<<    This continues the journal from Central Asia
Rennes	25 December 06
As our train rolled through Monte Carlo and into Nice, I had my first impressions of France - the country which I am about to make my home. I have to admit to being a bit nervous. A beautiful day, we had lunch by the sea, and even swam, and then hitchhiked to Toulon with much more sucess than we'd had in Italy. Couldn't ask for better. The people have all been super-friendly, and although the temperature has dropped steadily as we've made our way up the country, the locals have all been smiling and helpful.     Before arriving in Nice we spent a night in one of the most way-out places we've seen on the trip - an anarchist drug-den in Milan, found behind graffitied gates according to instructions we found on the web, before taking the train along the coast the next morning. Since it was only a few days before Christmas, all the fast French trains were full, so we made our way up the country using regional trains and by hitchhiking, spending the night with Claire's cousin Luc (who we met in Bishkek). I have to admit that there were times when we thought we wouldn't make it! Christmas has simply been surreal. Freezing cold outside, a lovely warm fire inside... all of our creature comforts re-found... Claire's family have been so welcoming, we've eaten and drunk so well (and so much!) that we seem to have changed worlds. Nevertheless after 20000km of public transport, 22 countries and 252 days, it's still going to be difficult to realise that this is the end. We've marked the final line on our battered oldworldmap. To wake up in the morning and not have to pack our bags and go and fight for a space on an overcrowded bus will take some getting used to...
Venice	18 December 06
My parents brought me to Venice when I was twelve - just for a day - but I was very surprised by how much I remember. Despite what everyone said, we managed to find a hotel room for half of what we paid in Ljubljana, and though meals were expensive, they didn't break the budget like we thought they were going to. And despite being touristy, it's still a wonderful place.     We had one rainy day, which we spent in the Accademia gallery, and a fine one wandering round the streets and the Doja's palace. Everyone knows that Venice is sinking, but apparently the tides are also becoming higher and higher - no one knows why, but St Marc's square floods 250 times a year. In any case we managed to keep our feet dry and thoroughly enjoyed our last stop on the trip. On our third morning we took the train back across the bridge to Mestre on the mainland, and tried our luck hitchhiking. Definitely not the same experience as in Italy as in Turkey, and after three hours, in a couple of different places - and despite our christmas hats making people smile, and quite obviously making us stars of the truckies CB radios! - we gave up and took the train to Milan.
Ljubljana	15 December 06
After spending a day in Zagreb - my overwhelming memory of which is of being very very cold, and drinking steaming mulled wine - we headed over the border into Slovenia.     Our first country in the EU, it's clearly an order of magnitude more wealthy than the other Balkans. Although they don't officially adopt it until 2007, we paid for everything in euros, with prices to match.     The capital, Ljubjana is a nice town, and it was beautifully illuminated for Christmas. We stayed in the free-living anarchistic quarter called Metalkova, which used to be an army barracks. Our hostel Celica used to be a prison for political prisoners, and has been refurbished with each cell designed by a different artist. Ours was decked out rather tastefully in blue and white, with surrealist representations of prisoners counting the days painted on the walls..
Dubrovnik	13 December 06
From Tirana we had a long day of travel; the bus to the border with Montenegro, a taxi across then three consecutive bus rides taking us up to Dubrovnik in Croatia. It was one of the most beautiful drives of the trip, along the coast and around the fijords just as the sun was setting.     I have to admit to wanting to stop in Dubrovnik mainly because I liked the sound of the name, rather than because I knew much about the city itself. As a maritime city though, once called Ragusa, it was historically very important though - once a major rival to Venice - as well as being a beautifully restored walled city.             We only had a day here but managed to cram it full exploring the museums and churches, walking round the walls,and eating fresh mussels in the harbour. We had a beautifully sunny day and I even took a swim before catching our night bus to Zagreb
Tirana	11 December 06
Albania must be a country with one of the strangest recent histories in Europe. Having just lost its title of Europe's poorest country to Moldavia, and having an intrastructure more akin to south-east asia than its neighbours, we were ready for anything as our bus toured the country before depositing us at the capital, Tirana. Albania is unique in the region in never having been part of Yugoslavia. Instead, after the communist revolution Albania aligned itself with the USSR - and then, when the Soviet Union began loosening up a little, with Maoist China. After everything collapsed in the 90s Albania escaped most of the violence which hit the rest of the region and things are definitely looking up now. The igloo shaped concrete bunkers which litter the countryside (one for every four Albanians) are being removed and the awful drab apartment blocks in the capital are being painted in bright colours - an initiative of an artist who has become the city's mayor.
