Baku is oil. A whole row of oil platforms can be seen on the horizon in the bay, even in the suburbs there are oil pumps on every corner and in every second front garden, and the wider surroundings of the city are a tangle of pipelines. In the many bars, money is immediately converted into alcohol and paid love, no trace of religiosity (apart from superstition). The beer tastes good to us, too, after the long all-too-dry time in Iran. The current oil boom is causing skyscrapers to spring up like mushrooms, just like at the end of the 19th century when all the magnificent palaces were built. Hidden away in the centre, there is still a walled old town, where the Sultan’s Palace is particularly worth seeing.
Baku needs water… My friend Micha, who is currently working on the city’s future water supply, picked us up and he will show us around Azerbaijan for the next while.
Nearby, in Qubustan, there are some petroglyphs from the Stone Age to discover. Here we also see the first mud volcanoes. Another excursion takes us to one of the famous dream beaches (well…) on the turquoise waters of the Caspian Sea…
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Backpacking trip Middle East and Caucasus 2008
Trek from Xinaliq to Lasa
Mud volcanoes in Azerbaijan
Lahiç and Şeki