Sorry, there are no more pictures. They take too long to upload and I can never place them in the correct spaces to go with the text! This is a shot of the old city walls.
Azerbai-where? This was response of most people when I told them of my Eid plans. Eid is a holiday that follows the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and at first, we were supposed to have three days off of school plus the two week-end days. Thanks to the Dubai ministry another two days were added to all schools at the last moment, so we had a week off. Our four day trip to Azer. quickly became a full seven days! Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that borders the largest lake in the world, the saltwater Caspian Sea, is located just a few hours from Dubai by way of a non-stop flight on Azerbaijan Airways. It is also located between Iran and Russia. We landed at 6:00 AM and the adventure began…..with a visa fee on the spot of $131!! So much for the former Soviet republics being cheap!! At the airport we were met by our driver, Gaffa. A new teacher at ASD this year knows a family that lives in Baku (the capital) and we ended up staying with this family for a few nights and using their taxi driver for our first day. Like many we would come across, Gaffa spoke no English; however my traveling companion and fellow ASDer Tim (Mills for those in the know) speaks some Russian so it was all good. Azer is the language of Azerbaijan but almost everyone in the country over the age of 30 or so speaks Russian from the old Soviet Union days. After visiting with the family (mom and two kids aged 3 and 5 (!) – the dad was in Canada for a conference) Tim and I grabbed a little rest and then headed out to explore with Gaffa. Our destination was a town about 50 miles south of Baku called Gobastan. There are really only two things in the town (or outside of it): some mud volcanoes and some Petroglyth drawings that are on some rocks. These are said to rival those anywhere in the world and they were pretty impressive. It was a cool rainy day and since it is neither cool nor rainy in Dubai at this time of year, the weather was a welcomed change. The mud volcanoes were not to be because the road was too muddy to get there…too muddy to get to the mud volcanoes! Perhaps the most interesting part of the drive was that it gave us a first hand view of the ‘environmental holocaust’ that is part of Azerbaijan’s legacy. Oil production in Russia (who have some of the biggest oil reserves in the world) all began in the Caspian Sea just off shore. And since Azerbaijan is far from Moscow, who in power cared about how the oil was obtained! The result is really a nightmare or as Tim aptly coined it the ‘wounded landscape.’ Factories, both abandoned and working, were everywhere, the water looked oily, and there were pipelines were abundant and all above ground. There was also tons of heavy equipment just rusting away and it had probably been there for years and years. There were also plenty of run down Soviet block apartment buildings that had seen much better days. The entire drive just seemed so bleak and gloomy, just like the weather. From Gaffa we learned quite a bit about the country and politics via his Russian to Tim. Turns out most people hate the president and his father before him. Like in most newly formed countries in this part of the world, corruption runs ramped and apparently this leader and his father, have stolen quite a bit from the country. At one point when talking about the leader, Gaffa made this hand gesture that was like an OK sign and held it close to his mouth and ‘blew’ through it? I don’t exactly know what that means, but it can’t be good! The next day we explored the city of Baku on foot. The weather was a little bit better. The city was quite interesting with the old walled city being quaint and beautiful and the new city being very ‘oil/mafia’ money! We went into a few trendy chic men’s clothing stores and felt like we were the only ones in there without obvious mafia connections. Of course, the president’s picture was in every store; I suppose stating that he does his shopping in the shops as well. In between the walking around and while it was raining we sought refuse in the very happening McDonalds. It was a holiday so there were plenty of people about. Our ‘hoped for’ three day/two night trek in the mountains was canceled due to rain and a poor weather forecast, so instead, we decided to just take a tour and drive to the places we were to hike between. As we were eating our Big Macs, these two young Azeri girls sat down beside us. The cynical side in us thought…hoes! But apparently there were attracted by our English speaking. Most young people in Azeri speak a little English. These girls were wanting to practice, so we engaged them for a little bit. Turns out they were 17 and in a type of vocational school for language training with the hope of getting a job in an embassy abroad, in this case Norway. Well, Tim speaks Swedish (from his exchange school days and frequent trips there) and if you speak Swedish Norwegian isn’t that far off so he can speak a little of that as well. So here we were eating a Big Mac in a McDonald’s in Baku, Azerbaijan and Tim is speaking Norwegian to two Azeri girls! It was one of those “did you think this time a year ago moments…..like did you think this time a year ago that you would be speaking Norwegian to two Azeri girls in between bites of a Big Mac!!” I felt totally American with just the ability to speak English, some Spanish and about 25 words of Arabic and 10 words of Nepali. All I could say was ‘hablan espanol?’ Of course, they couldn’t!! It was pretty surreal though.