Ohrid	9 December 06
After gathering our strength in Varna, we've embarked upon what will be the final dash of our voyage - a hectic rush across the former Yugoslavia and over to Venice via Croatia and Slovenia. We started with a night train from Varna to Sophia, where we spent a pleasant but cold day wandering through the misty streets between the many churches, with plenty of coffee breaks to thaw out a bit.         Today we're in the lovely lake-side town of Ohrid after a full day in the bus yesterday, and another planned tomorrow to take us to the Albanian capital of Tirana. Ohrid is a small village and they say that there is a different church for every day of the year. There certainly seem to be quite a few, and there's not really a lot to do but walk through the characterful old town (where Claire has declared her desire to buy a house) and pop in to check out the frescoes.     We've only got a couple of weeks left, so it's going to be a bit of a whistlestop tour of this so-far quite intriguing part of Europe - we'll probably be changing countries every couple of days at least. It's a bit frustrating; we've only just started to see Macedonia as having it's own identity and now we're about to leave - but a taste is better than nothing, and since we've done everything else the hard way on this trip, the easy option of taking a ferry over to Italy definitely wasn't for us!
Varna	5 December 06
In some ways, coming into Bulgaria felt as if we were heading backwards on our voyage to Europe. People speak very little English in comparison to Turkey, the Cyrillic alphabet has reappeared, Ladas and Trabants own the roads.... and currency is pretty much inexchangeable. However Bulgaria will enter the EU in January and the more we looked the more obvious it was that this country has come a long way fast, and is still far ahead of the Central Asian republics in terms of infrastructure and quality of life for the locals.     My uncle Farooq and his family have lived in the Black Sea resort town of Varna for the last seven years and we've been enjoying our stay very much, but although the beaches are lovely, the sea is a little cold for swimming. We've walked in the hills and seen a few things including a mediaeval cave monastry, but it's mainly been a time for chilling out, drinking coffee and discussing world politics over a few glasses of homemade vodka in the evening.
Istanbul	1 December 06
It's hard to sum up Istanbul in an entry like this. We've ended up spending longer in this city than any other along our trip - 6 days - and yet we both still felt that we were leaving too soon. People talk a lot about Istanbul being the intersection of West and East; perhaps it is - but having come from the East, and especially after travelling through Central Asia - it feels less like a clash of civilisations and more like a natural progression. Rather like travelling through the rural areas and small towns of a country and then finally arriving at its capital. The people of Central Asia - Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan - and even those of northwest China in Xinjiang - are Turkic people. The original Turks came from what is now Siberia and spread slowly across Asia. They all look very similar, eat similar food and speak languages which are very close to, or identical to Turkish. Because Turkey is the most developed of these countries and has the clearest idea of its own identity, my immediate impression was that in reaching Istanbul we had reached the cradle and centre of the Turkic culture of all the nations we'd passed through on the way. Which is of course not true at all; Turkey was the end of the westward drift of the Turks. In any case, our visit coincided with that of the pope, and we found ourselves cordoned out of our hotel a couple of times, because we were very close to the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia which the pope visited. Aya Sofia is a remarkable building; a massive structure with an enormous dome, it was originally built around the year 900 using amazingly advanced construction techniques for the time.     It was saved from destruction, renovated and turned into a mosque after the Ottomans took Istanbul in 1453. After the fall of the empire and the founding of the new Turkish Republic in the 1920s, Christians in Turkey and abroad called for the building to become a church again. For the Turkish muslims it had been one of their most important mosques for 500 years. The country's leader, Mustafa Kemal, revered and commonly known as 'Ataturk' (meaning father of Turks) therefore decided to turn the building into a museum, which it has remained to this day. But there's been trouble brewing recently; Christians in Greece and the USA have been pressuring and gathering signatures in support of the reconversion of Aya Sofia into a church. Just a few days before our visit, a group of Muslims came to pray inside the building in response and had to be removed by the police using tear gas. For some reason the Pope decided to visit this particular building at this rather sensitive moment - which seemed to us at best rather insensitive and at worst confrontational.     In any case we managed to avoid the protests and navigate our way among Istanbul's many other mosques, churches, museums and palaces. The Topkapi and Dolmabache palaces near the Bosphorus have redefined my understanding of bad taste, while the Whirling Dervishes gave us a glimpse at the sublime.     After having seen so many wonderful, significant and historical places, I'm a little ashamed to admit that one of my favourites was the Rahmi Koch Industrial Museum, where engines, cars, aeroplanes and even a newly decomissioned ex-US navy submarine (complete with its retired captain to show visitors around) were open for exploration. Broken pots next to long panels explaining the workings of civilisations which disappeared milenia ago are all very well, but buttons to press and knobs to turn are much more fun.
