The Long Road Home

I’m now in the town of Sheki, up in the north west corner of Azerbaijan. Finally here I’m cycling through really NICE places, rather than just INTERESTING. The temperature has been mainly about 30 degrees, and it feels lovely compared to days over 40 in Kazakhstan. The border with Russia is only about 20km away over the mountains from here.

The road now rolls gently through open yellow stubble, or darkly through deep forests of big old oaks now with acorns on, tall beeches with mast, and hazelnut and sweet chestnut trees. Then there are lighter woodlands with old weeping willows, birch with white bark, pussy willow with pale green leaves, ash trees full of keys and laburnum with pods. There are cherry trees full of fruit hanging over walls,, tons of red and black blackberries, elder flowers, and old may bushes with green haws. Blue prickly star flowers (no idea what they are) but they are everywhere) and yellow short hollyhocks.

There are wooden fences made of sticks propped together, and hedges of woven branches. sometimes the scenery is like a piece of Cheshire that got broken off and somehow drifted out here. or like north Oxfordshire or Buckinghamshire open wide fields.

On hot days it felt like high summer with deep shadow and cows standing in the golden stubble.

Then it rained all day yesterday and there were fallen leaves on the road, cool and wet, and a smell of soggy hedgerows, and suddenly it felt like autumn. The dry riverbeds were full of brown noisy water, which I thought was the sound of a motorway until finally I reached the river. In fact the water a bit further on burst right out of the river, and undermined pieces of the road so whole chunks broke off, and men were standing watching and putting piles of sticks to warn the cars. In other places the river was just flooding right over the road, really fast and deep, swirling muddy water. Quite hard to ride through as it tugs a lot. very dirty too. I was in a muddy mess when I arrived in Sheki.

I’m staying in a big old Intourist hotel, but there’s HO T WATER. Nothing’s been as bad as that collapsing Samaxi hotel, but even here there the upper floors are derelict, there are stray cats up there, and floors piled with mouldy mattresses. The best place I’ve stayed was a wooden chalet in the forest north of Qabala, where shepherds on horses rode through, and you could drink tea and eat sticky halva next to a lake.

I’ve seen big brown buzzards flap up from poles, little kestrels hovering, bee=eaters on the wires, whose little beaks make them look like they’re smiling, hoopoes flitting up from everywhere ridiculously fancy birds with orange crests up, a pair of goldfinches dashing along keeping up with me along the hedgerow, swallows, and sometimes jays and orioles disappearing into the trees with loud alarm calls.

There are baby donkeys (foals?) jumping in happy little parties (v endearing), brown cows that stand in the road and then bellow when I go past, horses and foals nibbling the grass, goats grazing in the scrub, a few big buffalo. There are scattered small villages with non-descript houses made of what look like yellow breeze blocks, and some of mud and straw. New buildings have shiny metal roofs with weathervanes. Tiny post offices. little yellow brick mosques.

Village shops sell Pasha tea in boxes, tins of cooking oil, lots of bottles of spirits, pasta, rice and puses in sacks on the floor, sugar cubes in big bags, boxes of washing powder. In the tows you can get sausages and cheese, flowery dresses hanging from the fronts of thee shop, and beach balls. Along the road are big signboards with photos of Alivey and his father looking serious with the the sunset behind them, or with crowds of men in suits, or patting school girls on the shoulders, or shaking hands with small boys in waistcoats.

There are cafes in the woods with big silver tea urns and smoking wood fires and charcoal shashlik grills. Near the villages there are white wooden cafes with verandahs where you get tea in teapots on trivets, and little narrow glasses with no handle, sugar lumps in a pot, and lemon. Also ewe’s milk cheese, buffalo butter white like lard. Halve sticky chewy nutty. Cheery juice. Water melons, round loads of flat bread. Cold pancakes for breakfast. Honey on plates. Tomato and cucumber, onions sprinkled with paprika, plates of chickpeas. Shashiklik kebabs, chips, meaty bones in oily soup. Flies. Ice creams.

The people you see and meet are almost all men. I’ve seen women in headscarves, with children, picking berries in the hedgerows. But at cafes, there are almost always only men, just once or twice I’ve seen a family. Men stop their cars and talk in the road. They do a loud slapping handshake with a big backswing, and then kiss each other on the cheek. They sit in shirt sleeves playing backgammon and cards, and drinking tea and smoking in the mornings. Old men have big black berets.

Two things are disturbing up here. It’s odd to be in a place so like Cheshire, or the Peak District, but where there appear to be no women. In Kazakhstan I met lots of women as they were running shops and so on. Here I hardly meet any, and people seem to find it UNTHINKABLE to be a woman not married, working, alone, and with no children. I have been battling along explaining g to everyone that yes I’m on my own, and that in the UK for example, it’s not so very odd, really, bla bla, but now to save trouble, and for safety, I’ve in the last few days invented for myself a husband, who’s always just up the road somewhere, a nice chap doing something, getting a hotel, buying things, etc etc. I must be quite convincing when I tell this lie, as some people have rather surprisingly even replied, ‘oh, yes, I’ve seen him”. .I’ve also chopped about 5 years off my age. Not sure if people are so convinced by that. It’s the most conservative male-dominated country I’ve been through.

It’s also troubling to be in such lovely s scenery sitting at cafes in quiet villages talking about volleyball, or watching loud jolly weddings in the towns, and think that if I were to ride just a couple of days north, I’d reach Groznu, and if a day or so south, I’d be in Nagorno-Karabakh. War memorials, and refugee children remind you suddenly.

But, Sheki is glorious. it was the capital of a khanate in the 18th C and a trade centre on the caravan route not only from the Caspian Sea to Turkey but also north over the Caucasus to Russia and south to Iran. It’s a mountain town with 18th and 19th C caravanserai traveller’s inns, all arches and courtyards, where you can still have tea in the rose gardens, and there’s an 18th C Khan’s palace with fabulous wooden lattice windows in deep blue and red stained glass, little Ottoman fireplaces, and a freize of painted horsemen in furry hats hunting and peering through telescopes.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Azerbaijan, On the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.