The next day we were off to explore various parts of the country with our tour guide. The highway took us past an old Soviet city that was just built for industrialization. Many of the factories are shut down now that it’s been 17 years since the old Soviet Union days, but of course the factories still stand. We were actually a few miles from the city on the highway but as we drove through the air quality dropped considerably! It was just plain nasty. I could only imagine living in a city with the air quality that poor and with a constant toxic smell in the air. The city is famous for two things: 1) how industrial it is/was and how the surrounding area has become the ‘environmental holocaust and 2) for its baby cemetery that contains the bodies of babies and small children that died due to horrific birth defects from living in the area. The tradition of Azerbaijan is to put a picture of the deceased on the gravestone, so there are many pictures of the deformed babies. For obvious reasons we kept on driving and decided to skip the visit into the city. Only 30 minutes past this city was beautiful landscape and snow capped mountains in the distance. That was our destination….up into these mountains to a village called Xinalic (pronounced Shinaleek).
Until two years ago, there was only a dirt road up to the village; now it is gravel and no big deal to get there. Just a few years ago, only about 100 visitors a year made it here. Now, the village probably sees that many in a month during the tourist season. The village is still cool. There are no restaurants or hotels, so if you stay you do so in a ‘home stay’ meaning you sleep on a mattress or cushion on the floor in a room in a family’s house. You also eat whatever they are cooking. It was nice as it was Eid, so a holiday atmosphere was present and there was plenty of food on the table. Azerbaijan produces plenty of fruit and in this village the meat of the day was lamb….fresh ‘range free’ lamb and though I usually don’t eat lamb, it was quite tasty. The house was rather modern, though with a walk around the village we saw many much older houses – some as old as 300 years- but there was no bathroom in any of the houses. At least in ‘our’ house,’ the bathroom consisted of a wooden outhouse with a hole in the floor! In the villages, they apparently don’t like having a bathroom inside or so we were told. This village, and others like it, are unique because they (back in the day at least) had very little contact with the rest of the country or even surrounding villages. As such, each village has their own language and customs. Modern times have arrived in the villages though. Almost every house has a satellite dish and at least one cell phone….and they still bath and ‘do their business’ outside! The TV was on and cranked up in volume the entire time we were there! Since there is nothing to do in the village except keep livestock, there is plenty of time for the men to watch TV. But not the women? They are too busy doing the cooking, cleaning, hand-washing, and farming (if there is any and they tend the farm animals!) It’s good to be a guy in the villages! When we were walking around we often saw little boys out playing around while the girls were inside helping their mothers or doing chores! The older guys just sort of hang out, play backgammon, drink tea and smoke. In one small village, there was this bluff overlooking the village. You had to enter the village from a the top of the hill as the village is down in a valley. On the bluff there is a bench and sure enough as we entered the town, there were several men just watching the coming and goings into the village! Since sheep herding is a big part of the animal economy in this area and there are wolves and bears, there is a need for sheep dogs. This area is famous for its mean dogs and we were told to be on the lookout if we were out walking around by ourselves. These particular dogs have their ears cut off to make them ‘meaner’ we were told. As we drove from the village we saw plenty of them herding sheep along the road! This also provided a highlight of the driving….having to slowly make out way through a flock of sheep on the road.