Ephesus	25 November 06
We rolled into to the holiday resort town of Selcuk in a 25 tonne petrol tanker for one reason - the ruins of the city of Ephesus nearby. Once a major town - rivalling Athens apparently - the ruins here are much more complete than any we've seen earlier. Colonnaded marble streets with indentations worn by hundreds of years of cart wheels still link the buildings and the theatres. The whole thing is amazingly complete with temples, fountains, baths and even public toilets. It's really a fascinating place, and it lets you really get a feel for what life must have been like - at least for the wealthy. Tonight, we take the bus to Istanbul where we'll spend four or fıve days, then it'll be on to Bulgaria.
Marmaris	23 November 06
After a couple of days in another seaside town of Kaş, where we hired sea-kayaks and kayaked over the ruins of the city of Kekova - which sank beneath the sea in an earthquake in 500AD, we moved on to Marmaris. Not our favourite place, the population of this town is 20,000 in winter and 150,000 in summer, mostly package tourists. Not surprisingly almost everything was closed, and we even had a hard time finding a place to sleep. After such lovely weather and my unexpected liking of this coast, we even decided to hire a yacht for a few days and cruise around the Marmaris peninsula, marking the corner between the Med and Aegean seas. Disappointed to learn that all the yachts were under winter maintenance, we grabbed a scooter and did the trip by land. Lots of lovely bays and small towns, as well as, tucked away in a small bay, a large industry building the beautiful traditional wooden Turkish yachts called gulets.
The Side of the Road	19 November 06
In Cappadocia we met a couple about our age heading down towards India. We shared some stories and it turned out that they'd been hitchhiking a fair bit in Turkey and that it had been laughably easy to get rides. With our budget in fairly bad shape, and bus fares here not being cheap, we've been been giving it a try. On our first attempt it immediately started raining, and as it turned out we'd picked the wrong road - a fairly rural coastal road in winter - and the only rides we got took us 10 or 20km further before leaving us at another empty intersection. Nevertheless we've persevered and had a few interesting rides along the coast and between big towns. Claire has been given jewellery, we're both offered beers and cigarettes and a couple of times I've even ended up driving! It's also been a great way to get some interaction with the locals - which is something that's been a little lacking in Turkey compared to the forced intimacy provided by a long slow journey on public transport in central Asia. The EU and Turkey's progress towards membership seems to figure quite highly in the national consciousness. General sentiments seem very positive towards the EU, and people often show a bit of pride that Turkey has come as far as it has - we haven't come across any frustration that the EU is still requiring further changes. According to our polls, the EU is responsible for the fact that everything has got much more expensive recently, but it has also meant that marijuana has practically been decriminalised. People also rave about the law change, attributed to the EU application, which means that policemen no longer have the right to stop and hassle people randomly on the street. France definitely isn't the flavour of the day here though, with the acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide thing, but we've never had any problems because of it.
Antalya	18 November 06
Well we've finally made it to the Med! For an Antipodean like me this contains some romance in itself, though Europeans seem less impressed. A beautiful sunny morning greeted us after our long bus ride, a bit of a salty tang in the breeze and that wonderfully unquantifiable laid-back sensation that always seems to go along with fine winter days by the sea. In fact it's hard to believe that it's nearly December - the temperature is perfect for swimming but without being to hot to visit the superb museum and Lycian ruins nearby, and at sunset a pleasant walk around the old Roman marina, still in use. I have to admit to have been completely taken aback by the fact that we're seeing Greek and Roman ruins in Turkey. Of course there was the Trojan war and all, but in fact the entire Aegean and Mediterranean coasts have histories almost entirely rooted in classical civilisations or offshoots of them. Apart from swimming, Antalya also gave us the opportunity to visit the ruins of the three fairly major cities more than 2500 years old - Termessos, deep in the forest and at the top of a hill so steep and defensible that even Alexander retreated from it, Aspendos with its amazingly well preserved 15,000 seat theatre, and Perge where its colonnaded agora still stands. My first encounter with proper classical ruins, and coming from what is a fairly new country, I was, and still am, really quite blown away by how much was accomplished, so long ago. It's hard to knock Angkor Wat in Cambodia - and I guess the Khmer ruins deep in the jungle hold more mystery and exoticism - but for me on the level of sophistication as well as antiquity (1500 years older than Angkor!) I've come away much more impressed.
