I wasn't sure if it was the cold or the fog that got me first. As I opened the door to leave the small house Ii was staying in I was hit by a striking cold and a thick, white fog. It was ten at night and I needed to go to the bathroom before bed. I was in the mountain village of Xinaliq, in northern Azerbaijan. The town was very small, made up of a handful of stone buildings covering the top of a hill. The sunset had brought below-freezing temperatures and a band of cloud that enveloped the whole area. Outside, visibility was low. Inside, beside a furnace fueled by bricks of dried manure and hay, it was warm. There was only one problem, the bathroom was outside.
Having used the larger town of Quba as a base, I had travelled to the town of Laza and stayed there the previous night. I stayed there with two other travellers I met in Quba. During the day we took an easy traverse through the Caucasus mountains, following a path north. We walked for a while, stopped for a break and then decided we had seen enough so we turned around and went back.
It was lucky that we turned around when we did. After returning to the river-crossing where the walk had started, we were approached by gun-carrying men in camouflage gear. They were from the Azerbaijani army. They were concerned we were walking a little too close to the Russian border. I was a little frightened by the guns but I thought nothing of the confrontation as I believed we were miles away from the border.
Technically, I was right. After we had passed the army men I checked my map. I thought we were at least fifty or so miles away from being welcomed at the border by the loving arms of Mr Putin. We were about six miles away from Russia. Sure, there were large mountains obstructing a direct route but, had we hiked for another hour or two along the river, we'd have needed to convert our manats to rubles.
Whilst Xinaliq was pretty close to Laza, the tallest mountains in Europe were still in the way. So we had to go all the way back to Quba, negotiate for a new taxi and then drive another hour or so to Xinaliq. A bridge on the route had collapsed four months earlier so we needed a four-by-four to take us over the river. Luckily we were able to locate a local share taxi at Quba bazaar who took us on his daily route.
We arrived in the stone village of Xinaliq, on the other side of one of the mountains we had seen in Laza. We were dropped at a homestay run by a local man who never removed his fur hat for the entire time we stayed there. He welcomed us into his home and his wife prepared us tea whilst he sat at the table with us and watched Youtube videos about recent Azerbaijan-Armenia conflicts.
Our dinner that evening had been a feast of homemade delights. In a small village like Xinaliq, everything was homemade. We started with pickled cucumbers and cabbage and white farmer's cheese and bread, all made by hand by the fur hat man's wife. Then lentil soup and fried potatoes. A rice pilaf speckled with yellow and covered with black-eyed peas and dried fruits was accompanied by some chicken cooked with turmeric and apricots. It was a lot. But it was all tasty. All well executed. All pickled, churned, kneaded, baked, boiled, slaughtered and fried at the home we were staying at. As the fur hat man liked to say, there was no supermarket to buy the chicken from.
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| Spot the fur hat man. |
The fur hat man had been in the army years ago. Speaking through the Russian-speaking German in our group, he said he only knew two words in German "hands up." Thankfully he saw the humour in it all these years later.
He took us through the 'museum' in his house, a dining room filled with guns, knives and soviet memorabilia. You could see he felt an immense pride from his army days, though he was quite happy settling down in quiet village life.
Despite all the reminders of war, not to mention the army base that stared at us from the other side of the valley, the town and the fur hat man were lovely. From this side of the Caucasus mountains we could see a long way down the valley to the river that separated the monolithic mountain peaks. The fur hat man said the rivers were receding in recent years. The snow too, had still fallen every winter but the temperature had been noticeably warmer in the last ten years.
But everything, for me, is relative. Leaving the sanctity of the home to go to the squat toilet before bed, the temperature outside was anything but warm. The fog was abundant. I could hardly see the houses in the street below, let alone the mountains I had seen only a few hours before.
But I didn't mind the cold temperature one bit. In a town in the middle of nowhere, my stomach was full from the best meal I'd eaten in two months and I was surrounded by travelling companions I hadn't stopped talking to for three days. In the coldest place, I felt the warmest.
Photos are from Laza and Xinaliq.
