Across the Southern Caucasus - Azerbaijan

Hello, Azerbaijan.  Please don't ask what time zone I'm in...


According to our guide, Azerbaijan is known as the Land of Fire and Wind. With its peninsula into the Caspian Sea, the wind arrives at high speed in all directions. I thought Edinburgh was the undisputed champion of that, I'm reconsidering. A number of my tour companions have been shivering in fleeces and coats; I'm remembering why I live in Scotland.


As for fire, that's a natural gas fire behind me, blazing away straight out of the ground. Stalin tried to bury it under tonnes of earth in WW11 to stop it acting as a beacon to the enemy. Apparently it took a few hours for the flames to find their way to the surface again.




It's an odd country, another former Soviet republic, with massive reserves of gas and oil, first discovered in the mid 19th century. The waterfront streets of Baku are lined with every designer brand, and some highways are a roll call of Aberdeen businesses. Much of the city is only a few decades old, yet some streets look like Parisian boulevards, or Gothic Prussian towns. After seeing the Flame Towers above Highland Park, we went across the salt plains to the outdoor museum of ten thousand year old cave drawings in the low rocky hills, protectors and prayers of ancient hunters living in the caves. Definitely unique.










Out of Baku and across the plains and mountains. Imagine someone decided to build a road across the top of BenNevis. It was interesting...
















Mausoleum and palaces and an Albanian village. The coach couldn't go up the hill to the village so we decanted into a fleet of ancient Lada and Mercedes. I've been on better roads on Foxy, but not at 70kph.

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