Cappadocia	16 November 06
I was initially reluctant to go to Cappadocia, with us having seen plenty of caves and rock churches in Georgia and knowing that it was one of the most touristy places in Turkey. When our bus conductor sprayed our hands one final time with eau de cologne (in Turkish buses for some reason at least once every hour, someone will come around and spray perfume on the hands of all the passengers) and dumped us by the side of the road in the cold, outside a deserted bus station, I felt even less enthused. Nevertheless the following day after organising the rental of a beaten up '70s model Fiat and checking in to our very own cave room we started to see the appeal of the region.         While there are loads of rock churches, they don't really match those in Georgia and have been abandoned for quite some time. But the soil, rock and layer of volcanic ash has created weird, wonderful and amusing rock formations everywhere and anywhere you look. It's no surprise that people took advantage of the natural formations and soft rock and extended them not only for churches but for houses, shops and warehouses. People still live in the caves today as well as using them to store their potato crop for the year, and though there must be far too many tourists in summer (it started snowing when we were there... definitely the off-season) that atmosphere is still of traditional rural Turkey.             There are also dozens of underground cities - all simply massive, capable of housing tens of thousands of people each, with churches, schools and wine factories - built before 500AD and in which the local inhabitants used to retreat when under attack.
Mount Nimrod	12 November 06
A long long time ago.. around 50BC actually, as Alexander's empire unravelled and Rome was still pushing eastwards, a small and very short-lived kingdom called Commagene was proclaimed in eastern Anatolia by its new king Mithridates. His son Antiochus went one step further and declared himself a god! The area is full of statues of Antiochus next to Zeus or shaking hands with Hercules. His tomb on top of Mount Nimrod was constructed surrounded by statues of the gods, with Antiochus himself among them. It was pretty much forgotten after 70AD when the kingdom was annexed by Rome and it's hard to imagine the surprise of the Ottoman engineer who rediscovered them in the 1800s. The two complete sets of statues, one facing the sunrise and the other the sunset, have fallen down over the years but the heads of Apollo, Hercules, Tyche, Zeus and of course our friend Antiochus, are intact and have been placed on the ground, staring out over the valleys below.
Diyarbakir	10 November 06
From Erzurum we headed south through east Turkey via the amusingly named towns of Bingol and Batman, which have unfortunately gained some notoriety for being the origin of the Istanbul, and more recently, the Antalya bombings. Diyarbakir, apparently another hotbed for PKK (the Kurdish Independence Party) activity, turned out to be a genuinely pleasant place surrounded by massive 5000 year old stone walls, and with it being on the Tigris river it gave us a chance to at least pass through the area known as Mesopotamia - origin of the world's first civilisations.
The world is at war	15 Novembre 2006
(by Claire) The Uzbek embassy in Kyrgyzstan doesn't like to give visas. "No Armenians go to Turkey" Tour guide in Armenia "Armenians terrorists!" / Armeniens are all terrorists Azeri Customs Official "Soviet Union, Russia, plokha!" / The USSR, and Russia, are bad. Georgien Turkish lira are not exchangeable in Georgia and Georgian lari are not exchangeable in Turkey. "What! British people need visas for Pakistan? - but that's a British Protectorate!" A British tourist "Chechnya, boum boum. Chechny niet!" with a gesture of a gun at the temple In a Kazakh train "eta nomer ok, niet armenian, niet gruzia" / This room is OK (if other people arrive) but not if they are Armenians or Georgians. Georgian Hotel Owner in Varzia Like Genghis Khan, I would have destroyed everything too. It makes things easier...
