Breakfast only started at 9am at our hotel in Baku, so we didn’t get on the road until 10am. Our driver was there a few minutes early, and we were on our way to Lahic!
Aside from Baku, there were a couple other towns we wanted to visit. Lahic, about three hours west of Baku, is a village which still retains the old copper craftsmanship. Another two hours west of Lahic is Sheki, an old city on the Silk route with a beautiful restored palace. It’s similar to some of the places in Iran, which was our original destination for this trip until we realized Canadians can’t easily get visas.
The scenery on the road to Lahic changed from desert-like to lush green as we drove into the valley. The road itself was great, a divided highway for most of the way. After the turn off to Lahic, the road got a little narrower, and the scenery got even more spectacular. The valley walls are vertical striations, which I guess was caused from the earth breaking off into the valley and falling sideways. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
When we arrived at the village, we first we had to pay an enterprising old lady a couple of manat. (With the increase in tourism, she rolled a large rock on to the road and set up a make-shift barrier). Our driver hadn’t been to Lahic before (tourism is still a bit new here), so we just drove towards the village centre. There’s only one road in to town, so it wasn’t like we needed directions.
It was obvious when we arrived at the ‘centre’, really just the part of town where the shops were clustered. It was a very quaint village, with original cobblestone and stone houses. There were a couple places where blacksmiths toiled away. About half the stores catering to tourists were selling generic stuff, but the rest had some better quality products, including copper, tea, spices.
We browsed around, bought an old copper pot, and watched a couple of blacksmiths at work. It’s a very photogenic village.
Next up was the drive to Sheki. We passed by roadside stalls selling colourful pickled fruits and vegetables. Had some freshly-made qutab, a thin crepe-like bread with a filling, in this case herbs, from a stall for lunch. It was delicious!
We reached Sheki just before 5pm, with enough time to see the Palace of Sheki Khan. So we dropped off our stuff and walked over, about ten minutes up and down rough cobbles.
The palace is beautiful, well worth the effort to get here. Unfortunately, photos are no longer allowed inside :( , which must be a recent change since all the travel blogs I read before had nice pics. The stained glass and detailed wall paintings are awesome.
We walked down the main street a bit looking for souvenirs. Heather bought a hand dyed silk scarf (Sheki is also noted for its silk).
We got back to our hotel, really just a b&b, Ilgar’s place. Met Ilgar, who I’ve been whatapp’ing with the last couple months to organize the excursions. He’s an entrepreneurial guy who’s passionate about promoting community-focused
tourism in Azerbaijan.
Cleaned up and walked about 20 minutes to the heart of town to the restaurant recommended by Ilgar. It was good, although pretty touristy. We should have gone with our initial choice of a local place close to Ilgar’s.
There was a little dog that followed us around most of the afternoon in Sheki - to the palace, shopping, and then down to dinner. Heather saved some of her leftovers for our companion (a real doggie bag!), but we didn’t see our dog after dinner. On our walk over to dinner, one of the shopkeepers we saw earlier was laughing and joking with us when she noticed that the little dog was still following us around :)
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