Tag Archives: Azerbaijan ๐ฆ๐ฟ
which way to the Coke Museum?
I drank a little more of the V, and then I packed my stuff and left the hotel to walk the rest of the way towards the border with Georgia. The streets in Balakan seemed a tiny bit more flashy than the others before it: The late President’s words were carved in stone on a […]
bowl, bottle, bonhomie
I woke up with something like a faint notion of optimism within me. Sure, the border was still about 50k away, but it felt possible to reach it before midnight the next day. That was when my visa was going to run out. Zaqatala turned out to be a bit bigger than I had expected: […]
the absence of light
I woke up in a hotel that was small and dirty. There was a slightly stupid-looking cat greeting me outside of my door: Everyone else seemed to be still asleep, so I just left the key in the door and stepped out on the streets of Qakh: I needed some tea, though. So I went […]
a breaking voice
I only had four days to get to the border, or else my visa for Azerbaijan would run out. So I said goodbye to the old town and the caravanserai and the mushroom, and I stepped out of the gates and started walking again: It was at least 110km to the border, and some of […]
Thanks, Mr. Shroom!
When I woke up I felt frustrated for several reasons. The newspaper had sent me a reply with the words “it’s very nice, but…”, and the part that came after that meant that I would have to basically rewrite the thing. I would have to cover a lot of distance (about 110km) within just four […]
to mock a hummingbird
Having turned in the article, I went and took a cab to a little village a bit further north in the mountains. The village was called Kish, and there was a tiny little old church in it: I remember telling you about the old Albanians of the Caucasus a few days earlier. Well, this church […]
ye olde Caravanserai
There were expensive hotels, and there were cheap ones. After a bit of searching I had found an affordable room in an historical building, the old Caravanserai of Sheki: The rooms were a bit run down, but they were spacious, and when it turned out that the shower in my room didn’t work, I got […]
full of piti
I woke up to the most gentle of morning lights: Fazil was busy doing his accounting: And two gentlemen were busy playing backgammon: Want some piti? Fazil asked me, and he showed me the food he was preparing: Piti is a dish of mutton and vegetables slow-cooked in a little crock. Of course I wanted […]
take my picture!
I woke up in a small room with another piece of classic hotel art on the wall: Someone gave me hot water for my tea, then I left. I was going to reach the historical town of Sheki today, finally. I had been looking forward to it for quite some time. But first there was […]
stress
I woke up in a wet world. The only thing that wasn’t moist was the inside of my tent. I packed up and started walking: There was a myst of morning due that hung in the air… …covering everything in a thin layer of water: It took a while for the sun to cut through […]
wet lands of the forgotten people
When I left the museum/hotel, it seemed as though the whole place was asleep. The season was over, I was told, there were no tourists and almost no visitors. And then something very good happened. If you look at the map, you will see a river that runs from the north to the south, a […]
road to ruins
It was still raining when I left Gebele. Walking around in the drizzle didn’t feel like a big deal, but I didn’t want to get surprised by heavy rains again. Maybe I was making a mistake? But it turned out that even the drizzle stopped after a while, and the road was quiet and friendly: […]
seen by me
With all my wet stuff hanging everywhere, my room had the feel of a limestone cave. This was probably part of the reason why I felt the need to get out. Also, people had been telling me how great Gebele was, real touristic gem etc. So I went outside: It was still raining, though not […]
wettos
When I woke up, I was in my tent in the forest: I peaked out and noticed that Mah Fren was there, waiting for me to come out and play: So play we did: Then I started walking, and the road, albeit going up-up-up, was good, and I felt optimistic: There wasn’t much in terms […]
castilification
When I left Ismailli in the morning, the sky was saying something along the lines of: “hey dude, check me out, I’m as optimistic as I am blue!” One genuinely weird thing about the whole area was the abundance of castle-like structures. They were everywhere. Ismailli was doing its part for the castilification of Azerbaijan […]
hanging
I liked being in the guesthouse. So much in fact that I decided to stay yet another day. Of course this was also due to the fact that my whole body hurt after the mountain pass of Shamakhi from two days earlier. So I stayed, and I picked up my laundry that had been hanging […]
take me somewhere nice
I was staying in a guesthouse in a quiet neighborhood. The guesthouse had something that I liked very much: Pink couches. In fact, the whole interior was very nice: It had been a Russian mansion at some point (I suspected it to be from the 19th century, when Russia had come to colonize these lands). […]
hello, autumn
Ilgar, the owner of Kafe Piknik, had given me a little shack to sleep in: It had been a strange night. It started out too cold (so that I put on a bunch of clothes and used my sleeping bag together with blankie) and ended up too warm (so that I woke up drenched in […]
easy mode or hard mode?
The weather was mild, and Shamakhi was green: And as long as the road was flat, walking almost felt easy: But I was worried. Today was the day that I would have to decide: take the easy way south out of the mountains and into the flat land towards the city of Ganja (and then […]
the logo
I had been planning to leave today, but I ended up staying. There was more food to be had: There was more time to be spent by the window, looking outside: Also, there was something I wanted to take care of. I wanted to develop a brand identity for The Longest Way, something that people […]