Leaving Baku

Wow, Baku is expensive. A manat is worth around the same as a euro, but it doesn't seem to go as far. I've made six separate withdrawals from ATMs in 48 hours. After Uzbekistan, everything costs a shocking amount of money. You want to charge me $3 for tea? You thief! Going back to New York will take some adjusting.

It felt like a month since I'd met a fluent English speaker, so last night I dragged the two Japanese kids from our hostel to the local Irish pub/restaurant, Finnegans. Jackpot! The oil industry means tons of expats working in construction, and we got talking with an Irish architect and a bunch of Liverpudlian builders, all apparently called Danny. "There's no building happening in Liverpool now", Danny told us, "and we heard there was lots of work in Azerbaijan.". "I bet I know what your first thought was", I said. (In chorus) "Where the hell is Azerbaijan?"

We went to hear a live band at a gay bar where my Japanese friends danced and I got all the English conversation I could wish for. I can survive another week of talking to myself now. And I got a cultural experience to boot: a gay bar in a Muslim country is a new one for me.

Yesterday I just walked around a lot, enjoying the difference between the old town and the rapidly developing new city. There's a great promenade along the water, very striking in cloudy weather when the (oily) water, the seagulls and the distant smoky ships are all starkly black and white.

The old town here is quite lovely and well preserved. Wooden balconies covered in flowers hang over busy flagstones streets. It's a good place to stroll. On Thursday I had dinner in the old town with people from the hostel, one Japanese and one Turkish. We went to a caravanserei -- a sort of old travellers' inn with little stone rooms around a courtyard -- which is now converted into a good restaurant. Carpets and kilims covered the walls, and the rooms were lit by little gas fires and candlelight. A band played Azeri music, which sounded great to me but infuriated the Turk: he ranted (at great length) about how the Azeris are exceptional poets and musicians and how the tourist-quality music wasn't acceptable to his ears. Apparently the Azerbaijan Philharmonic is incredible, if you're in the neighborhood.

Today I visited the Shirvanshah's palace, a surprisingly big complex of mosques, mausoleums, galleries, etc, connected together with steep stone stairs. I played with some cats and sat in the plaza watching people go by. It was relaxed and easy.

And I drank a lot of tea. There's good chai in these parts.

In summary, Baku is a pleasant place to be. As the capital city, it's probably not at all representative of Azerbaijan, and I'm curious now about what Azeri people are like. I won't find out on this trip though. To Georgia!

In Baku

Aw, I take it back. Baku seems rather nice. I auditioned the city on the walk to the train station, and concluded that I should stay for a second night. Besides, who knows when I'll have a reason to be in Azerbaijan again.

Azeri appears to be Turkish with a French accent. Who knew?

Killing time in Tashkent

I've sorted out my next visa, collected my next ticket, and handed off a load of laundry, and now there's nothing to do but sit in a cafe and read the paper. You could argue that Tashkent has attractions, buildings, statues, etc, that any worthwhile visitor would go look at, but after Bukhara and Samarkand I have monument fatigue. I have seen enough wonderful blue tiled buildings with beautiful domes, thank you. I'll just sit here with my coffee and cake.

Pictures are at http://whereistanya.smugmug.com/Uzbekistan/ if you'd like monument fatigue too.

Tomorrow I'm going to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. From my brief reading about Azerbaijan, it seems that this is one of those places that have suffered horribly from finding oil and having sudden wealth: their environment's fouled up, their hotels cost a fortune, but somehow the average person is still broke. The Lonely Planet's suggested three day itinerary includes places that it later describes as "spirit crushing","mesmerising ugliness", "infamous pollution", "a nightmare vision of leaky small-scale oil detritus and rusting old boats". (I know at least two people reading this are buying plane tickets already).

I do enjoy horrific decay as much as the next person, but this, the book reckons, is the very best the country has to offer if you only have three days. If you visit for a whole week, who knows what kind of oily adventures you get to have. Poor Azerbaijan.

[Side note: six months ago, Tanya's knowledge of Azerbaijan was: 1) beside Armenia, right? 2) probably has a complicated relationship with Russia 3) um...? Since then, she has skimmed a pdf version of an out of date travel guide to the country. There is a reasonable possibility that she has no idea whatsoever what she's talking about. Azerbaijan might be perfectly charming. Also, Baku's old town has UNESCO world heritage status, so it does have some nice things and stop being mean.]

