Sheki – three rainy, underwhelming days

I think Sheki is overhyped.

Admittedly, I’ve been unlucky with the weather. I’ve been in Sheki for three days / two nights, and it’s been rainy, grey and overcast for every single hour that I’ve been here.

This meant that I couldn’t do the hiking that I wanted to and was trapped inside with inertia. Even so, I don’t think the town is exceptionally pretty, there are boatloads of tourists, and the view of the mountains doesn’t even compare with, say, Kazbegi.

I’m not going to fall in love with everywhere I travel to and I’m not going to always have a perfect trip. These things happen.

The one highlight has been my hotel. I stayed at Karvansaray Sheki, which is an original karvansaray from the Silk Road era. It’s all original brickwork and quite magical, even if there are usually at least a dozen tourists filming their way around the grounds at any given time. I was lucky enough to reserve one of the two single rooms at Karvansaray, which are priced at a budget friendly £9.20 a night.

I’ve picked up a bottle of pomegranate wine here, which is an Azerbaijani special, but I’ll have to wait until I have a bottle opener to enjoy it properly!

I am on night trains for three of the next four nights(!), so it’s likely that posts will be quiet for a few days.

TTFN, x

Baku and Qobustan – surreal city vibes, mud volcanoes and petraglyths

I find it impossible to announce that I’m in Azerbaijan without making it sound like Eurovision…

So, hello from Azerbaijan! I spent the day in Baku yesterday, which is a very surreal city. I can’t quite pinpoint it, perhaps it’s the clash of the old city and the Dubai-like skyscrapers, perhaps it’s the architecture inherited from the Sultans, perhaps it’s the omnipresence of the oil, perhaps it’s a bit of everything but I’m definitely not in Europe any more.

I actually had a very good sleep on the night train and arrived rested in Baku, but it was so hot that I couldn’t bear to venture out of the old town, so I have very few photos from Baku itself.

Today, I was more adventurous and went to Qobustan.

Qobustan is a town 70km south of Baku which is famed for its petraglyths and the nearby mud volcanoes.

The petraglyths were completely different in appearance to the ones I saw in Bulgaria but they also depicted hunting scenes. Some have been removed from the stone face and reside in the museum, but there are still numerous carvings which you can visit on the mountains. The carvings of the ox and antelope are particularly clear and arresting.

The landscape from the petraglyth mountain is also very beautiful and resembles a post apocalyptic moonscape.

The highlight of the day for me was the mud volcanoes. There are around a thousand mud volcanoes in the world and 400 of them are located in the coastal areas of Azerbaijan.

A very fun and playful atmosphere with people (locals and tourists) bottling the mud for beauty treatments, young boys sliding down the volcanoes, and taxi drivers driving up onto the volcanoes . I still have mud splatters on me after being caught in an eruption!

I used a variety of transport to get around Qobustan. I took an Uber to the museum from Baku (which cost 22 manat, £10) and then met a group of young Russian tourists who kindly took me up the mountain and to the volcanoes, before dropping me at a train station (where the officials helped me hail a bus, as there weren’t any trains running, peculiarly. I think it might be just for freight).

From the museum you can get a taxi to the volcanoes, but I didn’t have the mental energy to haggle so I was very grateful for the Russians generosity. I was told to expect upwards of 20 manat for that taxi.

Tours from Baku varied wildly in price, depending on how many wanted to do the tour that day. There was only two other people on the day I wanted to visit, so a tour would have cost me 70 manat. I was lucky to meet the Russians and have an easy bus journey back (the first bus only took me to the outskirts of Baku. A young boy who wanted to practice his English helped me with the bus connection, buying a ticket, and when to get off). If you have a tour quote you for 50 manat as a solo traveller, I would say take that option. But if you are travelling as a group, see if you can keep the Uber driving waiting and they can take you the Baku, museum, volcano, Baku loop. That would be the most cost effective.

It’s a little bit of hassle to travel there independently (or expensive, if you do a tour) but definitely worth it.

The post is being uploaded from a Pizza Hut(!) in Baku train station, waiting for a night train for Sheki (in the Azerbaijani mountains).

TTFN x

Kazbegi – one hike and two nights in the mountains

Kazbegi is the mountainous area most accessible from Tbilisi and it was genuinely breathtaking. Huge, epic mountains only 13km from the border with Russia.

It was only a 2.5 hour matrushky, which cost a mere £3, so well worth the adventure out of Tbilisi.

I hiked to the Gergeti Trinity Church and part of the glacier hike (but the clouds looked too ominous) and otherwise took it easy, read a book, and enjoyed the glorious views from my window.

I’m now in Azerbaijan for six nights or so, but I will be back in Georgia for a more thorough adventure at the end of the month (as well as a stopover before heading to Armenia!)

TTFN, x