During my trip around the world in 72 days I spent a lot of time catching up with friends and revisiting places I’d been in the past. In an effort to sort of justify the trip (if only to myself) I thought I needed to also check out a few places that I hadn’t been. This is more or less how I ended up in Azerbaijan. That, and having explored Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro the previous year gave me a renewed taste for the reason.
As part of this trip, we ended up spending two weeks checking out the Caucasus countries – Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In five days we managed a day and a night in Sheki, and a few days in Baku with day trips to Qobustan and Quba Qusar.
| July | ||
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday | 30th | Tblisi-Sheki |
| Thursday | 31st | Baku |
| August | Gobustan day trip | |
| Friday | 1st | Gobustan day trip |
| Saturday | 2nd | Baku |
| Sunday | 3rd | Quba, Qusar, Baku-London |
Before we even set off we had to sort out visas which wasn’t all that difficult. To get a visa you need an invitation from a tourism company or a hotel in Azerbaijan. I ended up booking a room with Altstadt Hotel smack bang in the centre of the old town – partly because of the price and location, and partly because they offered to help me with the visa.
Once I secured the invitation, used Geo Travel to help me with the rest of the visa application. They charged around 60 euros per person for the visa, and spent about two weeks sorting it out. Both the hotel and Geo Travel were quick and efficient and made me feel confident that I wasn’t getting scammed.
By the time the 30th of July rolled around we were ready for the big day we had ahead of us. We had to drive our rental car across Armenia and return it to the Georgian capital, Tblisi. After that we had to make our way to the bus station to to get our bus into Azerbaijan. After scoffing down a dirty chicken kebab, and a good while of waiting, we realised we were at the wrong bus station and had to cross town to a second one. Eventually we found the right place, got on our bus and started the journey east.
What should have been a relatively quick 4 hour journey blew out when we worked out that the bus was only going to take us as far as the Georgian-Azeri border.
We walked across the border without too much trouble but soon discovered there wasn’t any transport waiting on the other side. We walked a little, sat around a little, before biting the bullet and paying for a taxi to complete the journey to Sheki. The next drama came when the driver insisted on kicking us out on the outskirts of Sheki, rather than taking us to our hotel. Anyway we found a taxi without too much drama and before long we were settling into the old silk road Karavansary hotel.
We spend the next day checking out Sheki before our next transport misadventure. To cut a long story short, we missed our bus by an hour or so and ended up getting another private car to the capital, Baku. It was quick and comfortable and not super expensive so probably not worth complaining about. The car even dropped us at the gates of the old town in Baku, leaving us with just a short walk to our hotel – Alstadt.
We spent a night and a day exploring Baku and its seafront, before taking a day trip to Gobostan to see its farty mud volcanoes and prehistoric rock carvings. The next day we investigated renting a car to head north up into the mountains towards Russia. In the end we opted for another day trip with the driver from the hotel. We got up into the mountains to check out the Quba valley before being dropped back in Baku in time for our BA flight back to London.