As I made my way through the final grassy plains of Georgia I moved my thoughts on towards spending the next few days in Azerbaijan. My knowledge of this new country being somewhat limited to three facts - 1) it has a way awesome name, 2) its consul in Batumi has terrible handwriting and 3) it hates Armenia. So I had a lot to learn in what was going to be a very brief 'country-bagging' excursion before I doubled back to Georgia in order to continue south through Armenia. The border between Azerbaijan and Armenia being closed on account of this intense hatred of one another. I made a mental note not to mention this Armenian plan to anyone in Azerbaijan.

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I had the usual problem with not knowing whether to go through the car or pedestrian border crossing to get out of Georgia but I opted to try walking as there was a long line of cars that didn't seem to be moving. This worked fine and, despite some very confused scrutiny of the aforementioned poor handwriting on my Azeri visa, I was soon out of Georgia. Getting into Azerbaijan was a much more complicated affair. The cars were also parked up here, blocked by a huge wrought-iron gate guarded by a soldier. The pedestrian way was up a walkway into the building, so I headed for that, but a random and very unofficial man called me back and pointed me towards the gates instead.

I walked over to the gates and asked the uniformed soldier which way to go and he spoke for a few moments into a radio before pointing back to the pedestrian walkway. So I returned here and walked up into another airport-style building where I joined a queue of people. Another random and very unofficial man on a bench called out and told me I needed to go through with the cars. I ignored him.

I walked up to one of the four booths with my bike and was greeted by a tall and happy border official. Despite his apparent friendliness he told me that I had to go through with the cars. I stood firm and explained that the guard at the car entrance had told me to come here, to which he laughed in a nice way. There followed some confusion and the guard at the next booth, who we shall refer to as the medium-sized happy border official, got on his radio. I could only hear one side of the conversation which followed, but it seemed to go something like this:

"Hi, yeah, we've got a bicycle in here. He needs to go through with the cars doesn't he?"

Crackle, crackle, crackle.

"Really? I thought bikes went through with you guys. Through here, really?"

Crackle, crackle, crackle.

"His bike is kind of dirty though. He's going to make a mess in here. The cleaning ladies just been in."

Crackle, crackle.

"Yeah, she's looking really mad about it."

I looked over my shoulder where an old cleaning woman in blue overalls and a yellow headscarf was leaning on a barrier right behind me and she really was looking at me with a sour face. 'Look lady, I couldn't care less whether I go through with the cars or not, I just want to go through'

I was made to wait for a few minutes, until a third border guard arrived. He was much shorter and more serious than the others, but he spoke better English. The first thing he said to me was "What is the problem? What do you want?"

"Erm, just to enter the country." I replied. Happy-tall border guard laughed. Serious-short border guard did not. He asked me what country I planned to go to next and I said Iran. I knew very well that explaining my plan to go to Armenia was not a sensible idea. Satisfied, he walked to his booth and we finally began the process of doing just that. He looked at my passport and asked me if I had an Azerbaijan visa. "Yes" I told him, which seemed quite unnecessary because he was already looking at it. "What is your name?" he asked next, which, once again, I was pretty sure was information that he could have gleaned from a look at my passport. I told him anyway. Then medium-sized-happy man, whose English wasn't so good, addressed me from the next booth: "How...are...you?" he asked with a smile. I smiled back and said "Fine, thank-you." Short-serious man looked at us both with disgust. I think he had a complex about his height.

I was stamped through and walked on to customs, which was even more difficult. I had to take all of the bags off the bike, all seven of them that I had somehow collected on my travels, and feed them through an airport-style x-ray machine. This resulted in an extremely chaotic scene and unfortunately the woman watching this machine spotted something suspicious on the screen and wanted me to open one of the bags. This only added to the chaos as I now had to empty out both of the small bags, where nothing was found that looked like what she had seen. She even showed me the screenshot of the suspicious item, something big and metal which I guessed was either my tent or my laptop, but they were in the bigger bags and she was adamant this was in a smaller bag. So everything in the smaller bags ended up on the floor of the room, being watched by another offical, a very friendly man. We were having a bit of a laugh about things and when I pulled out some condoms I showed them to him and laughed, as if to say how ridiculous this whole process was. He didn't smile at all. 'Islamic country you idiot, Islamic country!'

Well anyway, to sum up, nobody found the bazooka and I was at last able to carry on into Azerbaijan. As I was walking down the walkway towards the exit I fell into conversation with an incredibly beautiful young Azeri woman who I was surprised to find spoke good English. I decided I was really going to like this country, the only thing killing the mood being the fact that her mother was standing between us.

Outside I was surrounded by men offering to exchange money but they offered me a terrible rate so I walked on past a line of taxi drivers asking me if I wanted a lift to Baku. I'm not sure how much a 500 kilometre taxi ride costs in Azerbaijan or if anyone has ever said yes to their offer but you can't blame them for asking can you? Looking back at the border building I saw 'Azerbaijan' in big letters over it and decided I should move to make a country-sign picture while I had the chance. I found the beautiful girl again as she waited for a car to come through and made a rather bizarre request for her and her mother to each hold up ten fingers as someone took a picture of us in front of the sign. Rather brilliantly they agreed and one of the money-changers took the photo, although he didn't get the border sign in. I wanted him to take it again but he refused and suddenly all the men seemed terribly afraid of the camera. I realised it was because it was the border and they weren't really supposed to take photos of it, as some soldiers started peering over at us suspiciously. Still, there is an Azerbaijan flag in the picture that he took (titled 'A beautiful girl, her mother, and an idiot') and so I'm claiming it valid:

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I liked Azerbaijan already and cycling onwards on a road with a decent shoulder only improved my first impressions. And it wasn't long before I was stopped by a young man outside a gas station who invited me inside for a glass of chai, something I was naturally extremely happy about. Inside I sat and drank my tea while an old headscarfed woman smiled through gold teeth and men played backgammon. It felt a lot like Turkey again, except the men who talked to me were younger and had more 'Eastern' faces. None of them spoke a word of English and I had trouble explaining my route to them. I didn't want to tell people that I was going to only spend a few days in Azerbaijan and then go to their arch-enemy Armenia, so the conversation went something like:

"Where you go?" (in sign language)

"Iran" (technically true)

"Baku? Baku?"

"Yes, Baku, Baku is a place in Azerbaijan" (technically true.)

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After this warm welcome things only got better. In fact it would be hard for me to accurately convey just how overwhelmingly amazing those first few hours cycling in Azerbaijan were. The people were so, so, so, so friendly. Almost everyone waved, everyone was pleased to see me, from children calling out "Hallo" from the fields, to the old shepherd that I stopped and spoke with. He was so nice, he smiled such a friendly smile the whole time and we had a long conversation, taking it in turns to speak even though the other couldn't understand a word. Before I left I asked to take a photo of him, and he agreed. As I fiddled with the camera and set up the shot I couldn't help giggling as I could see his sheep running away behind him. It was really funny, but don't worry, he caught them up.

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It was such perfect cycling. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the grassy plains a brilliant green, the road was good, the wind at my back, and the people just so awesome. I went past a couple of kids on bikes and fell into a really fun race with them which ultimately ended with me backing off and letting one of the kids win. Then, a short while later, I fell into a race with a Lada which pulled out into the road next to me. I was laughing and joking with the passengers as the Lada struggled to pick up speed next to me. Once again, this race ultimately ended with me backing off and letting my opponent win. Everything here felt safe, everything felt fun. It would actually not be an exaggeration to say that the first few hours in Azerbaijan had been the most fun cycling, with the most friendly people, that I could ever remember.