Walnuts? Cherries? Eggs? We can pickle that!
Leaving Tbilisi, we raced north and east, eager to be in the mountains again. After tracing the foothills of the Caucasus into Azerbaijan, we stopped for a much needed rest at the restored caravansarai in Seki.
While the mountains were ever present on the horizon, it was not often that we ventured into them. The Greater and Lesser Caucasus ranges sandwich the fertile valleys of Georgia and Azerbaijan, giving us fresh produce and good wine, and (mostly) snow-free roads.
Bukhara has a gritty, inhabited feel to it: people walk freely through occasionally crumbling medieval monuments, groceries in hand, while shop keepers hawk wares from under the domes of ancient bazaars. With no tourists about in mid-winter, we were able to wander undistracted through the madrases, mausoleums, and mosques. Here, the Po-i Kaylan (“Foot of the Great”) complex, showing the minaret of the Kaylan mosque and the turquoise dome of the Mir-i Arab Madrasah.
The Soviet-era cargo ship Dagestan took us safely across the Caspian in 15 hours, a record crossing for the rusty train ferry.
The dreaded Baku Ferry Office. The only clue as to its true purpose was a couple of Mongol Rally stickers on the sheet metal door. We waited here for 3 hours before bulling our way to the ticket desk and demanding tickets. This won us another 5 hours wait, and a bunk on a cargo ship across the Caspian.
n.
Zand Martin 