Not fancying trying to explain what a free ride was to plenty more Azeri's we decided to get the bus to Quba and from there a taxi ride or hitch-hike to Xinaliq a small village in the Greater Caucasus which our guidebook describes as another highlight. To be fair it was, but reaching it was a pain in the rear.
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| From Quba and Xinaliq, Azerbaijan |
We arrived mid-afternoon in Quba a fair sized town with some of the open gutters we saw in Shaki but not much else to see except for a memorial and a pleasant square with lots of statues. After a quick stop in a seedy internet café (half the computers were tucked away behind curtain giving the user relative privacy to watch naughty films or communicate with other people in the café using the web cam and when I say communicate what I really mean is watching other people do things they really should be doing in the privacy of their own bedroom with plenty of tissues on hand, delightful) we went on to one of the cheapest hotels in town dumped our things and went for a walk. With the evening drawing in and a tendency for shops to shut up very early outside of cities, we walked to Mahir's Café which LP said might have the best döner çorek in all of Azerbaijan, we were a wee bit disappointed with what was served up but it wasn't all that bad underneath the mayonnaise. We didn't dawdle getting back to the hotel, stopping for breakfast things and water before settling in to watch Angels and Demons.
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| From Quba and Xinaliq, Azerbaijan |
The next day after a night of coughing in our little room, we decided to get up and out early to see the rest of the town which took all of ten minutes, and then try and hitch to Xinaliq in the mountains. We managed to get half of the way there before reaching a tea house that we stopped at to have a cuppa and wait for a mashrutka which was supposed pass by – we never saw it. We ended up hitching with an Australian woman, Michelle who had been driven all the way from Baku by a guy who turned out to be a rude old greedy goat (thankfully not a fact we found out till we arrived back in Quba and were trying to renegotiate his sky-high price).
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| From Quba and Xinaliq, Azerbaijan |
The ride through the Caucasus was impressive even though all the mountains were dry and brown, we stopped several times to take pictures before arriving in the little village which had taken us all of the morning and a good part of the afternoon to get to. We wandered round taking pictures of the mountains, chickens, old ladies and children playing before hopping back in the Lada for the ride back to Quba.
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| From Quba and Xinaliq, Azerbaijan |
On the trip back Michelle regaled us with tales of gropings during her time in Azerbaijan and other countries so far, I was horrified at what she had been through – if it had been me I would have been on the first plane back home to learn some kick ass moves before heading out on the road again, woe betide any man who tried to grab a boob. Men in a hotel she was staying at opening her window while she was sleeping and managing to get halfway in, being forcefully groped by an aggressive 14 year old boy who asked her for sex after giving directions and generally mistreated by pervy goats.
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| From Quba and Xinaliq, Azerbaijan |
Arriving back in Quba we, well Djalma tried talking to the guy who had driven us there, to bring down the price he was asking – the equivalent of 125USD for an afternoon driving – a painfully long negotiation process followed with numerous phone calls before we said goodbye to the pig who drove us swearing at us in Azeri (fair to assume even though we didn't understand a word).
We checked in at another cheap hotel with Michelle staying in a triple room with mattress-less spring beds and had dinner at the adjoining restaurant – the first meal in a while which was kebab free. We spent a good hour wandering around the town afterwards taking pictures and revisiting the “pretty” parts Michelle hadn't seen.
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| From Quba and Xinaliq, Azerbaijan |
We left the next day in a taxi that drove around 140-150km/ph for the same price as a minibus – bargain.
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