Anyway, I'm flying to Baku tomorrow afternoon. I've got nine days to get from there to Istanbul, so I won't be there long enough to see much of anything, nightmarish or otherwise.

Having to fly is disappointing, because I'd hoped to go by land, but without a Russian visa the options were
- wait three weeks for a Turkmenistan visa that's 50% likely to be rejected for no reason, or
- go back through the border crossing of doom, spend 84 hours on a train across Kazakhstan, then wait around until a cargo ship is crossing the Caspian sea. Since they'd like me to be back in the office at some point[1], Tashkent airport, here I come.

[1] Probably. It's likely that I've been automated by now.

Freezing my fingers off in Samarkand

Brrr. Winter arrived. Joel's bringing my winter coat when we meet in Istanbul in a couple of weeks, so I'm trying to survive without buying a coat until then. I'm up to five layers.

Alain de Botton says this: "A danger of travel is that we may see things at the wrong time, before we have had an opportunity to build up the necessary receptivity so that new information is as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain". In other words, "Ok, this monument was built in the Shaybanid dynasty? So what? Why do I care?". I was kind of braced for this feeling in Bukhara and Samarkand. I tried to read some background information and quickly build an understanding of 14th-16th century central Asian and Islamic architecture, but my eyes kept glazing over. It takes some time before it's interesting and you start to care.

Luckily, Samarkand and Bukhara are magnificent. Even if you can't remember the difference between an emir and a khan, you can stand there with your jaw dropped at how big everything is, how striking the blue tiles are, and what a great job the restorers have done.

The Registan is the obvious attraction here, and it is indeed awe-inspiring. It's impressive that Ulugbek's madrassa, built in the 1400s, has withstood earthquakes and chaos better than anything built since. It's good to have a nerd running the country. Today I also saw the tomb of the prophet Daniel from the Old Testament (probably; there's a contender in Iran). These were both great and fascinating things to see.

However, the thing I found most interesting in Samarkand, which isn't on any of the tourist maps, is a modern graveyard attached to the Shah-i-Zinda avenue of Mausoleums. Rather than just names and dates, the gravestones have lovely etched pictures of the deceased person. Maybe this is a common thing, but I haven't seen it before, and I spent an enjoyable hour guessing people's lives and personalities, looking for family resemblances and so on. After some internal debate, I decided that photographing gravestones is only disrespectful if anyone sees you who is likely to be offended (This is my philosophy on a lot of things) so I have a bunch of pictures of the people I liked the most. It was interesting: couples tended to match in attitude, some solemn, amused, friendly, thoughtful, etc, but usually matching.

Walking around here is still fraught with pestering, worse than in Tashkent. It feels like every second Uzbek who passes is all "Hello! Madame! Signora! Where are you from? What is your name?". It's a prelude to money changing, tour guiding, buying appalling junk, etc, so after a couple of days I started only responding to the kids. The problem is that the police do the same rigmarole, and it seems less wise to blank them. The ones around the Registan come up close and, after we've ascertained what everyone's name is and where everyone is from, whisper "Climb a minaret? Very cheap!". Grr. I don't object to paying a few quid to get a better view, but there's no way I'm lining their pockets to do it. And I'd rather not be in a tiny enclosed space with them. Taxi drivers are the other worst: they slow down and crawl along beside you in case maybe you remember that you did need a taxi after all. It's creepy at night.

On the other hand, yesterday I was kidnapped by a delightful middle class family of four who saw me reading my map under a streetlamp after getting out of a shared taxi from Bukhara (That's the problem with travelling in winter; you always get to new cities after dark) and decided that taking me to my hotel was their good samaritan duty. I promise I don't usually get into cars with insistent randomers, but the 17 year old pharmacology student, her baby sister and their mum and dad were the least threatening people you can imagine. And they did indeed get me to my hotel :-)

One day each is enough in both Bukhara and Samarkand (or two if you cleverly visit a city of mosques when they're all in use on a Friday and you can't come in). It's easy to travel between them and Tashkent, the other point of the triangle that tourists usually see. Actually, Uzbekistan would make a good one week holiday, if you're looking for a place to go. Let me know and I'll tell you all about it. Madame! Signora! Where are you from? I give you good advice for Uzbekistan!