eager to get there. Had he known what it took to get to the glacier he might not have been so enthusiastic.

Sheki

The next morning we were still contemplating the shower situation but we decided to first take a walk to the nearby town of Pirqulu that lies on a hill and has a telescope. We figured we would be all hot and sweaty when we returned and so postponed our shower decision until then. It was a two hour walk uphill through small villages. At one point a police car stopped and I half expected that they would want to see our passports or something but all they wanted was to ask whether we need anything and they wished us well.


We returned to our Babayurd homestay in early afternoon and now we really could not delay our decision any longer: to shower or not to shower? Since it was still early enough we decided to move on and find a nicer place to stay at night where we might shower with something other than a hose in a public toilet. So off we went to Sheki. Our host drove us to town and showed us a crossroads where we should look out for a minibus and wave for it to stop. And so the waiting game began. We looked out for minibuses but not all of them were going to Sheki and out of those that were, they wouldn’t stop if they were full. At the same time taxis circled around us like vultures waiting if we would cave in and take a taxi instead. We decided that we would wait for one hour and if we had no luck with a minibus until then we would start negotiating with a taxi. But at least this time the taxi drivers didn’t profit from us because we were finally taken in by a minibus just 5 minutes short of our one hour cutoff time.


The minibus stopped at a roadside stop where I went to use the toilet. It was the first time ever that I have seen a women’s toilet with several stalls without any doors on them. I have never used a toilet like that where other women could see me but when traveling one can’t make the rules and if that’s the way it is then that’s the way it has to be. Actually I was the only woman in there at the time so I started digging into my backpack to find my toilet paper. When a man walked in, I looked him straight in the eye expecting him to realize that he made a mistake walking into the women’s toilet and he would turn around. But nothing like that happened, in fact, he walked forward, chose a stall and started opening his fly! I was out of there as fast as my legs would take me, thankful for the mess in my backpack that I hadn’t found my toilet paper and was still fully dressed when he walked in. He emerged soon and when the coast was clear other women started using the toilet. I noticed that there was some kind of policy where the women entered the toilet one by one while other women stood at the entrance, guarding those inside from the creeps outside.


The final destination of our minibus was the train station several kilometers away from Sheki. One of the passengers of the minibus heard us asking for a ride to town and he offered us a ride with his friend who came to pick him up. It made no difference to us whether we would pay a taxi or someone’s friend for the ride so we accepted but we were really very surprised when they refused to take any money from us. It seemed they were just curious who we were and were happy to drop off some tourists at the Caravanserai hotel.

The receptionist at the hotel almost tried to sell us the most expensive luxury room but then he looked us over and when he saw how disheveled we were from the dust in the minibus, the sweat from the morning walk, without a shower, he probably decided that we weren’t the type of tourists who would take the luxury room and showed us to a regular room instead. The whole place was wonderful as it used to serve as a rest stop for caravans on the silk route, one leg of which passed through the town. However it was completely modernized so our room was equipped with everything we needed, mostly a hot shower at that point. I looked out into the courtyard and imagined where I might park my camel had I arrived with a caravan.




The town of Sheki is small with not much to see, there is a nice old palace and a silk factory which is off limits to tourists, but it has an adjoining shop with a salesman who would rather watch sports on TV than try to sell us carpets. Which was good since we could browse in peace and we didn’t intend to buy a silk carpet anyway. We also looked over the local bazaar and spent the rest of the time relaxing in a lovely restaurant on the main square. We went there for breakfast where by that time Marko had picked up some of the language so he ordered our breakfast in Azeri: bread, butter, honey, cheese and tea. The place was nice and the day was hot so we returned there for lunch, actually just tea as it was too hot to eat. And we went back there for dinner as well.


I really loved the simplicity of Azerbaijan and the friendly people so I was somewhat sorry that we would be leaving the country the next day.

