Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan 2018
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan 2018
Caucasus 2018
The driving distance covered today was 340 kilometres, almost all of it on superb roads. We left our hotel in Baku at 8:30am and arrived at our hotel in Şǝki at 8:30pm, which made for a long day. Given the good roads, how could a drive of 340 kilometres take 12 hours? The answer lies in the excellent stops made along the way.
The stops as we drove west from Baku were few in number, but each consumed quite a bit of worthwhile time. If we ignore our first stop at a supermarket in western Baku to stock up on water, our first ‘real’ stop was the Diri Baba mausoleum in Maraza village. By now I have learned that Azerbaijani place names usually have several transliterations, and Maraza is also known as Mǝrǝzǝ and Qobustan Mǝrǝzǝ. Diri Baba was a skeikh who died around the beginning of the 15th century. His body was placed in one of the many caves in the cliffs overlooking an old Muslim cemetery. A few years after his death, local people saw his body and noticed it still looked fresh “as though he had died only two days earlier”. To commemorate this, a two-storeyed mausoleum was constructed in 1402 on the cliff face over the cave where Diri Baba was buried.
Climbing up to the mausoleum was no easy affair, partly because the stairs had deteriorated despite a relatively recent renovation, but mostly because the stairs were both very narrow and about three times higher than they were wide. It may not have looked elegant, but I did manage to scramble up to the top of the cliff face and down again.
Our second stop was in Azerbaijan’s old capital city, Şamaxi (or Shamakha or Shemakha). The city lies on a major fault line and has therefore suffered periodic destruction by earthquakes, and this explains why the functions of the capital were moved to Baku. Traditionally Şamaxi was a wine growing area (yes, most Muslims in Azerbaijan seem to drink alcohol, justifying it on the grounds that “we’re not in Arabia”; apparently pork is also commonly eaten, and is proving very popular with visitors to Azerbaijan from Saudi Arabia). The wine industry declined in the 1980s, not as a result of fundamentalist Islam but Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign.
Our first stop in Şamaxi was the Juma (or Cüma) Mosque. The remains of the foundations of the original 8th century mosque could still be seen, but it was destroyed in an earthquake, and since that time, there has been a succession of earthquake-initiated destrictions, notably in 1859 and 1902. In 1918, the mosque was attacked by Armenian nationalists who set the building on fire. It was extensively restored and rebuilt in 2010 to 2013, so the mosque looked understandably pristine today.
Non-Muslims are permitted to enter the mosque and take photos provided shoes are removed first, so I availed myself of the opportunity. The interior is both modern and ornate, and surprisingly small given the grand dimensions of the exterior, and especially the front façade.
A short drive from the mosque brought us to our other destination in Şamaxi, an old cemetery containing seven tomb towers. Known as the Yeddi Günbaz Complex, the towers were in varying states of disintegration and collapse. Some had lost their roofs completely, exposing the tombstones inside, while others were still intact, revealing the tombstones inside to have bright colours on them that had faded long ago on the tombstones that had been exposed to the weather. The cemetery also gave a pleasant panoramic view over Şamaxi, including the water reservoir with its row of trees planted across the top, and the city’s one single high-rise building, a hotel during the Soviet era.
We stopped a little beyond Şamaxi for lunch at a roadside restaurant. At the suggestion of our guide, Anna, we ordered shared plates of food and drink and split the cost. We certainly at well for a cost of 20 manat per person ($Aust.16.45), although spending almost two hours on a lunch break seemed an extravagant use of daylight in my view, especially when the driving time was so long.
Soon after we had left Baku this morning and driven inland away from the Caspian Sea, the landscape had quickly become very dry, and indeed in some places it was desert-like – completely devoid of water and vegetation. As we continued the drive west, we climbed in altitude from our starting point of 40 metres below sea level to over 1,000 metres above sea level. As we gained altitude, the hills became greener, first with grass, then scrubby bushes, and finally with trees and forestlands of oaks, chestnut trees and walnut trees.
About 60 kilometres west of Şamaxi we turned onto a smaller road heading north along a deep river valley that brought us to the picturesque town of Lahic (or Lahich or Lahij). Scenically, this drive and the town were the highlight of the day. On the way to Lahic, we stopped at a narrow suspension bridge that crossed the river. Suitable for pedestrians only, this narrow bridge is the only way people in a tiny village called Müşkǝmir can get to school or work each day. Naturally, I took the opportunity to cross the bridge which did sway considerably high above the rushing waters below, but not to the extent of some less substantial suspension bridges I have used in other parts of the world.
Lahic itself was a beautiful little town (if a town with 5,000 people can be called ‘little’). It was settled in the 5th century by people from what is now the south of Iran, and their language is still far more closely related to Farsi than the Turkic languages of Azerbaijan. The town is in a severe earthquake zone, but the local people have developed a style of building that intersperses strips of timer between every few rows of bricks to minimise the impact of earthquakes. It was interesting to see one old building that had been affected by an earthquake but was still standing despite its obvious damage.
Lahic is famous for its craftsmen who specialise in metalwork and carpet-making. These skills were evident as I walked around town this afternoon, but the town is obviously becoming more reliant on tourism, as shown by the number of souvenir shops found in the still-beautiful cobble-stoned main street.
We left Lahic at about 5:15pm, and the drive to our destination, Şǝki (or Sheki) took a little more than three hours with two stops, one for fuel for the bus and the other for a short walk across a bridge to catch a glimpse of Azerbaijan’s highest mountain, Mount Bazardüzü (4,467 metres). From the little I have seen in the dark, our hotel in Şǝki (the Sheki Palace Hotel) looks great; the room I have is certainly comfortable. My only regret as I type this diary entry at 11:00pm is that I won’t have longer in my room; our original plan to leave at 10:00am tomorrow has been changed to an 8:50am departure to allow adequate time for the border crossing in Georgia.
Day 4
Baku to Şǝki
Thursday
6 September 2018
