Most of the people from Europe, who decide to visit the Caucasus, go to Georgia and right after to Armenia. We actually didn’t meet anyone, who would go to Azerbaijan (except one German guy and a French girl, but they did a travel around the whole world, which doesn’t count as a small trip to the Caucasus). The reason is, that you need to get the visa there. Armenia and Georgia are visa-free for people from EU. However, to get the visa for Azerbaijan is not a big thing. You can do it easily online and it will cost you around $20. The condition is, that you didn’t visit Nagorno – Karabakh before. In that case, you will not be allowed to visit the Land of fire anymore. To Azerbaijan, we took the night train from Tbilisi. We bought 1. class ticket, so we had coupé for two. I had some problems with stomach, so the only thing that I did was trying to sleep from the beginning. The journey to our first destination took us around 6 hours. We arrived to Ganja at 2:30 a.m.
GANJA 🕌
We decided to visit Ganja, because it was on the way to Baku and wanted to see some place, which will not be so touristic and we might feel the Azerbaijan country bit more than on touristic places. And for that, we chose it perfectly. We arrived to the city in the night and thought, that we can somehow spend the night there, walking and have fun. But right after we went out from the train, we realised, that the nightlife in that city doesn’t exist. We were trying to ask some policeman, who was working on the station (btw. in Ganja is army and police everywhere), where is some hostel available. Finally, it was a pretty long process of understanding each other. He took us with his car to some hostel, where we were the only guests. In the morning, we went for a walk, visited a mosque, had pomegranate juice (pomegranate is the national fruit of Azerbaijan) and drank some teas and coffees. Later, we decided to visit the Imazadeh Mausoleum. We took a taxi because the Mausoleum is located 7 kilometres from the city and we had no clue how to get there with public transport. The guy asked us for 8 Lari, but later we realised, that it should cost only about 4 Lari. Yes, in Azerbaijan, it happened to us much more often, that Taxi drivers wanted to cheat us. Before entering the mausoleum, there was a control (like at the airport) of our things and clothes. We were bit confused because there was a huge amount of people everywhere. We learnt later, that we arrived just a day before a big event there. Imam Huseyn, was killed some centuries ago on the following day. So it was a big day for Muslim people in Azerbaijan. We took the train to Baku in the evening (11 p.m.) and arrived there at 6 a.m. on the following day.
GOBUSTAN AND MUD
VOLCANOES 🌋
Gobustan. I realised, that this place exists pretty late during our trip. I think around the time, that we were visiting Ganja. But it was definitely one of the top places, which we managed to see during our trip. For me at least. Again, you will be forced to take taxi there, which is not cheap at all, but still acceptable. We paid 50 Manat for going there and back ( and also for the time, that the taxi driver was waiting for us, which was together more than 2 hours). When arriving to Gobustan, you need to pay a small entrance fee (For me and Xavi, it was 2 Manat each, because of our student cards. Xavi is not a student already for 9 years, but he uses the student card anyway since there is no expiration date :D. There is a really great museum, which explains many things about petroglyphs and palaeolithic age. I loved that. Maybe also because I am just reading the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – a great book where Yuval Noah Harari explains basically everything about humans, how they developed, how religions developed and so on. After the museum, our taxi driver took us to the rock art again. The main petroglyphs, that I was looking forward was much smaller than I was expecting, but the whole place was just magical. We asked some Pakistani guys, if we can join their tour and had because of it a guide for free. And it was great. He explained us many things about each petroglyph, many historical facts and was always ready to answer every question.
After visiting Gobustan, we came with our taxi back to some market next to the road and needed to take another taxi in order to get to mud volcanoes. We paid for it another 15 Manat, with what we didn’t count before, but at that time we didn’t have any other option than to accept it. The taxi driver, who took us to the volcanoes took some mud to plastic bottles and wanted us to pay for that. We refused, so he gave it us for free as a present. 😀 Our taxi driver from Baku was visibly less friendly than before. I guess that he needed to wait much more than he expected. But I had no worries about it, because I knew, that he was overpaid (since 1 Liter of Diesel costs 30 Cents in Azerbaijan).
Shadag National Park
If you decide to hike in Azerbaijan, be aware, that there are not many places to do so. However, we found Shadag National Park and read ( very little) information about that area. There are not many websites or blog, which would describe hiking in Azerbaijan. We took a marshrutka to Qusar ( not really interesting city) and wanted to leave there somewhere heavy things from our backpacks in order to not carry too much weight. Luckily, we met some guy, who lived there in some village next to the town and offered us to leave there our things. We went with him with a bus (where we paid 30 qepik for a ride). His family welcomed us and gave us some food. After a few minutes, we decided to go to the Laza village (which was 30 km far from Qusar). We walked for 1 hour and were still in the city of Qusar. It was pretty boring, so later, when some car stopped and the guys asked us, if we want to take to Laza, we just said yes without any hesitation.