After returning to Baku for a day and switching to renting a car with a driver instead of a ‘tour’ with a car, driver, and guide, Tim and I set off for the western part of the country. Before leaving Baku we went to see an eternal flame, which is just a line of flames coming out of a side of a hill. It had religious meaning (zorasterism) back in the day; now it is just ‘there’ in the middle of nowhere. To get there we passed through another ‘wounded landscape’ filled with oil pumps – working and nonworking and rusting away!- and miles and miles of pipelines. There were some shacks where people were living and some newer dwellings and then all of a sudden, you would see a mansion set in the middle of the worst views that you could imagine! As we left Baku were rode over endless miles of rolling hills of greens, browns, yellows, and oranges. The trees were beginning to change and it was beautiful. Our destination was a small village called Lahic which sits at the end of a 20K gravel/dirt road, but because of the rain, the dirt was more mud. We officially had the slowest driver in the world and every time we had to navigate through a muddy stretch of the road, he would start yelling in Azeri. He couldn’t speak much Russian and no English so we had no way to communicate with him. We just acted like the ‘customer is always right’ and never acted like we wanted to turn back. At one point, the guy was terrified (and I was a bit apprehensive as well) as we came to a narrow part in the road with a hundreds of feet high sheer wall of rock on one side and a hundreds of feet drop to the river below on the other. It was getting dark, the road was muddy, and there were fallen rocks on the road – evidence of falling rocks due to the rain! But, there was no way to turn around at this point and there was no way he could go backwards, so we pressed on. We finally reached the village and stayed in a little guesthouse where the family spoke English. It turned out to be a great night as some other tourists that we happened across in Xinalic (two Israelis and an Italian) were also there. The next morning we walked around the village and watched some of the artisans bang out cooper products. As we drove back down the road, it was quite impressive to see the views and the road itself in the nice weather and daylight. The driver was all into us taking his picture in front of various sites and of the road by the cliffs as well! After hitting the main road, again after the slowest driving of 20 Ks ever(!) we reached the main road and made out way to Seki. Seki was OK but had a few great moments including the driver getting a ticket for driving the wrong direction on a one way road! This provided us with endless fits of laughter when he wasn’t around!! We stayed in a place that was once a palace for a ‘shah’ and played an impromptu soccer game with some local kids. Tim and I against three Azeri boys. We played with no goalie, they were quick to inbound and shoot at our goal and at one point, I thought I was in the goal and deflected the ball with my arm. They started yelling, I assume, “hand ball” in Azeri and before I could even get in the goal to defend, they kicked the ball, scored, and started dancing around! Since the U.S. is used to losing in international soccer games, our 6-2 loss was rather easy to take! Another highlight was another shah’s palace that is a museum. It had stained glass and beautifully painted mural in the rooms….for the men. The women’s rooms were just plain white as back in the day; they wouldn’t be having visitors anyway as the women were not allowed to entertain! What was cool about the rooms were the designs on the ceilings. The floors were all hardwood, but back in the day would have been covered with woven carpets that mirrored the murals on the ceilings. It was quite impressive. Azerbaijan is famous for its carpets as well as copper handicrafts. I did get a mosque incense burner that looks like a coffee pot to add to my collection (to those in the know!)
The next morning the driver met us, and since we knew how long the trip would probably take to get back with his slow driving, we just wanted to hit a local Saturday market and head back. We wanted to look at carpets, more copper products, etc. but the market ended up being one for the locals. It was interesting…tons of machine made carpets, clothes, and just about any vegetables, fruits, and fish/meat one could want including sheep’s head and feet for sale! Our driver insisted that we see this Albanian church that was located in a village above Seki. Since we didn’t know where we were going, and neither did he (I swear he would ask directions every two blocks!) we just looked at each other and thought, ‘well, we can’t tell him we don’t want to go because we can’t communicate!’ we just went with the flow. We arrived at the church and it was another highlight! It had interesting history as somehow the story of the Vikings is linked to this area of Azerbaijan. The famous anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl has somewhat controversially stated that Azeri people would up in Scandinavia and are the original Vikings! Anyway, he got the Norwegian government to renovate this 2,000 year old church and there is still evidence of crypts with bones and a history of the area within the church. There was one interesting thing….if you are a believer (in what I’m not sure!?) you should be able to get an old Azeri coin to stick to the stone wall. I never got mine to stick but the ‘tour guide’ did at least one time. Her’s stuck and I tried to stick mine on the wall above her’s. Well, it fell down, knocked her’s off too and then she couldn’t get it to stick again! Perhaps she only ‘believed’ part time and the wall knew it!
