By Alex Shnitman, on June 9th, 2011 
As our train rolled towards Baku, we started to get an uneasy feeling about this place. The first notable thing was the oil drilling rigs that started appearing all around us as we got closer to the Caspian coast. Everything in this region has been revolving around oil for the last 150 years; in 1905 it was producing half of the world’s petroleum, and now that a pipeline from here through Georgia into Turkey has been completed, skipping politically complicated Russia and Iran, Baku is getting rich meteorically fast. In older times most of the extraction was performed from shallow wells using small rigs, which are all still standing, some even still pumping; these days the major efforts are focused on off-shore drillings. Of course oil extraction is not a particularly pretty business, and the scars it leaves nobody really bothers to tend to. The forests of old rusting derricks create an almost post-apocalyptic landscape that was not easy to digest, especially as the first thing to see from the compartment window after waking up in the morning.
. . . → Read More: Baku, Azerbaijan
By Alex Shnitman, on June 5th, 2011 
We returned to Tbilisi for a last taste of Georgia, staying for two days to make up on some stuff we missed, as well as to finalize our Azerbaijani visas, before hopping on the night train running eastwards towards the Caspian sea into Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
. . . → Read More: Georgia wrap-up
By Alex Shnitman, on May 31st, 2011 
After spending a few weeks in Georgia and putting a lot of effort into learning the Georgian writing system, to the point of being mostly able to read place names on signs, we arrived in Armenia and became analphabets once again. It’s quite remarkable how the small region of the Caucasus is split between four countries, two unrecognized independent states, and four languages from three different families written in four different alphabets. Thankfully, the fourth of those, Russian, is quite universal and spoken by most people — in Armenia more so than in Georgia. It seems to be a really bilingual country, with most signs in both languages. I’m not sure why Russian survived so well here but I’m very glad that it did.
. . . → Read More: Armenia
By Alex Shnitman, on May 23rd, 2011 
The homestays in Georgia are connected to each other by a network of personal acquaintances between owners, and once you stayed in one, the owner will always refer you to a friend in the next city you’re going to. We found this to be quite useful, and when Gia, our host in Mestia, offered us direct drop-off at Irine’s house in Tbilisi, we agreed right away.
. . . → Read More: Tbilisi – Yerevan
By Alex Shnitman, on May 20th, 2011 
After a few lazy days in Tbilisi, about which I will write later, we left to the mountains again — this time to another area of the Caucasus at the foothills of mount Kazbeg. A relatively low-altitude pass over the Caucasus ridge exists in this area, at 2300 m. above sea level, so an important route passes here, connecting Tbilisi to Russia, that has been in use for centuries. It was made into a proper road by the Russians; now it’s called the Georgian Military Highway. A highway it isn’t, especially around the pass where enormous winter-summer temperature fluctuations have chopped and washed away all remains of the asphalt, but the road is still in heavy use. The last settlement before the Russian border, Kazbegi, was our home for three days.
. . . → Read More: Kazbegi
By Alex Shnitman, on May 15th, 2011 
Our journey from the Black Sea coast to the Caucasus started with a marshrutka to Zugdidi, followed by a grueling four-hour-long ride up into the mountains. The road from Zugdidi to Mestia is only around 140 km. long, but it is mostly unpaved, potholed, muddy and generally unsuitable for traffic — except there is no other road. Marshrutkas plow through this route once daily, early in the morning, a fact which we didn’t know. We arrived in Zugdidi at noon, but were very lucky to meet Gia, who lives in Mestia and was returning there in the afternoon.
. . . → Read More: Mestia
By Alex Shnitman, on May 14th, 2011 
From the Kackar mountains we descended to the Black Sea coast, and crossed the border from Sarp, Turkey, to Sarpi, Georgia. Land border crossings are rarely attractive places, and this one was no exception: busy, noisy, bustling with people walking around lines of rumbling trucks waiting to cross the border. Georgians return from Turkey loaded with bags of merchandise, everything from toys to kitchenware, which is a surprise since so far everything seems a lot cheaper here in Georgia. People are pushing and shoving each other for access to the passport control windows, but usually without much violence. A man who stood before me saw my backpacks and straw hat and asked, “Tourist?” I said yes, and he smiled and waved me and Dana before him. We smiled back and politely refused. Despite the chaos, people don’t lose their temper and civility.
. . . → Read More: Batumi, Georgia
By Alex Shnitman, on May 6th, 2011 
A succession of buses took us, over a 24-hour period, to the foothills of the Kaçkar mountains in eastern Turkey. The little village we found ourselves in is called Barhal, and it is situated in a deep valley at the confluence of two rivers. In the summer it is bustling with travelers, chiefly Israelis, who come here to trek in the Kaçkar; we arrived here before the season (as we did everywhere else) and thus we were almost the only ones there.
. . . → Read More: Kaçkar, and goodbye Turkey
By Alex Shnitman, on May 4th, 2011 
Cappadocia is on the itinerary of every visitor to Turkey, and photographs of its “fairy chimney dwellings” are some of the most recognizable images of Turkey. Most visitors to Cappadocia stay in a village called Göreme, right at the heart of the national park, and so did we. If Göreme ever was an authentic Turkish village, all that’s left of that now is a small teahouse in the center where the elders spend their day drinking tea and playing cards and backgammon. These days it looks like a sanctuary, almost like a small zoo lost between English-signed cafes, restaurants, carpet shops and tour agencies.
. . . → Read More: Cappadocia
By Alex Shnitman, on April 29th, 2011 
We’re back from 5 days in the mountains. St. Paul’s way, Turkey’s second long-distance trekking route, is much more rugged and wild than the Lycian Way. It runs through rough terrain, sometimes for days without meeting civilization (except the occasional goat shepherd). The person responsible for both these routes, an Englishwoman named Kate Clow, has published a guidebook for it. Since the Turkish government doesn’t release detailed mapping information for the country, citing security reasons, a volunteer Hungarian mapmaker made a map on his own, a very impressive piece of work: he took the topography from ancient pre-Turkish-republic maps, and overlayed the roads and cities from a modern map. This piece of wonder comes with the book. Not quite like the 1:50000 maps we’re accustomed to in Israel but better than nothing. According to the guidebook, the route itself is waymarked according to the strict French Grande Randonee standard, so armed with this book, as well as our still-unused camping equipment, we took a bus to Çandir, our starting point.
. . . → Read More: St. Paul’s Way
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