Genze to Baku

Leaving Genze I stopped at the Nizami mausoleum just outside of town. He was apparently a famous Azeri Poet, and the mausoleum looked new and quite well done.

All along the road I continued to see these fake castles:

Though the majority of the road was just boring desert scrub:

I ended the day in a cheap motel at the edge of Guychay. Since I've been forced to buy bottled water at markets I get stopped and questioned a lot, and most everyone wants to ask me questions. My favorite question seems to be the equivalent of “why are you here?” As if for some reason I shouldn't be in Azerbaijan.

I turned north to save some milage into Baku, but that took me off the nice main highway (which was apparently incredibly boring to cycle through) and onto roads that weren't paved, and up a bit into the mountains.

This was probably the worst day in Azerbaijan, where I had to deal with the awful roads, awful drivers, a bit of a run in with some dogs, and a few kids sellings things by attempting to get themselves hit by jumping in front of myself and other drivers on the road. I had a decent shashlik meal before camping just outside of Shamakhi.

The following day was a Thursday and I wanted to make it to Baku so I would be able to deal with visas on Friday before the consulates closed, so I rushed through the countryside and made it to a hostel in Baku, but not before meeting a group of british cyclists headed towards Georgia.

 Over the last few days there have been tons of Cyclists in and out of this hostel and I have helped or been helped by most of them.  I was able to pick up my Uzbek visa fairly quickly on Friday and I applied for the Tajik visa the same day. He said it would be 3-4 days, so I decided to stick around and wait rather than try to apply in Tashkent.

In the meantime I have seen a bit of Baku. In the old town there is the Maiden’s tower currently under renovation so you can’t go in:

The Shirvanshakhs’ palace is also in old town. It’s an old complex of tombs, mosque’s and a bath house:

Probably the most noticable buildings in Baku are the three flame towers:

At night they light them up with flames, the Azeri flag, and an image of a guy waving the Azeri flag back and forth.

There is also quite a nice park/promenade along the Caspian which you can see as the green along the water in this photo:

I also made it out to the Zorastrian fire temple which wasn’t that impressive. Apparently an earthquake in the 1700 or 1800s caused the natural gas to stop, so now they keep these fires lit artificially.

I was finally able to find some tubes that fit my bike so I have two more spares now. I registered with the Azeri OVIR so hopefully I shouldn’t have trouble leaving the country. I got my first haircut since Budapest. I’m stocked up on food and water for the ferry. Today I picked up my Tajik visa, so now it’s just a waiting game until the ferry with no schedule decides to show up again.

Some thoughts on Traffic:

In London there are tons of cars on the road, but at least they move fairly quickly through the city.

In Geneva there is tons of traffic because the engineers designing the lights had no idea what they were doing so entire lines of cars sit waiting at red lights for no reason.

In Istanbul there is lots of traffic because everyone, particularly taxis, love to pull over to the side of the road and block traffic.

In Baku, almost the entire city is gridlocked because no one knows how to drive, and everyone blocks every intersection. People honk constantly at everyone to move, but no one can move because no one in front of them can move. It’s actually quite hilarious to watch as long as you’re not stuck in the traffic yourself. Also apparently the practice here is that you can park in lanes where you’re not supposed to by giving a tip to a guy beside the road, who definitely pays the police to not ticket your car. So three lane roads become two lane roads because corruption. You also don’t need to pass any drivers test to get your license. All you need is about $1000 in bribe money and to know where your car horn is, so go figure why the traffic is terrible.