Erzurum	7 November 06
After spending a wet couple of days in the otherwise picturesque Black Sea town of Batumi on Georgia's East coast, it was time to move on. On reflection, Claire and I agree that Georgia has been one of the highlights of our trip. There've been no immediately captivating 'sights' as such, though the scenery and landscapes in general have been as appealing as any we've seen, and the quasi-European lifestyle, coupled with good doses of Asian bizarrery and craziness when you least expect them have meant that travel has been challenging but still extremely rewarding. Georgia is one country to which we would like to come back. But move on we must and entering Turkey was a piece of a cake with New Zealand and French passports (other Europeans and Americans have a much harder time apparently).     We took a brand new minibus down a super smooth road lashed by surprisingly huge breakers on the rocky beach to the small town of Hopa, from where we headed inland and up into the snow. We arrived in Erzurum - a city which has had rather bad publicity from all quarters - late at night along a road with piles of snow on either side.     I seem to have rather a bad habit of losing my clothes, which has the advantage of making for a small backpack, but which meant our first stop after the bus station had to be to aquire me a new woolly hat, the previous having abandoned me on a horse somewhere I think. In any case, while there's not a lot to see, it's nevertheless a pleasant enough town, surrounded by snow and with ice on its clean streets. The Seljuk mosques and medressas are interestingly plainer - lacking the tilework we're used to - and yet more finely engraved than those we've seen before, and to see them all surrounded by a very modern clean town made the town well worth the stop.     Perhaps our appreciation is coloured by the fact that this is our first non-Soviet town for 4 months and 6 countries... A lack of massive grey Soviet apartment blocks could make any town look good I guess. It also brings new challenges in figuring out how things work, as well as in language. We've muddled along with our basic phrases of Russian all through central asia and the Caucasus, and now we're pretty lost with the local lingo (though trying to improve, to the amusement of all). It's not really a problem though as English seems to be fairly widely spoken even here in the far east, and that's probably likely to improve as we head towards the more touristy areas of Cappadocia and the Med.
Batumi	3 November 06
Overall, most people agree that Joseph Stalin was a fairly bad sort of chap. Everyone except the residents of Gori, in Georgia, that is, where the man was born. Here he is hailed as a local hero, and the Stalin Museum chronicles his rise from his birth in the one room apartment around which the museum has been built, to leading the world's largest and possibly most powerful country. We were lucky enough to encounter the Korean Embassy staff who were visiting and had contracted the services of an English speaking guide, and were given a fascinating, if rather one-sided, look at the story of the man who turned the USSR, a collection of mostly agriculture based economies, into a nuclear-armed superpower in about 10 years. He also had a fear of flying, and so went everywhere by train, and we wandered through his private bulletproof carriage that carried him everywhere from Vladivostok to Tehran.     On the subject of Stalin, Armenia makes the best Cognac in the world apparently (though it can't be called Cognac in the same way that bubbly can't be called Champagne), and Stalin used to send Winston Churchill dozens of cases of Ararat Cognac every year. Of course we had to try, and the factory even offers tasting tours.... The other gastronomic delight we've encountered in Georgia was Katchapoori. Basically a flat pastry pie stuffed with cheese, the Georgians love the stuff, and its miles cheaper than anything else, so we (like they) have been eating it three meals a day. There are a few variations including adding a fried egg and a gob of butter on top. Lovely.
Tbilisi	1 November 06
After passıng through another 'vatican', this time of Georgia's....     ...for the second time we arrived in Tbilisi and had a hard time finding anywhere reasonably priced, and for the second time we ended up sleeping in a living room, though this time thankfully otherwise unoccupied. A nice town, Tbilisi has the feel of a place which ıs growing very very fast. The vibe is exciting, with bustling streets, lots of traffic, lovely old buildings and slightly dodgy weather making me think of London. And then we wandered into the a church and while the black-bearded gold-robed priest walked around the small interior dispersing an unction of burning incense, I heard vocal harmonies more beautiful than I ever thought possible, coming, unaccompanied, from beneath the veils of the three nuns near the altar. Almost chanting at times, Georgian religious music suddenly splits into wonderous polyphony, using unlikely and unfamiliar modes and tight harmonies and even dissonance before resolving miraculously at the end of the phrase. I stood captivated, despite my general fear of being out-of-place in a church, for the entire mass and only Claire's insistence that we go and eat snapped me out of my reverie.
Yerevan	29 October 06
Well after nailing my colours firmly to the mast in the last post, I have to say that Armenia is a fantastic place to travel. The first Christian country in the world, in 309 AD Grigor the Illuminator succeeded in converting the country and founded a church still unique in the world. I never paid it much attention, but there was even an Armenian church in Singapore. It really is a country of churches, and one of the wonderful things about a walk around Yerevan is that, in order to not draw too much Soviet attention to them, the small chapels are hidden everywhere throughout the city - inside the courtyards of drab apartment blocks which were build around them, down dusty old lanes and so on.     We've visited the 'Vatican' of the Armenian church which houses fragments of Noah's Ark, the lance used to pierce the side of Jesus before the crucification and many other closely guarded artefacts.     We also took a trip to Lake Sevan - the second highest lake in the world (though we've heard that before somewhere) and will visit several more monastaries next week before heading back to Tbilisi in Georgia (obviously there is no open Armenian-Turkish border).