Rural Azerbaijan

Armed with the freshly learned word for bus station in Russian we hoped we would be able to get out of Baku and continue our trip. We managed to board a minibus whose driver confirmed that he would take us to the bus station. But we seemed to be going in the wrong direction, at least according to the city map we had in our hands. After a while, the driver pointed to another minibus that was headed in the opposite direction across the street and motioned for us to go there and he even signaled the other driver to wait for us. Not sure where we were or where we were going, we followed instructions. The driver of the second minibus who also confirmed that he would take us to the bus station eventually deposited us at a huge parking space. We realized that it was not the bus station, but before we had a chance to decide what to do next, someone approached us asking if we need a ride. Another look around confirmed that we were at a shared taxi parking space where taxis wait for people who need to go places and they negotiate rates and destinations for groups of people who then share the price of a taxi. We told them we were going to Samaxi and almost immediately another passenger for Samaxi materialized and before we knew it we negotiated the price and were sitting in the taxi and on our way. Not exactly the way we had planned – by bus, but at least we were breaking free of the chaos of Baku and hopefully we would have more luck finding bus stations in smaller towns that we still planned to visit.


During the ride towards Samaxi we saw the Azerbaijani countryside for the first time. While it was mostly desert around Baku, it was now getting greener, with bushes and trees. It seems that grapes were already ripe during mid-August because they were sold along the road. Our driver stopped to buy a huge bag of grapes and offered us some. The grapes were a white variety and well ripened, so they were sweet and tasty. Another thing I noticed along the way were the butcher shops. On my travels I have seen many butcher shops where they just hang large pieces of meat outside and allow flies to feast on them. In Azerbaijan they wrap the pieces of meat in white cloth that could be old bedsheets or old white shirts, so the meat is protected from the flies.


Our destination for the night was the Babayurd homestay that we picked from our Lonely Planet guide. It was a farm on a huge estate with apple and pear orchards, a delightful change from the desert heat of Baku. The place was actually a restaurant with tables scattered underneath trees alongside the house and they also offered sleeping accommodations. Our host who later explained that he did not own the place but just worked there was very friendly and genuinely pleased that he had overnight guests. We were shown to a table under a tree where it was nice and shady and slightly windy so we made ourselves comfortable and allowed them to serve us a leisurely late lunch. The host did the grilling on an outdoor grill, a woman whom I took to be his wife did the cooking in the kitchen and a younger guy who might have been their son served us at the table. During the course of the afternoon we saw several parties of guests come and go to eat at the restaurant. We noticed a group of men sitting at a remote table for most of the afternoon and we assumed that a huge black car that was parked in front of the house was theirs so it looked something like a business lunch.


After lunch we had tea and just relaxed reading in the shade. We couldn’t help noticing how the businessmen relaxed after lunch. The younger guy who was serving brought them a carpet and rolled it out on the grass beside their table. The men all laid down on the carpet one beside the other and had a nap. Marko wondered aloud what if we introduced such custom back home, for example what if he asked his business partners to take a nap with him after lunch?

Seeing that it was siesta time we were shown to our room. Well, a room. It was quite obvious that the room was lived-in, probably by the son who would presumably sleep elsewhere that night. The woman handed me a stack of bedsheets, they were old and worn but they smelled clean and were freshly ironed. I changed the bed myself and that took care of the sleeping arrangements. There was electricity in the house and Marko risked charging his telephone. Very carefully, because the electrical outlet was installed on a wire that was hanging from the ceiling.


The only thing we still needed were toilet facilities. Since the place was primarily a restaurant they showed us to the toilet that was used by everyone: the dwellers of the house, the restaurant guests and us as overnight guests. It did not seem to be cleaned every day, it was quite dirty and smelly. Now for the shower. This needs more explanation. Azerbaijan is one of those areas of the world where they do not use toilet paper but rather wash themselves after using the toilet. I knew that and I always carry my own toilet paper when traveling anyway and so it makes no difference to me. While I have often seen toilets fitted with faucets and plastic jugs in many parts of the world, Azerbaijan is more modern and instead of the plastic jug the faucet has a hose attachment with a nozzle, similar to something I would use to water my garden. So I guess they wash themselves with the hose rather than using the jug. And how does this relate to the shower? Our host pointed to a water heater on the corner wall and indicated that the hose has warm water and that we may shower there. In a dirty stinking public toilet. Where one should undress and stand barefoot to shower? Hmmm, Marko and I unanimously decided we would first think about it and went to bed without a shower.

