A Talysh Retreat

With only one day trip out of Baku under our belt, we were antsy to head out of the big city and start seeing the rest of Azerbaijan. We arrived in the country by overnight train. So, even though we've technically traveled the width of it, we didn't really get a good look at anything. I know Merlin just extolled the virtues of our new carless existence - but we never said we wouldn't rent a car now and then.
A highway stretches down along the coast of the Caspian Sea from Baku to Astara and into Iran. It was mostly flat, though the scenery did vary some. We were excited to get up into the Lesser Caucasus of the Talysh Region. There are basically two mountains roads in the region that are deemed "readily passable by car." So, obviously, we took them both to the towns they led to: Lerik and Yardmili. The drops down to the hillside below were sometimes staggering and always beautiful. Along the drive from Lankaran to Lerik, there were a number shuttered resorts and riverside rental huts. Signs promised shashlyk and fresh bread. Grills and tandirs sat on the roadside. I imagine that, in summertime, the route must feel like a long, fragrant cloud.
We may have seen more sheep than people for a good deal of our time driving through the Talysh region. Young boys, who were just tall enough to see into our windshield, herded groups of sheep with flimsy sticks. Now and then, a man would gallantly ride past us on a horse. Sometimes, a donkey would pass by with a heavy load on its back. But the sheep, those masters at hanging out diagonally, were definitely most abundant. They spotted the scenery and clogged the road.
Lerik itself felt unremarkable - but that's sometimes the point. It was simply a town that was reachable, so we reached it. Legend has it that, in 1990, a local shepherd donated his flock to refugees and President Heydar Aliyev wanted to honor the man with a visit. He was told that the road to Lerik was simply too bad for his car. So, he repaved it. I guess, in a way, every foreigner who makes a trip to Lerik simply because they can is really paying tribute to that nameless shepherd.
The town of Yardmili was more picturesque and slower paced. We should have stayed longer,. There were so many things to do: visit a carpet weaving factory, see the Shalala waterfall, gaze over Tangi Canyon from a recommended tea spot. Sometimes beautiful weather and a sleepy town have a way lulling you right into contentment.
That night, we slept on the road between Yardmili and Masalli at a bizarre hotel - the only we could find. The gold-toothed manager wore a full suit and there were at least ten people on staff - about five times as many workers as customers. There was an artificial pond, gazebos and talk of peacocks on the premises (though we never saw any). The epitome of life on the road.

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Miles of Groceries

A shopping trip along the roads of Azerbaijan's south could take hours - the ducks and onions are miles apart. Each town has a specialty and we found ourselves passing through districts where only one thing was for sale.

Xirmandali is a small town with no real features other than a slight bend in the road. The residents raise chickens to sell, live or plucked. We stopped and looked at some eggs. This man wanted to show us his rooster.

In the rich plains around the Mughan Salyan river there are potato fields stretching beyond the horizon. The black earth was being plowed when we passed through, horses and men dotting the landscape. We stopped and talked to this group in broken Russian - neither we nor they spoke it well. A friendly man brought us some ways out into the field to show us the seed potatoes and the slow progress of the horse plows. The women offered us tea. A cold mist was beginning to creep in from the distant sea. All along the roadside, sacks of potatoes leaned in piles, waiting for buyers.

Orchards must be hidden somewhere near Sharvan and Chukhanly. Vendors set out their apples and pomegranates in the road dust, then spend their days polishing the fruit with rags. We learned about a peculiar hybrid of lemon and orange, peculiar to the Talysh region, that's sometimes available too. "Mehr" lemons don't taste much sweeter than regular lemons, but they're oranger - so they seem like they should be edible. They're certainly sour, and it was difficult to choke one down. We learned later that they're just Meyer lemons.
In Shorsulu, people sell fish out of roadside bathtubs. There are two options: nominally alive or dead. Boys tend to sell the dead ones, arranged on boards or hung from lines.

People waved ducks at us in one town, rabbits in another. The road changed to highway as it swung back towards the Caspian, and men came up across the coastal desert with poached sturgeon. Onions in bags, lamb by the piece. Close to the salty shores of Lake Duzdag, there were waterbirds dangling by their long legs.

In Masalli, hay was sold from overloaded trucks - not really foodstuff, but an amazing sight.

People do stop to buy things. The vendors crowd around cars that pull over - especially the nicer vehicles and the better dressed customers. We were mostly given bemused looks. I think it was pretty clear that we weren't interested in a few live hens.

This is the coop that the man dived into for his rooster. For a few seconds he was completely obscured by beating wings and feathers. The commotion was understandable - it's unlikely many birds get put back after being taken out. An older man without teeth tried to interest us in the plucked hens that he had in dirty plastic bags, but we demurred.

