From Samaxi, eastern Azerbaijan
Here’s a quick update. I’m in an internet cafe in the town of Samaxi, in eastern Azerbaijan. The reason it’s a quick update is because it’s BOILING hot in this internet cafe.
It’s packed, and the young men playing video games are all in outsize white flat caps, which are obviously the in thing.
Since I last wrote, I have had a lovely weekend in Baku - thanks especially to JOHN who let me use their company apartment right opposite the French Embassy in the best part of town, and CHRIS who took me round for lunches and coffees and dinners and very nice breakfasts. Both are working on projects for Tenghiz Chevron Oil in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan etc. If you are reading this Chris and John - THANKYOU! and I’m OK, don’t worry!
I feel quite surprised that I made it through Central Asia in one piece, after talking to these people who work there. I didn’t mention it in my blog, but I did feel very ill when I arrived in Turkistan, in south Kazakhstan - sore skin, exhausted, and although thirsty, I threw up the water I drank. The oil engineers explained that these are actually heat stress symptoms, and said they normally put people on a saline drip if they get into that state. Lucky I seemed to be OK just sipping rehydration salts and lying in bed a day. Anyway, I’m OK, and now I know.
Back to Baku: it’s a bit like Trieste and a bit like Manchester - big 19th C city architecture (Manchester), big sqaures and old fashioned sea front (Trieste). Then there are caravanserais and mosques and 14th C Shah’s palaces, which are not really like anywhere I’ve seen before.
People dress up like mad in the streets, and there are European brands like Next and Accessorize and Gap which I haven’t seen for months. There are also Irish pubs and English cafes full of expat oil men, and I had a lot of very nice full English breakfasts…
Now I’ve left that all behind again, and am on the road, heading west towards the Georgia border. I had a hard day battling out from Baku. All around there are just open dry rolling yellow hills, covered with yellow dry grass. THere was an enormous gale blowing, and in places I could hardly hold the bike on the road. There are lots of birds of prey, patrolling the hill slopes, but I STILL can’t tell a falcon from a hawk etc so I’m sorry I don’t know what they were…
I ate at a cafe where the wind was ripping through willow trees over the outdoor tables. I had dinner at a little village where the men were wearing big black felt caps and the women looked like Mrs Tiggywinkle in wraps and cloaks. Everyone was about four feet tall. There were flies everywere and noone minded (except me).
I stopped for the night under a radio mast, camping in a spot sheltered from the wind behind it. Amazing views into yellow nothingness, and the big sky full of stars.
This morning I rather surprisingly met an Azerbaijani professor from Edinburgh University, whilst having breakfast on the white terrace of a lovely cafe in a tiny ten-house village. He was a specialist in the unusual (to me, anyway) combination of William Blake and Caucasus international relations. He told me about massacres of Muslims in these towns in the early 20th C. Two child refugees from Nagorny-Karabakh were helping in the little cafe, a brother and sister. The six-year old daughter of the professor’s assistant shared my honey and stared at me with huge black eyes. Below the road curved away across the bare hills.
Now I’m in Samaxi. THe town used to be the capital of Azerbaijan’s Shirvan Shahs, but it’s suffered earthquakes etc and there are not many old buildings left. In fact I’ve seen none at all so far. Just nice squat yellow stone cottages with grape vines.
The hotel here is literally collapsing, whole bits of the floor are caved in, there’s no water at all, and most floors are boarded up. Once it must have been nice. I’ve got a whole suite, with chandelier, two old wooden upholstered armchairs, and a portrait of a 19th C Russian lady with her hair up. I dare not go onto the balcony for fear it will collapse. But it’s OK. And the view is nice.
Better sign off. Tomorrow I go on towards Georgia, on the road to Saki, south of the Great Caucasus mountains.