We were offered tea many times along the way, and sometimes that came with the extra bonus of candy, bread, cheese, fruit and nuts. People bought us grapes, corn on the cob, a plate of food, beer and kebabs.
But unlike in Iran, where we were spoiled beyond belief for three months and where people jumped out of their cars to warmly welcome us to their country and into their homes, Azerbaijanis took on a more serious stance, at least initially. Their invitations frequently came with a former Soviet-style coldness and without smiles; softness and compassion swept over their faces only after understanding the extent of our long walking journey and examining our maps (older people educated in Soviet classrooms have a strong sense of geography and always ask to see our “kartas,” the Russian word for maps).
This interpersonal distance, along with getting to know a new culture and adapting to different social behaviors over a short period of only 3.5 weeks, followed us into the evenings, and we had a mixed experiences with our daily nests, or resting places.
Some nights were really good. Like these, below.
After walking a long stretch with lots of houses and fences, and not being able to camp anywhere after the Iran-Azerbaijan border, an Azeri-Russian student visiting his relatives invited us to stay in his family’s home. It was a delightful surprise, and he turned out to be a great help to us. He arranged for us to get our registration slip for staying longer than 10 days in the country, and took us several hundred kilometers away to give us a personal tour of Baku.
On a hot afternoon, a man waved to us from the road and invited us in for tea. It was near the end of our walking day, and soon we would have to look for a place to sleep. He said we could stay in the sarai (wedding hall) he owned and/or managed; in Azerbaijan, wedding halls are every few kilometers, and most cities, even the smallest towns, have at least a couple of these fancy places. He gave us tea, called his brother who spoke fluent English, invited us to go to his home for a shower and to meet his wife and children, and cooked us a delicious chicken dinner. We slept on the stage where the band plays. If we weren’t so tired, we would have danced on the ballroom floor.
Other nights were strange.
During one of our “take it easy” days where we were not so pressed to hit a certain mile marker, we stopped along the way to have a long morning rest with older men drinking tea and playing backgammon. We stopped a bit later for another tea with a few ladies. And, after only walking a total of 9-10 kilometers, we accepted an invitation from an employee of the electric company, who was staying in a one-room cabin listening to the company radio waiting for something to do. He told us we could sleep inside; he said and insisted on “no money” and said he would sleep on the cot outside because of the very hot weather. We had a nice, quiet afternoon doing nothing but relaxing and finding a universal language to speak with the employee. I went to the little store and bought all of us cheese, bread and juice. People across the way we’re having a wedding, and later in the day brought us plates of food. They also brought vodka; we declined to drink –vodka is too strong for us, but the on-site worker gulped down about a half bottle. That’s when things turned weird. I was invited to take a shower at the house of the neighbor whose daughter was getting married and to go down the street to see the wedding for the few minutes; Lluís was not extended the same invitation. I reluctantly accepted, and walked with the neighbor a few hundred meters down the road to another neighbor’s backyard where the wedding was. Lluís stayed behind. It was close to sunset, and that’s when the electricity employee started saying he wanted money for us to sleep there, that we had to leave and all sorts of ramblings, which Lluís told me about in the morning. Lluís exchanged angry words with him, which apparently snapped him out of his partially drunken state. He let us stay inside the cabin, without further incident. I slept on the cot and Lluís stayed on the floor. We left at dawn with this awkward tension hanging in the air.
Another afternoon, we stopped in a park for a few minutes rest. An old man invited us to tea, which later extended to a round of beers. He was a lonely old man, and told us his wife was killed when an Armenian bomb hit their town several years before. He had sad eyes, and kept repeating certain things. He told us we could sleep at his place. We accepted, thinking he needed the company more than we did. After some time of listening to his repeated stories, we made our way to his house. His sister was equally strange, with sort of crazy eyes, and the room we were meant to stay in was cluttered and dark; we attributed that to the construction that was going on a few meters a way where, his son?, was building a new family house. We sat on the beds, assured that we were allowed to be there. We heard some shouting between the old chap and we assume his son through the street-facing window. We kept hearing “turists” is something like that that made us believe they were talking about us. On our way to the outhouse, we each found the son sitting alone, in the dark, in an adjacent room drinking tea, never entering the room where we were or acknowledging our presence. A couple hours later, just as the sun was dropping, the old man came back, with vodka heavy on his breath. Mumbling in Russian, which I translated through the Croatian I know, he told us we could not stay. This wasn’t really his house, that we could go somewhere else and pay someone a few manat (local currency) to sleep somewhere else. There was quite a bit of confusion, but basically, he was throwing us out, saying it wasn’t his fault. Our jaws dropped in absolute disbelief. It was getting dark with each passing minute and we angrily stomped out of this house filled with crazy people.
After being thrown out of the old chap’s house, we walked about an hour in the dark to somewhere outside the city limits desperately searching for a camp spot. We ended up in a few behind a stack of concrete blocks, what would probably be used to build some family’s new home.
A few nights, we slept in separate places. When the temperature reached 44-45 Celsius (about 110 Farhenheit), I couldn’t handle walking anymore. I felt on the verge of heat exhaustion, or worse. I took a van about 180 kilometers away to the next big town with a hotel, waited out the heat in a slightly air conditioned room. Lluís stayed on the road for a few more days, braving the heat, destroying his feet on awful gravel and rolling rocks of a half-built road, and camping wherever he finished the day.
The motel room in Yevlax where I took refuge from the heat, waiting for Lluís to arrive.During one of Lluís’ toughest solo walking days in Azerbaijan, he finished here. His feet were cut up with blisters and his body was exhausted by heat and a long distance of walking a half-built road of awful, uncomfortable gravel and rocks. He found this incredibly dusty and dirty spot off the road. Dust puffed up and covered his pants with every step he took. But, sleep came easily and night passed too quickly.
Many nights, we camped in fields adjacent to the main road or in makeshift shelters used by farmers.
Our night in an unused, abandoned stable, out of view from the main road.To to get to this farmer’s sun shelter, we had to claw our way through high grass and a surprise cotton field that we stumbled into and couldn’t see behind the high grass. It was a hard effort, but turned out to be a good night’s sleep with frogs and crickets singing lullabies to us.
We had a couple “luxurious” nights in hotels and guesthouses, places where we enjoyed good beds and showers.
This was one our fanciest nights on the road. Two great guys from Baku, working on assignment in Ganja, helped negotiate a cheaper rate for this multi-star hotel with a fancy swimming pool out back, which we didn’t have time to enjoy. They bought us beers and we spent a few hours talking about our trip and their lives in Azerbaijan. One of them had visited Georgia many times and told us what a great time we would have there. We were so tired we couldn’t even switch on the TV. We fell asleep as soon as we hit the pillows.
The no-frills guesthouse we found in Agstafa, one of the last cities we passed through in Azerbaijan.
Thank you, Azerbaijan! We weren’t there long enough to really get to know you, but we’re glad we passed through your land and shared tea with some of your people. We’ll brush up our backgammon skills and maybe see you again, but definitely never again in August!
