Baku to Tbilisi on the overnight train is a great experience!   It comprises of good solid East German stock of a mid 1960s vintage; good in its day, no doubt, even attractive in its Prussian way, but today it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. The train is an exercise in functionality, offering overnight passage between these two Caucasian capitals in either 1st or 2nd class. Each carriage is completely identical, but the 1st Class offering has only two lower berths, while four passengers prise themselves into two layers of bunks in 2nd Class. The compartments are actually […]

Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is really rather strange; a very pleasant place, to be sure, but distinctly odd. It is a city of great contrast. Battered old Ladas jostling in traffic alongside shiny new BMWs; gorgeous, statuesque buildings stand next to blocks of rotting Soviet-era concrete; wide and perfectly constructed eight-lane highways intersect with rutted and gravelly streets; exquisitely laid out parks and central areas co-exist with dusty neighbourhoods strewn with garbage. I had been here a few months ago, but only for a couple of days, and now wanted to see more of Azerbaijan, but first its capital […]

Qobustan, Azerbaijan and the ancient rock paintings. I could, of course, ask the same question as yesterday, but I won’t. It was a distinctly odd day. Waking up in Quba in the north of the country, I was still full of the peculiarities and wonders of Xinaliq; the hotel I was in could not have been more of a contrast, however. It was an “Olympic Complex”, incorporating a massive sports training centre as well as a hotel; I idly wondered if it was a remnant of the 1908 games in Moscow when Azerbaijan was still a part of the Soviet […]

What do you immediately think of when I say Xinaliq? Or Azerbaijan? Qinaliq, Azerbaijan Not much, probably, but that is a shame. Xinaliq is actually a most remarkable town in a most remarkable country. I am back in Azerbaijan, having been here in November at the end of a bit of an ordeal on the Black Sea; the sailing from the Ukraine actually took four days longer than planned, and as a result, my planned stay in Baku was significantly curtailed. So taken was I on that first whirl-wind tour that I determined to come back this summer; with the […]

Andorra is truly a really rather silly place.   It lies perched high in the Pyrenees, accessible from either France or Spain by a single road that runs through the country, and for much of the year, one needs snow chains to do so. I know of no other sovereign state (although Bhutan perhaps qualifies) that is so remote from its neighbours. It is not a member of the European Union, although it is a full member of the United Nations; it has 60,000 inhabitants of whom roughly 10,000 are “Andorrans”, the others being guest workers and rich ex-patriate hide-aways. […]

High in the Pyrenees lies the Principality of Andorra. Today we visit. The Languedoc and the fabulous Pyrenees have a vast and exciting water system. I am not, I hasten to add, talking about domestic plumbing here, although that does have its eccentricities here in rural France, but the system of rivers and lakes that carry away the vast quantities of water generated by both normal rain and the annual run-off from the mountains. Not thirty kilometres from here is a pass that represents the east/west divide; rivers and tributaries from one side eventually find their way to the Atlantic, […]