Yerevan	29 October 06
We visited the Museum of Armenian Genocide this morning. Recognising the attrocities committed by the Ottoman Turks against the Eastern Armenian community during WWI seems very a la mode at present, maybe because of Turkey's impending entry into the EU. A huge memorial has been recently erected along with the museum a couple of years ago, and various world leaders have planted trees alongside to indicate their support. Inside the museum are some fairly emotive photos and paintings of people starved to death, heads on sticks and people being hanged, along with small piles of dirt from each of the 12 provinces of 'Western Armenia'. The photos are newly captioned (in French thanks to Chirac's recent visit) with labels along the lines of 'Example 5 of the barbarism of the Turkish people'. While of course it's hard to argue on the side of the Turks in this case, I have to admit that this museum worried me intensely, especially as we saw the large groups of 10 year old schoolchildren being herded through it. The memorial is wonderful and touching, especially in its lovely spot in front of the biblical Mt Ararat. But I personally find it difficult to understand the goal of such a museum except to feed nationalism, anger and paranoia. Though rather unlikely, the only place such a museum could serve a useful purpose might be in Istanbul.     In the '90s, Armenia, a small Christian country squeezed between Islamic countries to the east and west, declared war on its Muslim neighbour, Azerbaijan, which was seeking to reign in a separatist province (Nargorno-Karabach) containing a large proportion of Christians. Mainly due to the huge amount of aid that Armenia receives from the USA (second only to Israel) Azerbaijan took a beating that it's still recovering from. Maybe it's not PC to talk down the genocide - and sure, acknowledging it wouldn't cost Turkey too much - but it's easy to draw parallels, and the world doesn't need another Israel. The recent, seemingly deliberate stirring up of this history (mostly on the part of Armenians living in the USA) seems sure to cause more harm than good.
Akhaltsikhe	23 October 06
We've just spent a great week in Georgia. I feel terrible saying it, but be it religion, Western influence, money, or something else entirely, it was at this border that I found a line between Asia and Europe which is much more real than the geographical line of the Caspian. Remains to be seen how Turkey's going to fit in to the picture, but here - in Georgia and Armenia - things work for the first time 'as you'd expect'. Actually I'm sure I'd never even have written that phrase at the start of this trip, and accused myself of cultural narrow-mindedness and arrogance for even thinking it. But the buses leave on time, prices are relatively fixed and the change is always right, the villages, though poor, are always clean, shops are open at least most working hours of the day, and I have a sneaking suspicion I'd be going on about the Protestant Work Ethic if these people weren't Orthodox.. In any case, our first night spent in the small town of Signaghi was a culture shock like crossing continents. It was in this lovely little town where we, on entering the town restaurant, were seized by the local police chief and asked to propose a toast to Georgia and its people - even before we'd had a chance to sit down. It was a bit tough considering we'd only crossed the border a couple of hours ago, but I muddled through a suitably long and convoluted expression of our first impressions, which seemed to please as they then insisted we sit with them and share their banquet and numerous further toasts (including one, as I recall, to the beauty of Claire's elder sister, Anne-Gaelle.)     We've seen some wonderful cave monastaries in David Garetja and Varzia where monks lived and studied thousands of years ago, and now live again after a brief hiatus during the Soviet era. There are frescos and icons of which neither Claire nor I can understand the significance and it'd be nice to try to find our more about the Georgian and Armenian churches.         A bit too much culture and it's time for some trekking! The very end of the season, and despite repeated strong warnings from the park office and the brochures, we decided we were experienced enough not to need a guide to bring us across the mountains from the south to the north entrances of Borjomi National Park. We never saw a single other person during the three days of the trek. The first day was a brilliant climb, breaking through the light fog to a rainbow of autumn colours covering the valleys. We made a fire in the small, deserted hut, boiled our standard pop-up noodles and sipped vodka sitting by the fire at sunset.     After a cold night, the next day dawned foggy and got worse. We started early on the supposedly 7 hour walk and we were completely lost before lunch. After backtracking for an hour and finding the path again we got lost at least twice more - the track was marked, but turned out to be intended for those coming in the opposite direction. We would find ourselves continuing along a good path which would get smaller and smaller and then peeter out completely.... By the end we were both pretty stressed as the fog had moved in so visibility was low and we made the hut after around ten hours walking and around 10 minutes before sunset. Everything was wet so our attempts to make fire failed miserably so we went to bed cold and wet but wonderfully relieved not to be sleeping outside in the damp forest which had seemed to be a certainty... Ah, just what we needed after the cultural overload of the last months.             The final day was a lovely walk down though the yellow, orange and red forest to the final stop, the park guesthouse, where we were served a many-course dinner by candlelight complete with a 1.5l Pepsi bottle of homemade red wine. The wine is worth a word in itself; generally red wine is drunk here and it's slightly sweet and thick with a lot of depot, but perfectly drinkable. Asking for two wines in a restaurant will surprise the waitress though as it's only served by the litre (for about US$1).
