April 3, 2014
Georgerbaijan: Don't buy squirrel
It was time to do a U-turn in order to head back to Georgia and I was a little concerned about the process of leaving Azerbaijan. First of all I had to navigate my way back along the same section of road that I had entered the country on. If I came across anyone that I passed on the way in I didn't really know how I would explain my sudden return two days after apparently being on my way to Baku. But as it turned out all the people that called me over and forced tea down my throat were different and no one recognised me. Of greater concern was the border itself, where I was worried my sudden backtracking may arouse suspicion and cause me to have some issues getting out of the country without interrogation. Explaining my plan to go to Armenia without mentioning Armenia would be very difficult.
But the biggest difficulty at the border appeared once again to be whether to go through with the cars or the pedestrians. A soldier guarding the car entrance pointed me very definitely up the pedestrian walkway. As I was walking up it I could see through the window the tall-happy border official who had originally greeted me on my way in two days earlier. I was really hoping to avoid any of the men that I had spoken to before, because that would make my backtracking much more difficult to explain away. Luckily he was outside and none of the men I encountered inside the building were the same, although the scowl on the cleaning woman's face suggested she remembered me. At the top of the walkway I was met by a man in a suit, who immediately told me that I had to go back and go through with the cars. I couldn't believe I was having this problem all over again. We had an argument in sign language and a soldier came and waved me on through the pedestrian building, much to the suited man's dismay who still wanted me to go back. I decided to obey only the uniformed soldiers though - they had guns after all.
The building was basically empty except for us three, a tired old man at customs, and the passport control booths beyond. We all stood around for several minutes until the old man found the energy to switch the x-ray machine on so that I could go through the pointless exercise of putting all the bags through again. It was pointless because even if there had been a dozen AK47s in there I very strongly doubt this man could have been bothered with the hassle of confronting me about it.
That just left the difficult bit; getting out of the country without being interrogated about why I was returning through a border post I had entered through just two days earlier when I had been declaring to all and sundry that I was heading for Iran. It turned out not to be difficult at all, a lack of common language being useful in avoiding an interrogation, and I was stamped out. I walked down the walkway and out into no-man's land between Azerbaijan and Georgia. At that moment Mr Tall and Happy appeared through the car gate and called out to me. He was smiling at first, then there was that awkward moment when he seemed to be remembering how he knew me, then a look of suspicion as he recalled my telling him that I was going to Iran, which now clearly had turned out to be a lie. He looked very much like he wanted to interrogate me, but seeing as how I already had my exit stamp I wasn't going to hang around. "HellonicetoseeyouagainokayI'mgoingtoGeorgianowbyebye."
The Georgian side was much easier. I was stamped back in with a smile and I asked about customs. "Customs doesn't want to see you. Just go Georgia" came the reply. There aren't that many things I love about Georgia, but the border procedure is one of them.
But the 40 kilometre section of road that I was cycling between Azerbaijan and Armenia wasn't really like being back in Georgia at all, because everyone living along it was Azeri. I was therefore greeted by lots of friendly people, waved at by almost everyone, and generally treated almost exactly as I had been in Azerbaijan. This, as you may have guessed, was not something I considered to be a bad thing.
At about six in the evening I was called over by a large group of men and offered more tea which I gladly accepted. It was wonderful to sit there and talk with these men and think about how far I had come since Paris. Behind me a man stood and tended his cows next to my bike, around me were crowds of gold-toothed Azeri men peering at me curiously, and in front an old broken car sat with its bonnet open as a horse and cart made its way along the road next to it. It was magic. When the kindly man sitting next to me offered to let me sleep in his house I saw no reason to do anything other than gratefully accept.