We took another road back (a little to the south) which allowed us to see even more of the countryside. The land in this area is quite fertile (and apparently does not suffer from the leftover pollution Soviet times). There were tons of orchards and farming along the way. And in the middle of nowhere there would be an apple or pomegranate stand! And let me tell you, the fruit was delicious and right off the tree. (None of this having to be shipped to Dubai which is usually the fruit that I eat). The driver finally put the pedal to the metal and we made good time on the return. As we approached Baku he somehow made it clear that he wanted the pictures that we had taken of him. Again, we couldn’t tell him otherwise so we did as he wanted! It didn’t matter in the end as we got to the airport when we needed to and then flew back to Dubai. All in all, it was a great trip to a new country, and as usual there were many good adventures along the way.
A final tidbit which hasn’t been mentioned yet but it pretty funny….when we were in the house in Xinalic I was given some hot tea to drink. I reached for some sugar cubes and dropped one into my tea. I was informed that this wasn’t sugar and was then handed some granulated sugar. The sugar cubes were ‘candy.’ They were used like this….one picked up a sugar cube, dunked it in the tea and then put it in one’s teeth. Then, one drinks the tea through the ‘candy!’ And most of the older adult population have gold capped teeth or rotten teeth….coincidence? I think not!! Another interesting part of the tea drinking (much more popular than coffee) is that they put jam (their canned fruits) down into the tea. We tried it and it was really tasty…with cherry jam. Tea drinking proved to be very popular as was smoking! And almost all adult men smoked….chain smoked! And forget about the worldwide movement of banning smoking inside someplace – that’s definitely NOT happening in Azerbaijan!
The guy I travel with was Tim Mills (for those in the know). I actually met him several years ago when I returned from Kathmandu to Dubai to travel to Kerala, India with my friend Glynis from the Kuwait days. Tim and Glynis worked at the same school in Dubai, but now Tim works at ASD. I actually stayed a few nights with him when I was passing through Dubai on my ‘gap year.’ Anyway, Tim is known as “Global Tim” and me, “Chip of the World.” We both have traveled quite a bit and this trip is probably the first of more that we will take together to places we have not been to before. On one of the long drives we compared the number of countries we have each been to. To my dismay, he is +2 over my 56 countries! In addition I’ve been to several ‘independent territories’ of other countries including Bermuda, Cayman Islands (England), and Curacao (The Netherlands). Tim used to live in the south Pacific and would be way ahead if he included these territories into his total count! Alas, he will gain a few more at Christmas as he heads to South America! I better get busy if I’m to keep up with Global T!
When you see the island from the sky, you know it's gonna a fun vacation!
The beach (Legian) in front of the hotel.
Surf's up, dudette! Check out the waves in the background.
As the sun sets.
The restaurant on the beach.
Satay chicken, yummy! Beer, good! Sticky rice, yummy! Seafood, gross!!
Sunset before dinner at the beach restaurant.
One of the hotel pools.
The hotel entrance.
"Trying out" another tatoo. The symbol means 'welcome' in Bali.
The American School of Dubai group under the waterfall. 
The river runs through a jungle.
A U.N. raft: Me (USA), Austin (Canadian), Vinay (Indian), Arya (Iranian). One of the reasons I love teaching in international schools!! (and lead by a Balinese fella)
About all I can handle on my head.
Carrying the 'stuff' uphill....about 1/4 mile up concrete stairs!
Balinese Hindu temple. They're everywhere on the island.
Stone statue outside a temple adourned with tropical flowers.
The team and our 2009 'hand sign!'
