MIR Corporation's Travel Blog:
Treasures of the Trans-Caucasus
Follow along with MIR Corporation Tour Manager Devin Connolly as she accompanies MIR clients on MIR's Treasures of the Trans-Caucasus small group tour.
View what other past MIR travelers have had to say about Georgia.
Days 3-4: Gobustan, Sheki
October 1-2, 2008
There are a few long driving days in this itinerary, and today is one of them. We began our journey to Sheki this morning with a slight detour by driving one hour south of Baku to Gobustan State Reserve, site of thousands of ancient rock carvings and petroglyphs. One of my favorite things about being at Gobustan is that the site offers a completely different view of the Caspian than the view from Baku. Without a large city on the horizon, the vastness of the sea is much more apparent. And as we learned on our excursion, the carvings and mineral deposits in the stone at higher ground give reason to believe that the Caspian Sea used to be even larger.
Having explored Gobustan, we continued on the road to Sheki. There are two main east-west roads in Azerbaijan, and we decided to take the lower, as it was recently renovated and in much better shape than the upper road. This route enabled us to watch how the scenery and people change as our distance from the capital increased. One thing that did not change was the prevalence of posters and billboards dedicated to Heydar Aliyev, former president of Azerbaijan. Though he is no longer alive, his image continues to thrive throughout the country. It seems like nearly everything in Azerbaijan is named after Heydar Aliyev: parks, museums, roads, the international airport, and on top of all this, nearly every town has a large billboard with a picture of Heydar Aliyev, often alongside the text of a quote attributed to him.
We arrived at our hotel in Sheki just before dinner. Our accommodations, called Sheki Saray, were located right on the town's main square. I helped the group get checked in and gave everybody some time to freshen up a bit before we got back on the bus for the brief drive to the authentic Silk Road-era caravanserai up the hill where we had reservations. We ate indoors on the second floor of the caravanserai and were serenaded by a trio of local musicians during the meal. By the time we got back to the hotel, everyone was ready for a good night's sleep. The funny thing about long driving days is that even though they require the least amount of walking, they can also be among the most tiring days of a tour!
The following morning, we met after breakfast for a full-day tour of Sheki. We stopped in at the local market before making the brief drive out to Kish Village. The main attraction in Kish is the 5th-6th century Albanian church, which was formerly a pagan temple. The church is situated atop a steep, rocky hill that our coach couldn't access, so we walked up as a group. In Kish, much more than in Sheki, there is a distinct feeling of being in a remote mountain village. We passed several homes on our walk up to the church and we could see what they were growing in their gardens, the laundry they hung out to dry and the smoke from their chimneys rising up above the hills. We met some locals along the road and a few of them tried to engage us in conversation, which consisted mostly of pantomiming and a lot of smiles.
Later, we did a bit of strolling in Sheki. Some folks bought halvah at a local sweet shop, others browsed the souvenir shops - all two of them! Azerbaijan is definitely not a shopping highlight of the itinerary. We had dinner at a hillside restaurant with a panoramic view of Sheki. which was great, because Sheki is at its most beautiful at dusk. At dinner, we discussed the border procedures for the next day's crossing into Georgia and enjoyed our meal as we watched our last Azeri sunset.
Photos from this leg of the tour (click to enlarge):
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