The man, named Ramis, was quite large and appeared to be in his fifties or sixties with a grey moustache and hair, and to my astonishment he got into the beat-up old car, which I was instructed to follow. I had to wait quite a while before I could follow anything though, because it took a long time for the old machine to kick into life. When it did there was still the monumental task of completing a three-point turn for it to undertake. After doing the forward bit, Ramis rolled the car back down the verge at the side of the road, almost taking out the tea-table and a cow or two as he did so. Then it took several attempts to get enough power to get back up onto the roadway, before finally we were on our way, me following the trail of smoke coming from the exhaust-pipe which, incidentally, was tied on with a piece of string.
We trundled our way to his little wooden shack of a home just along the road and I was encouraged to push my bike inside where it would be safe, which I did. Then Ramis took me back outside and beckoned for me to get into the car, as we were off to the shops. Oh dear. This was awkward. As you know, I don't do cars, not under any circumstances. And if ever I were to break my no-car rule, this certainly wasn't going to be the vehicle I would be doing it in. Well, fortunately I knew enough Russian to be able to say the words for 'car', 'no', 'bicycle' and 'yes'. I said the first two a lot. Ramis responded by saying the word for shop and making cupping breast-like motions over his chest, which I took to mean that an attractive woman worked at the shop. Tempting as this was, I stood firm and Ramis allowed me to stay at the house while he went to do the shopping.
Before he left I thought it best to explain to him that I was vegetarian, because if he brought a steak home especially for me it would no doubt be very rude of me to refuse to eat it. The question was, how to do this, as the Russian word for 'vegetarian' was one of the many that I did not know. Making animal noises and saying "No, no" only brought extremely confused looks from my host. Then I remembered the children's Russian alphabet book that Dasha had given me in Ukraine. It had pictures of lots of different things, if I could find it I could point at all of the vegetable pictures and say yes and all the animal pictures and say no. It was yet another brilliant idea from my very underrated brain, congratulations brain! I dug the book out from one of my bags and flicked through it. Unfortunately the pictures weren't as useful as I'd hoped. There were no vegetables, only one picture of some apples, which I pointed at and said "yes". And the only picture of an animal one might associate with food was of a pig. I pointed at that and very firmly said "no!" It was only later that I realised how ridiculous it was that I was essentially telling a Muslim not to buy pork. Just to be sure I flicked through all the pages of the book and said no to some of the other animals too. In the end I think Ramis got the message, and the message was, "Buy apples, don't buy pig, don't buy rabbit, don't buy fox, don't buy squirrel, do buy apples."
I sat and watched some television which was a mixture of Turkish and Russian channels mostly. It was of course very difficult to understand but it was alright because women's volleyball was on. Then after about half an hour the old car spluttered its way back up into the driveway and Ramis walked into the house. He was of course carrying in his hands a massive bag of apples.
I honestly thought we were going to be eating apples for dinner, (which was alright, it was better than eating squirrel,) but then Ramis found some potatoes and a jar of tomato/vegetable sauce and made a really delicious dinner on the old wood stove. While we were enjoying this he poured us both a large glass of cognac and gave a toast and I took a drink. It was the strongest and most foul tasting spirit I could ever have tasted. For some reason Ramis then interrupted the meal to lead me into another room which was essentially just a prayer room with pictures of Allah and he was indicating to me that he was a Muslim. The reason why he did this only became clear to me when the next toast was made and I noticed that as he lifted his glass to his mouth he stopped short and didn't drink any. He pointed again at the prayer room and I realised that he didn't actually drink alcohol because of his faith. I drank again the foul tasting liquor and looked at Ramis with a rueful smile.
AZERBAIJAN SUMMARY:
Time: 2 days (+1 day in Georgerbaijan)
Distance: 115 kilometres (+44km in Georgerbaijan)
Best bits: There was basically nothing that wasn't great about my short visit to Azerbaijan - the incredible friendliness of the people, the scenery, the weather, the roads, it was all great.
Worst bits: N/A
Top tip: Make more time in your schedule for this country than I did.
02/04/14 - 64km (41km in Azerbaijan, 23km in Azerbaijan)
03/04/14 - 66km (21km in Georgerbaijan)
Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 15,734 km (9,771 miles)
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