Around Baku

We did some sightseeing in Baku, not too much since it was vacation and we were not in a hurry to do anything and also because it was so hot that it took much effort to walk from one place to another. We had to take rests between sights with local Xirdalan beer. Actually, it was much too hot to drink beer all the time so we also drank lots of tea just like the locals. The temperatures were well above 40 degrees Celsius during the day and they dropped to just below 40 at night. We survived only because they have air conditioning everywhere and that included our hotel room so at least we could sleep normally.


The newer parts of the city look just like any modern European city, everything is clean and well kept, there are flowers and grass that is watered every morning. There are also many restaurants with menus in English and that solved our how-to-order-food-when-we-don’t-know-the-language problem.

We went to a carpet museum and we looked over the palace in the Old city. Near the palace we noticed a sign for the Slovenian consulate and that was a surprise since we had no idea that Slovenia had a consulate in Azerbaijan. Actually when we checked into our hotel the previous day they told us that there is a consulate nearby but we just politely acknowledged the information thinking to ourselves that they probably have us mixed up with Slovakia. It also explains how the nearby miniature book museum where we wandered totally by accident has a miniature book by the most famous Slovenian poet France Prešeren. The lady at the museum told us (in Russian which we were by then beginning to understand slightly better) that it was donated by someone from the consulate.


The next day we planned a day trip to Qobustan. Easier said than done. According to our Lonely Planet guide we needed to go to the bus station and catch some bus to Qobustan and hire a taxi from there. So the first question was where is the bus station in Baku, how do we get there and last but not least, how do you say bus station in Russian? After some discussions with the lady in our hotel reception who tried to be helpful we were unfortunately not able to find where the minibus stops that was supposed to take us to the bus station. We then approached a taxi driver who absolutely did not understand that we wanted to go to the bus station but understood perfectly well that we wanted to go to Qobustan and was willing to drive us there for a nice price. We finally gave up on finding the bus station and negotiated a price for the taxi ride.

At the bus stop in Qobustan there are taxis lined up that wait for those tourists who are better at Russian than we are and who actually make it there by bus. But there are rules for those who arrive by taxi as well. Our Baku city taxi was obviously not allowed to make tourist routes around Qobustan as that is in the jurisdiction of local taxis. There was some very heated discussion between our city taxi driver and a local taxi driver and while I really couldn’t care less how they settled their differences, whatever they were, the final decision was that we are continuing our sightseeing in a local taxi, all of us, including our city taxi driver (the photo below shows Marko flanked by both taxi drivers).


We saw mud volcanoes: they look like mounds of dirt where real mud spurts out. Another tourist family was there at the time and their children were having a party sliding down in the warm oozing mud. We also saw a rock with Roman writing that is supposedly the most eastern place that one of the Roman armies ever reached. And there is a place with prehistoric rock art and a small museum.


On our way to Qobustan we drove along the coast from Baku. The driver pointed out fancy hotels and beaches along the way where the wealthy people come to stay. Since I spent most of my childhood summers on the Croatian seacoast I must say that compared to that the Caspian seacoast is ugly, dull, and smelly, offering only views of oil drilling platforms. I sure am glad we didn’t come to Baku for the sea. Another thing we noticed when driving outside of Baku was remains of Soviet industrialization, there were so many factories of which some seemed operating and some were in various states of decay.


While I loved being in Baku because the city really surprised me with its neatness, it was time we made our way further into Azerbaijan and eventually towards Georgia from where we were flying home. So we checked out of our hotel the next morning but we still had to resolve the matter of how to find the bus station.