Fifteen hours after departing Shanghai, complete with an upgrade to “Comfort Class” on Turkish Airlines and a stopover in Istanbul, I arrive in Azerbaijan.
Check out the old-school flight tracker, it still flips!
Flying in to the city, you first have to go over the Caspian Sea before turning back in to land at the airport. Yesterday was a beautiful day for it, too — green waters around an archipelago of islands just to the west of the city make you think you are going to the Caribbean. Then you see the Soviet architecture and you are brought back to reality. Upon landing, immediately to the right was a field full of private Leer jets…which I’m sure don’t get used by the regular Azeris. Adding insult to injury from my previous attempt to enter Azerbaijan last year…the government has started issuing visas upon arrival again, though still only to regional nationals, like the Turkish, etc. You can read what happened last year at my brother’s blog – long story short, I was turned back en-route due to an overnight change in policy. This year, I did make it through immigration after a few suspicious looks…
We met up with an A-100 friend of mine, Brigette, who is working at the Embassy here in Baku and had a wonderful afternoon coffee before going to a friend of Aaron’s for dinner (enchiladas in Azerbaijan!) to meet with his fellow peace corps volunteers that were in town for the weekend.
We’re making pancakes this morning and getting ready to head out to the “regions,” the term for any place in Azerbaijan that is not Baku. We are expecting to see lots of sheep in pens along the way as this Monday and Tuesday are national “Days of Sacrifice” that coincide with the Islamic holiday Qurban Bayram. We are told it costs anywhere from 150-450 Manat to sacrifice a sheep, the meat of which then gets distributed to the less fortunate. This is 3-9 times the price of a sheep in ordinary times.
More from Lankaran later. In the meantime, check out this video made by Peace Corps volunteers about the city of Baku…Caspian Dreaming.
Baku Cityscape with the 2nd Largest Flagpole in the World
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