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Desert Mud Volcanoes

When we returned to our hotel this evening, a man asked us why our shoes were so muddy. "Oh," we said, "we were just at Gobustan."

"Ah," he said. "Mud volcanoes."

Gobustan is a nowhere town about an hour south of Baku, not far inland from the oil rigs of the Caspian. Beyond the cement buildings, some kilometers of dirt road lead to this - a strange and lonely group, gurgling in the desert.
Azerbaijan has more mud volcanoes than any other country on earth (you knew they had to be hiding somewhere, right?), with over three hundred sites in all. There are several types and classifications, but seemingly little interest in them. We spent about an hour at the cluster - supposedly the most famous in Azerbaijan - and saw nobody. On the road we passed no other cars, only a few shepherds and a boy twirling a stick.

This is the top of the largest cone, which is about fifteen feet tall. There were large, satisfying bubbles in its ooze.
The volcanoes are apparently seasonal, and the "eruptions" are sometimes more impressive than the bubbling we witnessed. The action on the day we visited was limited to bubble-and-seep, but at times there are real geysers of mud and, occasionally, flames.

A strong wind was blowing, and we had a hard time hearing above it, but the gurgling was still audible. The wet, plopping noise is amplified somehow, as though by an earthen drum.
On one side, somewhat separate from the cones, was a bubbling pool, more watery than muddy. Called a "salse" pool, it was the most active of Gobustan's features.
The volcano action is produced my methane gas under the earth's surface being released through small holes in the ground. Mud from a large, semi-liquid aquifer is brought up with the gas. It's cool to the touch - there's no pyroclastic flow or molten lava, no steam. Just slow streams of brown mud. Built up over centuries, the ground around the volcanoes is constructed of many layers of the stuff, in various degrees of solidity. Older mud is cracked and hard-edged, younger flows are still liquid.
Warning signs, in Azeri, probably asked that the site be respected - we couldn't read them. Sadly, there are tire tracks from 4x4 vehicles around the periphery, and some trash stuck in the flows.

We left feeling more bemused than anything - Gobustan isn't that impressive, but it's almost a new concept. Cold, muddy volcanoes? They highlight the otherworldly feeling of the desert - the wind and distant mountains, the scrubby growth, the burbling mud, the distant-planet texture of the earth.

(Our shoes are still muddy, it's very tough stuff to get off.)

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Təzə Bazar

Beluga! the taller man said to us with a proud smile. He linked arms with his friend and implored us to take their picture, making the universal shutter click hand gesture. We'd just walked into the fish section of the Təzə Bazar, past a row of hanging dried river fish. Gold and silver skinned, they reminded me of watches in a pawn shop. After he was done posing, the man wrote his name on a piece of paper and handed it to us with his grin still in place. Facebook, he requested.
Təzə Bazar is, without a doubt, one of our favorite marketplaces of the trip. Located on an uprooted construction zone of a street, in a concrete block building with adjacent sheds and tarps, it looked stark. Inside, though, it was warm and welcoming. We were invited to take portraits, to sample the dried fruit and pistachios. We were invited to have some tea.
We were able to walk around slowly, taking it all in. There were no demands for our attention or aggressive salesmanship. We were implored only to look and appreciate, not to buy buy buy. The market was quiet with more vendors than shoppers, which added to the relaxed atmosphere. We felt safe, like guests. This display of jarred vegetables was amazing. Other stands specialized in pickled grape leaves for dolma. Some marinated in recycled coke bottles.
The man behind this stand plucked a sugar-coated dried persimmon off from a bunch and tore it in half with his thumbs. A walnut was pressed into the flesh of each and handed to us. We chewed on the delicious snack and he smiled with full understanding. It was a little bit of perfection. Azerbaijan, he said, referencing the origin of both ingredients and welcoming us to his country. At least that's how it felt.
These young men also provided us with an email address and mentioned, more then thrice, that they had some caviar for sale. Apparently, the roe dealing at the bazaar used to be much... well... fishier - with men inviting you down into the lower level to peruse their illegal stash. Now, it's legal and far more expensive.
That downstairs room in the main bi-level building is now the meat market. There are slabs hanging from hooks upstairs, but here it gets to the nitty gritty of it all. Huge meat lockers buzzed and the shiny metal tables gave an instant sense of sanitation at the bottom of the blood specked staircase. This woman sold the full works, tongues, trotters, et al. She put her hand to her chest to confirm our assumption that the large organs in the front were hearts. Then, of course, she welcomed us to take a picture.
Azerbaijan is famous for its fruit and while the full gambit was run, you could easily tell which season it was. They tried as best they could to get these squash into a neat pyramid like all the other produce. But its shape just makes things too tricky. The colors were extraordinary and most everything was polished to a sheen. Off to the side, there was a cafe and we sat for some tea. Waiting for boiling water to cool off really gives you a moment to take things in.
Word got around about us and we were greeted into rooms with our new nickname: Americas. It became a smiling contest of sorts. Merlin and I have rather big ones and people put up their best fight trying to out grin us. We walked around in a sort of happy stupor, pointing at all the gastronomic treasures. There were rices and dried herbs and vegetables and beans. Lambskin sacks kept dairy products cool and wheels of cheese added a saltiness to the air.
Food is just a part of what Təzə Bazar encompasses. There is a whole section, just as large, with hardware, home appliances and lighting fixtures. This area had more customers while we were there. Men tried out power tools and examined lawn mowers. Everything was kept neatly - the most orderly store of its kind I've ever seen. As we left, a man pulled a wagon loaded with fresh cheese through the extension cord department. We took more pictures and he even stopped a little to make sure we got a good one.