Saki	16 October 06
Azerbaijan is a strange place, often annoying and generally bizarre. Certainly not what we were expecting, and it's the most difficult country to travel in so far. This morning we were kicked out of our hotel (a lovely 19th century caravanserai as it happens)... ...with 15 minutes notice, due as far as we can tell to a last-minute corporate booking, and I guess that may have some effect on my outlook. But right from the start we've had to resort to laughing about the Azeri experience in order to avoid getting too upset about it. After being grilled by the police at immigration if we were going to be going to Armenia (the obligatory answer being 'oh no officer, they're all terrorists there aren't they?') we were grudgingly let into the country. As we usually do, we then found an ATM and withdrew a good amount of Manat, the local currency. But all was not as it seemed, and handing over a 10 Manat bill for a taxi fare which had been quoted as 'three', we were surprised to receive four Manat change. Hmm. A crowd formed in front of our modest hotel, amused to see foreigners stupid enough not to know that taxi fares are quoted in Shirvan; one Shirvan being 10000 Old Manat (Mr Shirvan's face being on the note of course), while a New Manat is only worth 5000 old Manat. Hence the doubled price, without even starting on Marmots and Dingbats. And thus in Baku started the most frustrating, bizarre and budget-blowing part of our trip...     It's been really hard not to get a bit bitter when, for the first time since we left Singapore, people have regularly and actively short-changed, overcharged and cheated us, and it hurts especially in a country where even the non-inflated tourist prices are at European levels. And it's even worse to find yourself immediately suspecting everyone you deal with of trying to cheat you, having to ask the price of every item you order in a cafe (the idea of a menu is an anathema here) and having to make a scene in crowded restaurants in order to get the correct change. But if we don't, we end up paying US$10 for a cup of tea in a roadside cafe, and despite what everyone seems to think, we simply haven't got the money... OK, enough with the annoying part. The strange parts include the bubbling and farting mud-volcanoes next to 12000 year old petroglyphs...         ...and the ancient fire-temple near Baku where natural gas used to seep to the surface resulting in an eternal flame which burned for thousands of years (but where the last of the Zoroastrians now bow to a flame fed from the gas mains). An eternal flame is still burning at the top of a hill in the snow outside the totally isolated village of Xinaliq though, where they speak their own language totally unrelated to any other, anywhere. Here we stayed with a lovely Azeri family, but only on the final morning before the jeep ride back to civilisation did the mist clear enough for us to enjoy the spectacular surroundings.         The dilapidated Soviet observatory in the middle of nowhere... Winter is also definitely on its way, and it's rained every day for the last week or so. Two days ago we found ourselves in the middle-of-nowhere village of Pirguli at the end of a long trip from Baku, dumped at 10pm at the gate of a hotel whose owner had decided to arbitrarily triple the prices for us. Negotiation proved impossible and I think he enjoyed watching us trudge out into the pouring rain, ankle-deep in mud and head up the hill into the darkness. After half an hour or so of slipping and sliding we found ourselves soaked to the skin and following our noses, and the only light to be seen in the fog, to the kitchen door of an otherwise deserted holiday resort, where the surprised staff interrupted their movie for long enough to open up a chalet where we were allowed to sleep and have a small dinner for the bargain price of US$80. Ouch. I think our memories of Azerbaijan will be vivid and I'm sure we'll be glad we passed through, but for now we'll just try to keep a sense of humour...