We set off on Saturday, after lunch, to a meadow not too far away. Elevation 1000 metres though, so a bit cooler than here in Baku. On the way we stopped to look at a pretty tall mud volcano and luckily neither Rudy nor Matilda fell in. We then drove through a remote village where several ladies were washing clothes in a trough quite a way down the hill from the houses. Donkeys were on standby for the trek back home with the wet stuff. This does not look so bad on a nice sunny day but maybe in the snow they just reorder the scarves they drape around themselves...
After this village the road deteriorated and would not be drivable in the rain, let us hope it does not rain. After another couple of is, we passed a nomad family with a few young cows in an enclosure. Hard to work this out, why are the cows in a cage? The scenery was very stark, no trees, just dry looking grass. The tops of the hills were all ploughed. Later that evening we discovered, as the mist rolled in, that this is because a mist rolls in and the ground is ever so slightly damper. The wind blew mightily and our tent, pitched incorrectly, kind of collapsed onto the childrens half but they did not seem to notice. E cooked a lot of meat and then ate it all and a few veggies. Lots of stars were out, when the mist blew off, so everyone had out their iPhones and the Star Walk app to see. It is not as good as you think though as everyone s was slightly different. Calibration problem perhaps? Crap code?
Breakfast also featured meat in it's many breakfast forms and was delicious. No one fell in the fire. One of the guys para sailed around the edge of the cliff in an excellent display, he followed a hawk around and the hawk did not seem to notice. At the bottom of the cliff was a really huge mud volcano, it was about 500 metres across and looked like a big brown circle, apparently, it is the largest in Azerbaijan and probably the world.
On the way home I stopped with a norwegian fellow who has been there before at the decrepit village as he had tacked some photos and wanted to give them. It was like something out of a National Geograaphic movie, people in scarves came over to look at the photo and marvel at it. U fortunately, these were not the people in the photo and it occurred to me that they may be blood rivals and the photos might be used in some bizarre ritual and next time we go there will be a vacant house.
We looked at another of these massive mud volcanoes and Toby found some beautiful crystals that look like lots of diamonds. Just lying there. Matilda found, and then lost some gorgeous thing also, it was this big.....
We are now eager to go to other places with our tent. If we gor a cage for some cattle we could look like nomads and I could easily start wearing drapey scarves. Churning butter? Who kmows
The sun rise was beautiful
Chicago in the Summer
11 years ago
