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.

Arriving in Baku

How did Marko and I decide to spend our vacation in the Caucasus? Last year we were in the eastern part of Turkey and were wondering what it might be like across the border, further east. And one thing led to another and before I knew it we had airplane tickets on Turkish airlines through Istanbul to Baku, Azerbaijan and return from Tbilisi, Georgia.

It started when we checked in at the airport in Slovenia. The lady at the counter read and re-read our destination and finally had to ask, where is this Baku anyway? Are you really going there? What will you do there? Do you have a visa? Is it safe? I have to say it is slightly creepy when the people at the airport have never heard of the destination where you are going. But I guess not many people travel from Slovenia to Azerbaijan.

We spent the first night in Istanbul at the same place we stayed last year and it felt nice that the staff actually remembered us. The next morning we continued our journey to Baku. We need a visa for Azerbaijan that is issued at the airport. It all went smoothly without any complications. We did not have a hotel reservation in Baku because it is not possible to book budget hotels online so we just picked something out of the Lonely Planet guide and asked a taxi driver to take us there. He obviously knew that we did not have a reservation so he offered to take us somewhere else, in the same area and within the same price range. It was all the same to us and I guess he made a nice commission for bringing us there.


The Maiden tower is the most famous attraction in Baku and it was very close to our hotel so it was the first place where we wandered. We climbed to the top for the views of the whole area, the port on the Caspian sea, the Old city and beyond it the newer parts of the city. We noticed that the new buildings that are being built are not all glass and modern but rather built in a way that blends in with the existing architecture and the yellowish stone of the Old city buildings. Thus it is hard to tell where the old part of the city ends and the new begins and the magic of the old city seems to be more preserved.



The language in Azerbaijan is Azeri, but most everyone also speaks Russian. No English. We speak English but no Russian. So communication was interesting, at least at the beginning.

Our hotel did not serve breakfast so we had to find something to eat the first morning. We asked the lady at the reception who spoke a few words of English mixed with Russian and hand signs for a suggestion and she pointed down the street where we should turn left and there we will see a Cafe sign. We followed her directions and found the place with stairs that led to the basement and we went in. There was no one there but the owner happily came over from across the street.

We managed to convey that we were there to eat and he produced some menus. In Azeri. OK, forget the menus. We tried to explain that we wanted breakfast which I am not sure whether he understood but he excitedly offered us chicken. This we understood because the Russian word for chicken is the same as the Slovenian word for chicken and because he also demonstrated a chicken cackling so this part was now clear. I told him that we want breakfast, not chicken. And he again offered us the chicken with rice. We got the rice part because the word he used was pilaf and that made sense. So once again I shook my head no, I really do not want chicken for breakfast. He seemed a bit distressed but then came up with an offer of kartof. What? We were clueless. He started thinking, probably how to demonstrate, but then he had an idea and went into the kitchen and brought out a pot and showed us the contents: mashed potatoes. That made sense, I know the German word for potatoes is Kartoffel. But I had no intention of eating reheated mashed potatoes so I shook my head no. Now the guy was getting frustrated and he finally offered us grecka, somehow letting us know that that was his final offer and we either take it or go hungry. Once again he brought a pot from the kitchen and we deciphered that grecka is buckwheat, we have it in Slovenia and were surprised that they eat it there as well. So the guy took our expression of recognition of grecka as a yes and was off to the kitchen to prepare our meal for us, the chicken with the buckwheat and some fresh vegetables. All in all the meal was not bad, it is just that I would never have ordered something like that for breakfast. So we seriously needed to learn more Russian. Or find a restaurant with a menu in a language that we could understand.