A Trip to Azerbaijan

I visited Azerbaijan as part of a tour of the Caucasus region that also covered Georgia and Armenia. The itinerary was done with three fellow travellers. We entered Azerbaijan on the train we had caught in Tbilisi, Georgia, bound for Baku. We had set off the evening before, just before midnight, and were at the Georgian-Azerbaijani border. The train stood still for a couple of hours for the thorough Azerbaijani customs checks. We had been quite worried about coming from Armenia, a country formally at war with Azerbaijan, but fortunately we got away with just the confiscation of a souvenir one of my friends had bought in Yerevan. We had bought the entry visa online a few days earlier. I had been foresighted and left the souvenirs I'd bought in Armenia a few hours before in the safekeeping of the Children's Art Gallery in Tbilisi. When the train set off again we lay down on the berth.

We were travelling first class in two compartments, each with two beds. Some travel accounts mention a frequent scam against tourists, who at the end of the journey are charged for a pillowcase they failed to hand back to the conductor. To avoid this, I didn't take the sheets and pillowcase out of the wrapper that had been given to me, and I fell asleep fully dressed. In the morning, on waking, we looked out of the window at a desert landscape dotted with ancient oil wells. We arrived at the ultra-modern Baku Station, where we had breakfast before taking a taxi to the Old City. This is one of the oldest places in the Caucasus region; the little streets climbing the hill are protected by a ring of walls, and the mighty Maiden's Tower is the symbol of Baku.

Our hotel, though, was further down, outside the walls, in the recently developed district, where the long pedestrian promenade and the monumental fountains are. After taking possession of our rooms we walked the pedestrian promenade lined with shops as far as the seafront on the Caspian Sea, the largest lake in the world. From anywhere in the city you can see the three Flame Towers, the three skyscrapers whose silhouette recalls three flames shooting up towards the sky. With one hand I touched the oily water of the Caspian, then after a long walk we returned to the Old City, where we got lost among the alleys looking for the palace of the local rulers. We went into the disappointing Shirvanshah's Palace and then had dinner in a fine restaurant in the old town, where we ate reasonably well.

We had read on the web that Azerbaijanis are wary and dishonest people, but we found them extremely kind and welcoming; they always tried to help us. For instance, we asked a lady for some information and she offered to walk with us for a long stretch, wanting nothing in return. Nor was it an isolated case: we witnessed several episodes that make us inclined to think Azerbaijanis are very hospitable. On top of that, it should be noted that Azerbaijani women are very beautiful, or at least that the proportion of beautiful women is extremely high. In the restaurant where we had dinner they were all stunning. What's more, Azerbaijan is a Shia Muslim country, but after many years of state atheism during the Soviet period, I don't get the impression that religious precepts are followed. Here the vast majority of women don't wear the veil, and beer is served quite happily in the bars.

After dinner two of my friends took a taxi to see the city by night; my other travel companion and I walked as far as the Caspian, from where we watched from a distance the spectacle of the Flame Towers, offering light shows that form cascades, the national flag and much more. We then went back to the hotel for the night. The following morning we left Baku, a city between Europe and the Middle East where ultra-modern districts and an ancient historic centre coexist. I had expected much less from this place, so it surprised me favourably. In a taxi-van we made a long transfer to Sheki to visit the small, disappointing Palace of the local ruler, famous for its coloured glass windows. It's a useful stop to break up the long transfer towards the Georgian border, but absolutely skippable.

To get there from Baku we first crossed a region with sparse vegetation, then lush woods where Azerbaijanis come to picnic. Here we stopped to watch a woman making bread in a strange well-shaped oven in which the dough is stuck to the wall to cook. The bread, cooked and eaten, is delicious and crunchy. One negative note about this outlying area of Azerbaijan: the public toilets have no toilet paper because here they don't use it. From Sheki, in a couple of hours we reached the border with Georgia, which, having left the taxi, we had to cross on foot. The customs formalities were simple and quick; we crossed a river and we were in Georgia.