03/12/2022
Why Azerbaijan?📍 ( Long post alert😁)
# on arrival visa for Indians📝
# short flight ✈️
# a mix of culture, food and sights
# skii destination 🧤🧣⛸️
# a cheap cobble street destination that gives you great Instagram photo spots ( dubbed by some as 'the poor man's Europe')
# food and shopping 👌
Must visit
# Nizami Street for some serious glamour quotient
# Baku sightseeing/ Old City tour, Shirvanshah palace, Heydar Aliyev Center..
# Shamakhi with vineyard tour & Diri Baba tomb visit
# Absheron - Fire Mountain & Fire Temple
# Qabala - Tufandag Mountain- cable car rides & the Gabala shooting club
6N 7D makes it a relaxed tour!
Read ahead only if you have the patience and time 😅
A week in Azerbaijan
A little peak into our time in Azerbaijan. Just in case you plan on traveling to this beautiful Caucasian country sometime soon.
Azerbaijan, the oil rich country in the southern side of Russia which has boundaries with the Caspian Sea is more than just Baku, its capital.
Make sure you converse with the taxi drivers, shop keepers, restaurant boys and so on in a type of slow, easy English if you want to be understood.
Indians get an on-arrival visa here and airport formalities are mostly hassle free. We had taken our visas before we started, just to avoid any last-minute confusion but having said that it isn't a necessity.
We had booked a modest hotel right in the centre, bang on the very vibrant Nizami street which has various restaurants, cafes, hotels, stores, and little kiosks all through.
Nizami street is essentially a no-vehicle street which is cobbled and prettily lit buzzing with people in the evenings. Our hotel was just around the corner of the road making it easy to carry / roll our suitcases up to the hotel lobby. Our petite hotel was just across a park, a huge plus as it gave us sneak peaks of everyday lives of the locals - young mothers walking their babies in prams, elderly men chit chatting with their friends over hot cups of chai, young men and women crossing the park on their way to work - everybody busy in their own way. Interestingly, life began a bit slow we noticed, especially when compared to Dubai - probably owing to the chill weather.
We had decided to relax and predominantly enjoy the weather there, so we kept the mornings for exploration and evenings for simply walking through the streets. As we landed on a Saturday, the city streets were on a totally different vibe with the young crowds hanging out and enjoying their weekend. I should and DEFINITELY should mention that it was sheer delight to watch the people walk past dressed stylishly from head to toe.
Apart from the usual Baku sightseeing, we spent three days driving out of the city to Qabala, Quba and Absheron.
Qabala is a Gulmarg if you have been to Kashmir. The Tufandag mountain resort, on the city’s northeastern outskirts makes the snow experience lovely with cable car rides up and down. There are 2 routes you can choose from. We chose the one that goes near the Chalet Steak and Wine House which offers some spectacular views for photography. We also visited the Gabala Shooting Club where we tried out our hands at gun shooting with some real masculine guns if I could use the term!
When coming back to Baku we stopped at the Nohur Lake which provided stunning views of the beautiful water body against backdrop of the mountains. We gave a miss to the pedal boat rides you can opt for when there.
At Guba we visited the Mountain Jews Museum which serves more like a memorial to the rapidly disappearing population of Jews in the area due to the wide emigration of the community from the Red Village that once existed there and the Caucasian region in general. Before getting to the village, we went off road to stop by at the Candy Cane mountains that looked like they were streaked with red lines intermittently thus sporting tinges of red and white all through. Our pictures do not do justice to what we saw in real. An aerial view from a chopper or a drone would bring out its beauty said my driver.
The highlight of our trip was
the visit to Absheron to see the Fire Mountain and the Fire Temple. The Yanar Dag or the burning mountain in the Absheron Peninsula is a marvelous sight to behold.
Researchers opine natural gas emissions in the area contribute to the constant fire but the sheer sight of the flames and the strong winds that force you to cover your ears create a trance like feeling when in the area. The fact that it has been continuously burning since the 13th century come what may, is itself a marvel as no snow or rain has died it down! There is a museum in the same compound which explains the history of the place, its mud volcanoes, and the very significance of fire in Zoroastrianism which was primarily the religion followed by the earliest inhabitants of this land and why Azerbaijan has rightly been termed the Land of Fire.
The Fire Temple, a little away took us by total surprise as we heard the ‘Om Ganganapathaya namaha’ being chanted from one of its caved insides and Ganapathy and Nataraja moorthies displayed with utmost reverence! History says the temple was a place of worship for both Zoroastrians and Hindus of the land in the 17th and 18th centuries but ceased to be so in the 19th century, maybe due to the migration of the believers’ population from the area. It was turned into a museum in 1975 as per records.
Food in Azerbaijan has hints of Arab and Indian/ Moghul similarities. Their plov which is a mix of flavored rice and meat reminds us of pulav, their mutton Lyulya kebaps / kababs on skewers and different varieties of dolmas, especially the ones with vine leaves are a must try. Their dushbaras or the Azerbaijani version of dumplings is essentially small dough balls stuffed with meat, tomatoes, and onions. Dovga, a yoghurt soup, so to say, mixed with chickpeas and herbs is a favourite among locals, they have it either warm or cold.
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