Ali & Nino: Go Read It. Right Now.

                                           

25 May 2009

Baku, Azerbaijan

After last night's bushcamp (note to husband: must put tent fly on before sleeping, as will inevitably rain if we do not...as evidenced at 2am when I, plus you and Denis in your boxers, had to do it in sudden rainstorm), we drove the 30K into Baku today.

            

Baku,as you know, is a booming oil town for the second time. In the 1870s it was a hub for Caspian Oil, but after the Bolsheviks took it over, production dropped steeply. In the last 10 years a stagnant economy has exploded and there are literally oil derricks in every square acre, plus scattered for miles offshore. Some of the new money has been poured into the rather grand city, which sports a beautiful Old City, rather Disneyfied and very shiny and clean. Dior and Celine are the sort of shops here now, with prices to match. Fountains everywhere, the police cars are Mercedes, and there are drunken oil rig men falling into tables in bars across town (we saw one this afternoon. He got up and had another drink. They don't cut you off in Baku.)

                        

Anyway, once past the desert and derricks, it's absolutely beautiful, friendly, and terribly civilized. Go read Kurban Said's novel “Ali & Nino”, a (literary and not slutty) love story set in Baku in the late 1910s, and then come and see this place. Wonderful little book. Islam, Georgians, jealousy, harems, diplomacy, love, and murder.

                       

Hoping to catch a freight ferry across the Caspian to Kazakhstan tomorrow, and will be in the desert for some time after with no internet, let alone wifi, so no updates. But don't cry! Will keep writing and post whenever we can. Perhaps you could print and laminate previous entries to keep yourselves occupied. Unless you work at Christies and the laminator sheets are worth more than your job these days.