In Laza, we wanted to walk a little bit, but it got dark really quickly. We put our tent next to some house, where they were offering food. So we went there, had a great dinner and went to sleep. The guy from the house offered us soma blanket to not be cold. And it was cold anyway.
The next day, we wanted to go for some hike, but unfortunately, we didn’t go too far. When arriving to some military base, they told us, that we are not allowed to move further, because there is already the border to Russia. So we were walking back and actually didn’t go to far after that. We went for a walk (about 2 hours) around the waterfall and came back and packed our tent. On the way back in some village, another car stopped us (we didn’t need to do anything to make it stop!) and took us to Qusar. There, we picked up our things and took Taxi back to Baku.
BAKU
CLUB NIGHT 🕺
In the evening, we went to some bar called Phoenix, where was a methal concert. After that, we decided to visit the Barrell Playground club which was such a cool place! Club with a loot of space outside, great music and happy people. The place was pretty expensive (for red wine, they wanted 10 Manat), but definitelly worthy to visit. Again, we went there with Uber and got back with Taxify ( which I definitelly DO NOT recommend you to use, we had many problems with Taxify drivers in Baku – they refused to take us, they didn’t arrive at all, they let us wait for a long time and so on…).
Temple of fire and the Carpet Museum
Our plan for that day was to do the free walking tour. But unfortunately, we were blocked in our hostel. The streets were flooded, so we were not able to get out of the building. So we stayed 2 more hours in the hostel in the morning and Xavi was singing and playing the guitar. I was just observing him and chilling. We met in the hostel some Russian (surprisingly) group of girls, who did the trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan only because they wanted to paint places.
When the rainfall stopped, we went to the Carpet museum. Xavi was telling me from the beginning, that it will be boring, but I found it as a very cool idea. Afterall, I need to admit, that the museum was pretty boring and the personal very unfriendly. After the museum, we took a taxi to the Temple of Fire. The Uber driver didn’t speak almost any English but we understood each other a little bit and were talking about taking pictures and his job as a photographer. After visiting the Temple of fire (Atesgah), we found some restaurant close to there which was absolutely cool! It was in the “all you can eat” style. Normally, I never go to this kind of restaurant, because I don’t like the idea to eat as much as my stomach is able to do so. But there, it was cool. For only 10 Manat, we got as much food as we wanted, pomegranate juice, tea, great baklava, fruit and the personnel there was super friendly to us!
Completely full after lunch, we took a taxi to the Heydar Aliyev Center. The first president (and the father of the current one), which is apparently very beloved by inhabitants of Azerbaijan. A huge and modern building, where is some museum inside of that, but otherwise it looks pretty empty from outside. There were everywhere snails around the building. Our plan later was to visit Taza Bazaar in Baku, but we didn’t manage to arrive there, because it was already too late for it.
Around 7, it was the perfect time to visit Yanar Dag. The Fire mountain. A 10m long wall of fire, that never extinguishes, is burning continuously alongside the edge of the hill. Local lore states that it was a shepherd that accidentally ignited the fire in the 1950s by tossing a cigarette, and that it has burnt ever since. We stayed there for 1 hour and were observing the fire and got distracted by some woman eating sunflower seeds. In the evening, we went to the Dolma restaurant (traditional Azerbaijan cuisine) and had pomegranate wine for the first time.
the CASPIAN SEA 🌅
Before going to the Caspian sea, we were asking us many things. Is the water salty? Is it a sea or a lake? Is it clean or dirty from the oil? It was actually not hard to find the answer on different websites. There are few places on Absheron peninsula, where you can go swimming. However, some of them are paid. And for me, it will definitely not be worthy to pay and stay there only for 2 hours (more hours of laying on the beach would be too much).
So what we did? We took Uber and put there some random address, which was close to the Caspian Sea. There was some town, so we thought, that there will be some nice public beach, some place to have coffee etc. Unfortunately, the opposite was true. We ended up somewhere in the middle of nowhere (well, there were some abandoned houses which looked like from apocalyptic times) and tried to get to the beach. On the beach, there were only some houses which seemed not used already for more years. But swiming in the sea was great. The whole beach was only for us. We did some handstand pictures and started to walk in some direction, that we thought is the best to get back to the civilization. After 20 minutes of walking, we realised, that before coming to some town, it will get dark. We saw some guys at the beach and asked them directly, if they know, where we can call a taxi to get back to Baku. They started to laugh, because they didn’t understand why we went to that town, where is usually noone. And tourists even less. Finally, they offered us to take us to Baku for 20 Manat. We jumped with happiness. In the evening, we just went for dinner to an Indian restaurant and later for Azerbaijani vine which was not good at all in comparison to the Georgian Saperavi! )
That day was also the last one of our vacation. We took our airplane at 7:30 from Baku and arrived to Prague at 4 p.m. Chiao Azerbaijan!