Travel notes 2021

2.2 kms, Aug 30, 2012  Sandwiched between Russia, Armenia, Iran and the Caspian Sea is a country with an exotic sounding name that is little more than a question mark in the Traveler's mind: Azerbaijan. What is this place? It's exciting to be going to a country with very little idea of what you will find there. But this country doesn't seem to be so eager to be discovered—at least not by Americans. While tourists from other countries can go there just by filling out a visa application, Americans need to have a “invitation”--and pay a hefty visa fee. The Traveler is undeterred. Luckily there is a travel agency that will provide him with this invitation letter... And so off he goes, catching a bus from neighboring Georgia to the border. He is excited to experience a country with hardly any idea of what he will discover there. He arrives at the border. In Georgia the border station is modern, crisp, professional and friendly. With the latest high tech equipment and lar...

29 kms, Aug 31, 2012 The next morning, the Traveler heads out to take in this new place. He is in walled Old City of Baku, but everything is crisp, clean and quiet. This does not feel like the bustling, rough and tumble Old Medinas of Morocco. Then, out the gates and to the shores of the Caspian Sea. All around him everything is immaculate. The shoreline is one giant park, lined with regal looking buildings and full of gardens and sculptures. To get there, you take a pedestrian underpass with marble walls and escalators to get down. This place feels more like Monaco than the Caucasus. The city feels like a strong central government decided to give the entire city a complete makeover--building the new and making the old looks like it's new. Even the Old City looks as if it were built yesterday. And it's very clear where the money comes from to build all this: oil. The city is still quiet as he wanders through the pedestrian street into the heart of the city, down the sta...

37.1 kms, Sept 4, 2012 The Traveler gazes out across the landscape, taking in what he's seeing. It looks like the set from from a Mad Max movie. An image of a brutal, lifeless landscape. No plants. No birds. No animals. No people. Just the repetitive movements of the last oil drilling machines that haven't broken down yet are swinging up and down, up and down like giant sewing machines. All around is a forest. But not a forest of life-giving trees. Rather a forest of rusted metallic skeletons, scores of oil drilling rigs scattered all across the gray landscape. A forest of death. He takes a few moments to let it all sink in. Then, suddenly it hits him. This is where it all began. This is where oil was first mechanically drilled from the ground. This is where the The Age of Oil was born. And now... 150 years later... perhaps he's getting a glimpse of how it might end. He continues walking. A cluster of houses appear. Miserable looking homes with ragged, dirt r...

14.9 kms, Sept 7, 2012 There's a special reason he needs an extra day in Baku: today he's meeting up with Giles, the veteran traveler he met in Georgia while applying for his visa to Azerbaijan. With emails they prearranged to meet outside the Old City subway station, and he tells Giles to look out for a guy carrying a guitar on his back. I'll be easy to spot, right? Wrong. As he waits, a whole crowd of music students gather--ALL carrying guitars on their backs! Now that doesn't happen every day. Giles has the same trouble the Traveler had with the Soviet era subway signage--but they finally manage to meet up, and go ahead and do another tour of the city together--mainly the Traveler just wants to learn from this fellow and hear his stories. Giles is not only a skilled traveler, he's also very knowledgeable in a wide array of subjects because, first of all he knows how to think outside of the box, and secondly, he's constantly learning from people he meets ...

11.2 kms, Sept 1, 2012 Taking the Baku metro feels a bit like a trip through time. At the top the Old City station is an elegant, glass structure, where you can either buy a rechargeable card, or wait by the recharging machine and give someone money to recharge their card--and they'll swipe you in. But as the escalator plunges into the bowels of Baku, it takes on a more old Soviet feel, with stern women in uniform watching people as they go up and down the escalators. The signs are few, confusing and not necessarily correct. Even though there are just a couple of lines, you can easily get confused, as different trains run on the same line. The Traveler takes his time, wandering around Baku's huge, multi-story bus station. It is nice to finally be able to read signs in the Latin alphabet. he Azeri alphabet has an interesting history, he later learns. Once written only in the Perso-Arabic script (and still is, in Iran), in the 1920s, they decided to follow step with Turkey ...

16 kms, Sept 2, 2012 It's pouring down rain as he heads to catch my minibus to the next town up the road--but it's still an enjoyable, lively atmosphere as they wait for the minibus to fill up. In Masalli , he's dropped off right in the middle of a bustling, muddy market area. This feels a bit more like your standard Azerbaijani city. Beyond the market he finds a plaza and a a stately government building, then heads on to wander the residential neighborhoods. Here the houses are typically quite large with metal roofs and, as in Georgia, many have a little garden next to it. If there's a car parked in front it will more likely be an antique Soviet Lada... and the roads are mainly dirt. What does look very much out of place in all these towns is a large, brand new "Olympic Complex" at the edge of pretty much every large town. It seems the government had the ambition of have Azerbaijan host the Olympic games--and I guess they thought that by building an Olymp...