Holiday in Caucasus (2): Baku, Azerbaijan
The basic Jules Verne trip to the Caucasus covers simply Georgia and Armenia, but three of us have signed up for the Azerbaijan extension. This starts with a two hour flight from London to Warsaw followed by a flight of approaching four hours from Warsaw to Baku. Since we left Heathrow in early evening and both flights were late and the Caucasus are three hours ahead of the UK, we landed at Baku at 5.30 am and checked into the Radisson Hotel towards 7 am.
There was little time for rest because our guide for Azerbaijan started his city tour of Baku at 10.30 am, the temperature was 34C, and we were not back at the hotel until 5 pm. Our guide is Elvin Alimuradov who has never left his own country, but has an excellent command of English as well as a prodigious knowledge of his country. His older brother was a commander in the Azerbaijan army who died in the 2020 war with Armenia.
On our first day in the country, already we learned so much and saw so much.
Azerbaijan is the largest of the three countries making up the Caucasus, but it is still only a little larger than Scotland. It is also the most populous nation in the region with a population of 10.4M which is around three times that of Armenia or Georgia. There is an exclave called Nakhchivan with half a million living there. The people are overwhelmingly but nominally Muslim. The currency is the Manat which is roughly two to the pound.
The presence of natural gas and volcanoes gives Azerbaijan the name ‘Land of Fire’, while the country derives its wealth from oil.The ruling New Azerbaijan Party has been in power since 1993. It has been accused of an authoritarian approach under the leadership of both Heydar Aliyev and his son Ilham Aliyev and the country has a deteriorating human rights record, including increasing restrictions on civil liberties, particularly on press freedom and political repression.
The capital of Azerbaijan is Baku. The name is Persian and means ‘house of wind’. It is the only metropolis in the country and Baku proper has about 2 million inhabitants, while a quarter of the nation’s population lives in the wider Baku area. The city is 28 metres (92 feet) below sea level, making it the lowest-lying capital in the world (the highest capital city is La Paz in Bolivia which I have visited).
The city is located on western coast of the Caspian Sea and is a mixture of the ancient (the Old City is a UNESCO World Heritage site) and the ultra-modern (oil money has fuelled the creation of some spectacular new buildings).
Our walking tour started with a view of the three iconic Flame Towers which were completed in 2012 and rise between 28 and 33 storeys. Then we strolled through an area known as Martyrs Alley which commemorates the dead Turks who defended the country against Armenians in 1918, the Azerbaijanis who died in 1990 protests for independence from Russia, and all those who were killed in the recent wars with Armenia. From the Highland Park, we had excellent views of the city hugging the Caspian Sea.
Next we went down to the Old City where we spent time in the Museum of Miniature Books, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs (the ruling dynasty for almost a millennium in the Middle Ages), and the Maiden’s Tower (we climbed the 125 stone steps), as well as observing the cobbled streets, old architecture and new shops, before finally stopping for lunch in a place called “Fisincan” in Fountain Square.
It was a wonderful introduction to a city which surprised us but it was unseasonably hot at 34C. In the evening, I walked down to the promenade to see the illumination of the Flame Towers in three sequences, one of which is actually representation of flames.