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Baku's Destruction/Construction

In 1850, Baku - the capital of Azerbaijan - was little more than a sleepy, stone village on the Caspian sea. By 1900, it was producing twenty percent of the world's oil, and the population had boomed. In the last hundred and fifty years, Baku's population has grown from seven thousand to nearly two million people. A lot of buildings were put up very fast - now, they're being town down.

We arrived here in a period of mist and chill, to find a city on the cusp of becoming something entirely different from what it has been.
Baku is a city on the line between sea and desert, full of dust, mostly new. Near the water, large steel and glass towers erupt from the ground, standing near neglected oil-boom mansions and obliterating the older, lower houses. The european gilded age was once the style here. Now, it is being transformed into a city of blank lines and large-windowed boutiques. Walking down the main avenues, there is little evidence of place - it could be any wealthy, bland city. The houses that have been left standing are being furiously retrofitted and carved up.
Walking in the northern part of the capital, further away from the old town and the Caspian promenade, there are huge swaths of torn-up earth and knocked-down buildings. One can still see a few graceful rooflines and elaborate mouldings, though the structures are hollow and filled with rubble.

Partly, these blocks were leveled because the buildings there were deemed unsafe or unfit to live in. Skeptics aren't so sure - there are people who believe the government has been leveling houses to provide inexpensive land for development and to help keep the housing market from collapsing.
The housing market, unlike in other places, has been very strong (it grew 7.9% in 2011). Azerbaijan is becoming wealthier - at least on paper - and real estate prices have been going up. Sadly, there isn't a great deal of parity, and most of the people who have been displaced from their homes aren't able to afford the new apartments.

It's common to walk next to glittering, new apartments on sidewalks of earth and debris. Little has been done to help the cities infrastructure. Manhole covers are often missing. Electric lines sag. And row after row of houses have been left to decay and fill with trash, their front walls ripped out, their floors torn through. It's unlikely that they would have become like this on their own, though that's what the government claims. They sit, waiting to be bulldozed.

The modern construction standards aren't necessarily very good, either. Despite claims that the new towers are being built to improve the quality of life and safety of Baku's citizens, that's hard to verify. In 2007, a prominent fourteen-story building project collapsed, killing five construction workers. Look at the state of this scaffolding.
Baku is a place that won't have much of anything old. There wasn't much here to begin with, there will be less soon. In the old town - a potentially delightful warren of small streets and creaky buildings - they are ripping out the cobbles as I write this, to be replaced with more "modern" paving. The old houses have been bought up; oil-company logos grace the plaques on the doors. One corner of the town's wall was leveled to make room for a hotel.

