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.