Sheki: Like a Polaroid Picture

"My brother Mahmoud will be near you for five minutes."

                                       

Our final dawn in Baku was spent huddled around a smartphone screen watching the box score of a women's basketball game. Tipoff was 4am local time, and we set the alarm to make sure we could watch our hometown Storm got the job done. They did! A little surreal to be on the Absheron Peninsula cheering for an obscure sporting event, but it's what we like. And everyone should have what they like.

And in Azerbaijan, that means pomegranates. They eat 'em by the bucketful here, and you find their husks in the street and in the parks. It's the seeds they want, you see. It's the seeds they're after. We tried not to slip on any as we made our way for the last time through the beautifully landscaped terraced parks of upper Baku.

A day ago, we had approached our room from a different route and found ourselves surrounded by golden statues. We had wandered into the hammam (public bath) district on Seyx Samuel Avenue where the sidewalk was lined with golden babies, warriors, camels, lions, lamps, and every damn golden thing. It was strange and hilarious, and we called the road Sexy Sam's Street.

We thought it would be too difficult to navigate in our bulky packs, however. Didn't want Sam to come out in his bathrobe and yell at us for knocking the ring out of his favorite golden bull's nose, so we took Pomegranate Park the whole way down.

                                           

The plan was to grab some breakfast, take the metro to the bus station, summon a mini-van, and coast north to Sheki. It was smooth on paper, but there was a lot of going the wrong way and getting on the wrong train and not finding food. So, we got a taxi, and a very sweet, grandfatherly gentleman took us where we wanted to be.

The word for "bus station" is autovagsal, but that sounds like a feminine product for cars, and we didn't know it yet. We just kind of made bus sounds until Sara said "marshrutka" and Grandpa got it. A marshrutka is a lot of things, but its mostly a mini-van or VW-bus-like vehicle that pretty much gets everyone everywhere. It's an amazing system.

It's how I've gotten most places I've been in Eastern Europe, spent a lot of time in marshrutka parking lots waiting for the one with my destination written in the window. The way it works is, you find one going your way, pay the driver, and then wait until enough other people are also going that way. Once the car is full, he takes off. It can happen quickly, or it can take several hours. But it eventually gets you where you want to go.

                                               

Azeri Gramps dropped us off right across the street from the station, but there was no crosswalk, and it was the central bus station, and the access ramp to the highway was right there, so it was hundreds and hundreds of rabid vehicles fighting one another and lurching forward with angry bursts of sudden aggressive acceleration. Clouds of exhaust, shouts and honking. We tried to skirt around it.

Eventually, we kind of grabbed onto an old woman's back and pushed her in front of us to get across. We drafted off granny until we got to a kebab stand just out of the kill-zone. It was the best-tasting donar-in-lavash we'd ever had. It tasted like life!

A few unspeakable Turkish toilets later, we were in a ticket area. About seven men tried to sell Sara earbuds while I tried to buy tickets from a bus station window. It was fascinating, this window, as opaque and imposing as the Berlin wall. At least twenty feet tall and with only a hand-sized opening to shout through. It was like they were trying to protect the identity of the ticket sellers. I can't begin to describe how unwelcoming and inefficient it was.

It was like trying to do business with the Once-ler.

                   

                   

While a family fought with the disembodied frown behind the flap, Sara went out to see if there was something slightly more scrutable. She found a pack of Sheki-bound matrushkas idling not far away, so we left the once-ler behind and walked over to try our luck. It held. A dude yelled "Sheki" at me, I yelled "Sheki!" back, and we were on.

An Israeli woman named Ireet was very happy to discover another English speaker in the van. She wore a funny hat with EBAY embroidered on it and told us about herself with the energy and enthusiasm of someone who has been traveling for a very long time with no one to talk to. She was friendly, but it got kind of overwhelming. She hinted she didn't have lodging in Sheki and that what usually happens in her life is that the people she meets invite her to stay with them.

There was some empathy. My mother just completed an eight-thousand mile drive around the US, camping in national parks and visiting relatives, and I felt a kind of parallel. Solo traveler in her 70s, no schedule, curious, open to new experiences. But... mama didn't hitchhike, and mama drove around in her own hotel. We told Ireet we would help her find a place, but it was unlikely she would be able to sleep in our room.

She said: "I've waited an extra few hours for this marshrutka, let the last one go on without me, because this one has an older driver. The young drivers go too fast, but the old ones are careful. See you in Sheki." Then she took her seat in the front. I took it to mean, "I have infinite patience. If I can hang out in this place of once-lers and earbud salesmen by choice, I can definitely wear YOU down and I look forward to curling up at your feet tonight in the room you guys booked."

                                                 

And then we were off. We joined the circle of death we had used granny-draft to cross, got on the highway and headed to the mountains. And the bit about the older driver was true, at first. He was careful and calm, but every now and again, his youth was restored, and he would gun it across a paradise of potholes and charge lance-first at a taxi in his way.

I read that darn Azerbaijan diary and dozed while the driver was old and held on for life when he was young. We stopped once for tea at a sweet little roadside place with very kind servers and a deadly toilet. I was gagging while I pissed and feared passing out. I thought of the Storm and their heroics and somehow made it through.

Long climb, up and up, into the hills and past hectares of sheep. Did you know the word "horde" comes from the word "sheep." It probably doesn't, really, but my book said it did. It was a little too jostly for Sara to read, so she spent most of her time plotting how to ditch Ireet when we arrived.

Which we eventually did! And such a nice place it was. Cool and mountainy, with a sweet little bus station selling mountain apples and mountain walnuts. We retrieved our bags and stretched out. Sure enough, that little EBAY hat came strolling over. "So, where are we staying?"

                                           

Sara made it clear we would be in a small room in a family's home and that the family would be there, but we would ask if there was another room that wasn't ours that she could stay in but not our room but another one and not ours. And Ireet said she wanted to buy some walnuts, and we got into a cab while she did.

Cute, leafy town with shoes for sale and gentle-seeming people strolling along gentle avenues. We stayed in the higher area, among the trees and hills. We were dropped off at a restaurant called Qaqarin, which it took us too long to realize was named after the famous cosmonaut.

The G, Q, X, and K do as they like here, so it was "Gagarin"

Sara got a text saying: "My brother Mahmoud will be near you for five minutes." and sure enough, a few moments later a dude named Mahmoud showed us the secret cobblestone path to our room, which was part of an incredibly charming stack of homes and porches and patios and courtyards all on top of one another in an hilarious LEGO-bucket jumble.

Just a marvelous collection of wood panels and cyrillic beach novels and old carpets and house plants with long vines and china hutches and overstuffed chairs and an hysterical princess blanket on the bed.

                                           

Dumped off our stuff and I took a nap while Sara went a'viking. She came back with fun tales of candy stores and lamp salespersons. We went to the cosmonaut's for dinner and enjoyed the menu items we'd learned about in Baku. We were old Azeri-cuisine pros at this point.

The place didn't have a roof, and we dined in the cool mountain air. I made friends with a cat by giving it some meat (which is how it's done) and it kept clawing Sara's ankle in thanks. It was a fine meal of soups and dumplings and those fake quesadillas they have here. Tea, of course.

Then a dark scramble up the stones for sleep. I thought I might stay up and read, but I'm not a young marshrutka driver anymore. In the morning, we would see the Palace of the Sheki Kahn. That was the plan, anyway.