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July 05, 2006
The land of $1.60 petrol
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN – The first thing one sees when flying into Baku is three lakes. One is bright yellow, with some black oil flowing into one end. The other two are blood red. Around these ponds, the afternoon sun shines off glistening puddles of oil and slurry. This corner of Azerbaijan was a major petrochemical center of the Soviet Union, and the Soviets cut every possible corner to produce the required quotas. Today, the dusty desert around Baku is among the most polluted places in the world, with a record of health maladies to prove it. The air is heavy with the odor of oil, and the Caspian Sea is covered with a thin layer of rainbow colored oil. The oil literally seeps up from the sea floor here, while the horizon in Baku is littered with a forest of oil rigs.
Some of the horribly polluted Abşeron Peninsula, near Baku, Azerbaijan.
One of many old petrochemical plants on the Abşeron peninsula.
Baku’s waterfront on the Caspian Sea.
It was so easy getting oil here that in 1900, Baku supplied half the world’s oil. Black gold is still the country’s saviour. Unlike Georgia and Armenia, whose chief exports are alcoholic beverages and ferocious nationalism, Azerbaijan earns huge revenues from its oil, money that goes to the political dynasty of the Əliev family, who run things around here. A young Azeri student and I discussed this.
Me: Azeris get huge amounts of cash from the oil
Him: That money all goes to the government
Me: True, but the government here clearly spends at least some of that on roads, buildings, schools, and hospitals.
Him: They’re corrupt—the money doesn’t reach the people.
Me: Try visiting Georgia or Armenia, and you’ll see how well the people of Azerbaijan have things.
Aside from vastly superior roads, far fewer beggars, and (probably) better public health, Azerbaijan can claim another distinction: a very attractive population. I don’t know why it is, but a big proportion of the Azeri population, both men and women, are quite strikingly good-looking. Even in Xinaliq, the impoverished mountain village, the people were far more attractive than just about any village I’ve ever seen. The gene pool here is arguably quite diverse and exotic, with large portions of Turkish, Russian, Persian, Greek, and (of course) Caucasian genes. (Caucasian = people from this part of the world, not necessarily fair-skinned people). With greater wealth than the Armenians and Georgians, both the men and women seem to be able to take good care of their appearance, avoiding the stoned Vegas hooker look so common in Armenia.
Apparently there are also quite a few prostitutes in Azerbaijan, as the hotel’s front-desk clerk tried in vein to get me to sign-up for a “massage” service girl to visit my room. I tried to remember the Russian words for syphilis, gonorrhea, HPV, AIDS, or “unhappy girlfriend.” “Yes, use sheath,” he retorted.
Baku’s fortifications surround the town’s old center (İçəri Şəhər), now a UNESCO World Heritage site but listed as “In Danger” because of a number of modern buildings that have been build in the old city.
Azerbaijan also gets the dubious honor of having the world’s most confusing money. They whacked some zeros off the manat recently, but they divided by 5000. Usually when countries whack zeros, it’s by an “even” number like 1,000,000 as Turkey did. But with Azerbaijan’s complicated math, a 0.10 manat coin is the same value as the 500 manat note, both of which are in circulation and called “manat.” Or one might have a 2-manat note—-it’s the same as the 10,000 manat note. Then a taxi driver might quote you a price of 1 shirak, which apparently is 25,000 manat or 5 of the “new” notes. The upshot of all this confusion is that people get ripped-off when dealing with money, though I also accidentally left a restaurant having shorted the house by 2000 manat, or about 44 cents, so it works both ways. (I left an extra-good tip the next night to redeem my waitress kharma.)
Baku spreads out behind the Bulvar, a street much like Shanghai’s Bund.
Baku is a friendly-enough city of 1.7M, though it doesn’t have a huge amount to do besides eat, stroll the Caspian Sea promenade, and get pestered by carpet hawkers. This is the furthest-out country in Europe, and while Georgia and Armenia clearly look to Europe, Azerbaijan is quite Asiatic. The language, a close relative of Turkish, is written in Latin script, but the music, food, and architecture all draw more on Asia than Europe.