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Georgia on the Vine

Georgia was destined for wine making. Their summers are warm, their winters are moderate with barely any frost and there are natural springs all over the place. The Black Sea keeps the air moist and the Caucusus drain mineral rich water into the valley. The Kakheti region is primo wine country and driving through brings you views of vineyards for as far as the eye can see. It is the proven site of wine making as far back as 9000 BC - making Georgia one of the oldest wine producing regions in the world. Some people say the oldest. It all started when grape juice was stored under the earth for the winter and turned up in spring as wine. People began to ferment juice in big clay pots, burying them in the ground for seasons or years. Shards of kveris, some from the 3rd millennium BC, fill Georgian ethnographic and history museums. Whole ones are on almost every front lawn or public park. Most "house wine," found on tap or served in recycled soda bottles in restaurants, is still made this way. I had heard a lot about Georgian wine and had been disappointed at how, well, awful I thought it was. It turns out, I just don't like homemade "black wine" (also known as "orange wine" outside of Georgia), which is made from white grapes, but fermented with the skins still in the mix.
While most families make their own wine, professional production is a large and growing field. There are about 400 different grapes in Georgia, around 38 of which are cultivated for wine. While the growing is still almost exclusively a small farmer affair, commercial wineries (who buy from those private vineyards) have popped up to deal with the production. We visited Teliani Valley, one of the biggest and most modern wineries. These barrels from the 90s were some of the first used, but shiny temperature-control stainless steel ones in the next room did most of the work nowadays.
They opened in 1997, just around a decade after Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign had destroyed 3/4 of all the vineyards in Georgia. They boomed for about ten years, before the 2006 Russian embargo on Georgian wine was put in place. Business is bouncing back steadily, though. An I Love Lucy-esque assembly line worked on bottling, corking (with only the finest Portuguese cork, something dear to my heart), labeling and boxing the bottles. Around 3 million are produced per year, including some special French/Georgian grape blends that are big in Austria.
Our tour guide had studied wine tourism in Seattle, Washington and the Tacoma Valley. Georgia (like the other leader in former Soviet wine production, Moldova) is hoping to excite visitors with winery visits and harvest-time festivities. While Teliani Valley may not have been the underground wine cave of Milestii-Mici, they are clearly on the right track. It was fun to visit, we were given delicious tastings and Nino even helped point us in the direction of our next sight-seeing venture.
Yes, our guide's name was Nino. Half the women we meet here are named after the saint who converted Georgia to Christianity - and is buried at recently visited Bodbe Monastery. She is also intertwined with the sacredness of wine in Georgia, conducting her missions with a cross wrapped up in grape vines. Anyway, Nino -guide not saint - advised us to wave down a marshrutka outside the winery and ask the driver to take us to the Aleksandre Chavchavadze House Museum in Tsinsandali.
There, we visited one of the biggest wine cellars in Khaketi (and had another "tasting" a.k.a. glass of Tsinindali wine). We weren't allowed to take photos inside, but the room of shelves filled with thousands of dusty, unlabelled bottles was awesome. At least 500 of them were from the 19th century. The old woman who had opened the cellar door for us laughed when we asked if she'd sampled any. "Vinegar," she responded and scrunched her face. So, it sounds like she had...?

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A New Type Of Travel

We traveled by car for the first fifteen months of the trip. Now, the car is back in America. A lot has changed in the way we get around. Above, the Tbilisi train station at dusk.
The biggest difference is the amount we are able to carry with us. We used to have a tent and folding table, a gas stove, pots and pans, spatulas and cheese grater, sleeping bags and wine glasses. We had to leave behind our tripod, our bags of books, our bigger bags of clothes, our thermoses and CD's. We used to feel as though there was a complete home in our car, ready to be unfolded at a campsite or rented room. One bag was called "the kitchen," another "the library," our tent was the bedroom, put in next to "our closets." There were times when we contemplated buying houseplants (or, car-plants?).

Now, everything we carry must really be carried.

Above, an uncrowded moment on the Tbilisi subway, which is actually quite convenient, fast and clean.
Another difference - we now have to know more precisely where the next destination will be, and how we are going to get there. With a car, it's easy to pull over for the night at some roadhouse or inn. We could wander at our own pace. There were no prescribed routes - we could take a back road or continue beyond where the busses ran. Now, we are at the mercy of our drivers, conductors and pilots, whose job is to go from one point to another.

We took a plane from Tbilisi to Mestia, which we never would have done before. On our flight there, we were the only two people aboard (there were sixteen seats, supposedly - I counted fifteen). On our flight back, the plane was full of Svans journeying to the capital for Christmas - it seemed most of them had never flown before.

Of course, in this part of the world, people travel by marshrutka, and so we have too. We'd been on them before, of course (our most memorable ride being into Transnistria), but not as often as most travelers in Eastern Europe.

Marshrutkas are, essentially, private busses - usually vans, actually - that run along predetermined routes and pick up or drop off passengers as they go. Sometimes they are quite pleasant. Sometimes, they are over-packed and uncomfortable.
We took a slow sleeper train from Tbilisi to Baku in Azerbaijan. It was, at one time, probably very luxurious, but was now tattered and faded. We felt that the journey - especially in between dreams, waking to darkness and clanging - was decades-old. The curtain rod was rusty, the fabrics musty. The porters had raucous laughs and a tiny room where they drank tea. They spoke Azeri to each other, hard-edged Russian to us. Outside, only occasional lights in the desert. We felt, for many hours, the slow tilt of the land downward to the caspian sea.

It was wonderful to drift in this relic of empire and Brezhnev, letting the miles pass unnoticed. We could read and play cards, drink Georgian brandy and use the bathroom. We miss our car very much - but this kind of travel isn't so bad.

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