Baku is brill, and we are ill.

13th May, Baku - Another botanical garden

After breakfast we built our bikes, enjoying the feeling of not being too hot. When that was done we went for a walk in the town. We spent an outrageous amount on proper coffee and had a look round the city. I was stunned at how FAB it was. We were staying in the walled old city which was very old and full of interesting buildings and pretty cobbled roads. The rest of the city was sophisticated, clean, well organised and modern. We walked down to the sea front and had a great view of the city laid out up the hill behind us. We then caught a cable car up to the flame towers which were super jazzy. 

After this we spent ages trying to follow the Lonely Planet’s directions to the botanic gardens and only finding miserable scrub land (we later discovered they’d all been replanted). Mum started feeling worse and worse and we made our way back to the hostel. We had planned to go out again immediately by bike but were both feeling wiped out so went to sleep instead. When we woke up we went out for street food. We had savoury wrap things filled with meat, spinach and cheese. These were insane. We went back for two more each because they were so delicious. Afterwards we thought we were having pancakes as a man was pouring liquid onto a hot plate. There were lots of strange looking things about this hot plate, and it turns out it was actually a cold plate, and he was making ice cream. We only realised this on about mouthful two and felt very stupid.. I’m not sure people who are tired all the time can get jet lag(?) but at this point we definitely needed some sleep.

May 14th, Baku - Some jazzy towers and a few showers. 

We woke up and Mum was feeling so rubbish that we decided to spend an extra day in Baku. She spent the morning in bed while I went to get new cycling shoes. I got the metro which was deeply enjoyable – a journey cost 7p and they piped in classical music to the carriages. Baku definitely does not have a European feel, or even an Asian feel. Russian is very widely spoken and it all seems quite soviet. For some reason they love the Russians. It seems a bit Stockholm syndrome esque that so many places seem to love the countries that take over, strip them of their natural resources and then ditch them but it’s really common – it explains why our british passports have such a worldwide positive reception. Anyway Baku all felt really foreign and exciting, and such a refreshing change from South East Asia.

After I’d bought shoes I went back and found Mum who was still feeling very miserable. She managed to muster enough energy to cycle along the seafront. There’s an 11.7km boulevard all along the Caspian sea, with a cycle path. This is also where they replanted the botanic gardens. There were so many people cycling along here and a massvie bike shed where you could pay $2 to hire a bike for an hour. Finding this was a real boon for us as they fixed some small issues with our bikes for free – saving us a trip to the bike shop the next day. We really wanted to see the jazzy flame towers at night so we waited for sunset. And waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually the sun set and the flame towers lit up. Soooooooo cool. They had all these great patterns, writing, the Azjerbaijan flag. It just went on and on. 

We also saw the Crystal Arena all lit up (the site of 2012 eurovision). After this we went out for dinner. We had chatupbairi which is effectively cheesy garlic bread, and this great soup with meatballs in. The food in Azerbaijan s so flavoursome and we very much enjoyed some different flavours after weeks and weeks of chilli in SE Asia.

May 15th, Baku to Probably still Baku - A new type of camping spot for us.

In the morning we finally managed to leave Baku. Mum was feeling better, but I was starting to feel ill. On our way out we decided we’d go via the immigration office to try and “register”, which you need to do if you want to stay for longer than 10 days, despite having a 30 day visa. We’ve read lots of stuff online that they don’t actually want you to register so you have to pay the $200 fine. We’d go along with that as the immigration office refused to register us. Cycling out of somewhere where 2 million people live is never a fun time, and Baku is no exception. It was made worse because Baku is at -28m below sea level, and most of Azjerbaijan is on a 400m plateau. This meant hills. We tried to dodge the main road as much as possible but soon ran out of side roads and ended up stuck on the M4. We stopped at a supermarket for lunch and were much amused by a tiny old lady who followed us around the shop. She made lots of suggestions about what we should be buying – sometimes even putting stuff in our basket on her own initiative! She got very stressed when we split up and grabbed my arm and dragged me back to mum, looking very pleased with herself. We tried to buy 2 tomatoes but she thought 3 was better and added another one. She was well below my shoulder height and very smiley. When we left the supermarket she came outside to help us put our shopping on our bikes, before suggesting that we had lunch there! She shepherded us through to the staffroom which was full of moody teenagers, got us both a cup of tea and some plates, and promptly cut up all our food. We learnt she was called Leila and had 5 grandchildren.

 Like many people in Azjerbaijan she had a golden smile (literally). When drinking tea in Azjerbaijan it’s the custom to take the sugar cube inbetween your teeth and drink the tea through the sugar cube. The number of cups of tea per day and therefore the number of cubes of sugar is a number that is upwardly open. After we said goodbye to Laila we set off again along the M4. This wasn’t really a fun time. The road was supposed to be a dual carriageway but there were roadworks so one side was closed and the road was doubly busy. There were a lot of roadworks machines that seemed to have literally no other function than blowing dust. I was really pretty bad by this stage and we decided to stop. We went to a building that looked like it could have potentially been a hotel, and found out it was a wedding reception venue! There were 6 men standing outside and they suggested that we camp there. We agreed, and were prompty taken into this tiny room for chai and dominos. Only one of them was an English speaker and he very much adopted us.

 Everyone in Azerbaijan seems to smoke the entire time, wherever they are, whatever they’re doing (driving a car, cattle herding, cooking, checking facebook, riding a horse) and Nesem was no exception. Being in a small room filled with smoke made me feel awful. It’s amazing how many parts of the world must have some sort of smoking ban because this is the first time this has happened. I thought dominos was luck but we both got absolutely rinsed by Nasem repeatedly. After this he cooked us supper using our food. He was very clingy and getting a bit annoying at this point. He kept making advances, on me to start with and then when I gave him the brush off he switched to mum. He cooked our pasta incredibly badly and used practically an entire bottle of oil on the vegetables. They were delish though. Anyway after this we had more tea and smoke and dominos before we went to sleep. The tent looked very funny in the venue.

May 16th, Probably Baku to the middle of the desert - A very surreal day by all accounts

In the morning I felt awful and clearly looked it, as Nasem was desperate that we should stay another day. He’d firmly switched to Mum by that point (it was probably my off putting red nose) and gave her a rose because she was so beautiful. I was actually quite jealous. We set off and suddenly were in desert. This was a bit unexpected but the barren land was familiar to us. Like the other deserts of this trip, the desert was completely empty, but unlike the others it was a bit cold and rainy.

 It was also very hilly and windy and progress was slow. After around 60km it gradually became greener until we were suddenly in gorgeous rolling green lush hills, with fields of wild flowers and orchards by the side of the road. We stopped in this crazy hotel called Qoboland, which was practically a theme park. It had a miniature London eye, plastic animals everywhere, a swimming pool, a lake, loads of stuff, and was completely empty (except us). The room was more expensive than we’d usually aim for but really really nice and I fell asleep for the next 15 hours.