Azerbaijan’s Dom Soviet government building blends Stalinist Soviet architecture with traditional Arab and Asian influences.
The highlight of the trip was the day I spent in Xinaliq, a mountaintop village of perhaps 300 people about 7000 feet up in the Greater Caucasus mountains, a few miles south of Russia’s Dagestan oblast. In ancient Albania (as Azerbaijan was known in the early centuries AD), there were 26 tribes and 26 languages, with Xinaliq being the one that still survives. Getting there involves a 3-hour marshrutka adventure from Baku to the town of Quba, from whence one picks-up a Russian-made UAZ for a 3 hour trip over mountains and through rivers to Xinaliq. The UAZ (pronounced “Waz”) is basically a Soviet knock-off of the Willis Jeep. It’s an indestructible bastard with a roaring engine, a green stamped-metal interior, and four gear-shift-like devices.
Our Russian-made UAZ, the only way to get to Xinaliq.
Xinaliq was a helluva adventure, but for reasons I didn’t expect. True, this was the first time I’ve been up into the mountains actually off-roading in an SUV (I don’t think an Escalade would make it). It was an adventure starting at lunch, an hour into the trip, when the server brought a beer bottle, slightly smaller than a “40 ouncer” here in the States. Neither I nor the guide drink, so the driver proceeded to down it. We went on through mud pits, over boulders, eventually reaching the village and proceeding another 20 minutes into the mountains. While I walked up to a Zoroastrian fire-worshipper site in the mountains, the driver and his buddy proceeded to down a full bottle of vodka plus three beers while grilling a sheep’s meat dinner. (His buddy had slaughtered the sheep earlier that day.)
Most of the people of Xinaliq are shepards, as there is no store, bank, or any other organized form of commerce or employment in Xinaliq.
A Xinaliq man brings home a sheep, soon to become BBQ.
The driver was completely hammered, though at least he was a happy drunk, offering me more lamb than I could possibly eat. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to ride with him. Then again, if I didn’t get in the jeep, I’d stay there somewhere in the Greater Caucasus Mountains, not speaking the language, at least an hour’s walk from the nearest civilization.
We ended up staying in a stone house there in the village, decorated with big Azeri carpets. The bathroom was a mere designation on the ground where clearly several people had recently preceded me. I told my told my large intestine that it would be a rough 24 hours but he’d have to wait until we got back to Baku.
A man on a roof stands staring out at the mountain, a time-honored tradition in Xinaliq and throughout the Caucasus.
The village of Xinaliq lies at the top of a mountain with 360-degree views of the surrounding Caucasus range
I believe that this man is the imam of the Xinaliq mosque, or at least he’s the guy with the key.
I stayed the night in this stone house in Xinaliq.
The bedroom was covered floor to ceiling with old Azeri carpets.
Back in Baku, I was still stinging from my marshrutka adventure in Georgia (see below). There was a small ferry line in the Baku harbor that costs 66 cents and lasts 30 minutes, or so I determined from the Russian signs. But I had no idea where it went. I watched the boats head out, but that didn’t tell me where they went. Would I end up in a forest preserve? A Soviet housing project? What if I can’t get back—-if this is the last ferry of the day?
After debating with myself for a day, I finally decided to get on the darn boat. I was surprised that no passenger had any packages, boxes, or bags, and there were lots of kids aboard. The boat headed out with a nice view of the harbor, though even this far out in the Caspian, the water was still covered with a thin film of oil. Then the boat made a 180. We were going back the way we came. After 30 minutes, we pulled back into the slip we left. Turns out that this ferry was just an extension of the nearby kids’ amusement park. So much for those forest preserves.
The Maiden Tower, about 8 stories tall, dates to the 1100s or earlier. Legend says that it was built by king who fell in love with his daughter. The daughter, repulsed at the thought of incest, told daddy to build her a tower so she could survey his domain. She kept demanding it be built taller and taller until she climbed up and threw herself off.
Posted by adrianjo at July 5, 2006 02:51 PM