GOING HOME (FINALLY): BAKU. AZERBAIJAN, TO LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, VIA DOHA, QATAR

After almost 24 days of non-stop travel, which included seven countries and an unprecedented number of miles covered (compared to all previous trips we have taken), I was SOOOO ready to go home, but we still had one more major hurdle to leap over: the flight home, which would entail five segments:

1. Arrive 2 hours early at Baku Airport for our international flight

2. Flight #1: Baku, Azerbaizan, to Doha, Qatar - 2 hours 50 minutes (1700 km / 1,056 miles)

3.  A layover of about 1 hour 35 minutes in Qatar

4. Flight #2: Doha, Qatar, to Los Angeles, California - 16 hours 10 minutes (3,360 km / 8,302 miles)

5. Drive home in mid-afternoon LA traffic - about 2 hours after retrieving our luggage and our car, which takes about 1 hour (85 miles)

If things went well, from the time we arrived at the Baku Airport to the time we arrived in our home, we would have been traveling for for 25 hours 35 minutes, would have covered 9,443 miles, and would have gone through a time change of 11 hours. (When we arrived at LAX at 2:05 PM, it was 1:05 AM the next day in Baku.)

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN: ART AND ARCHITECTURE

On our first night in Baku, our guide took us to an observation point that looked out over the city. To get there, we had to climb about a million stairs (okay, may just a hundred thousand). We had gotten very little sleep the night before because of our 3:30 AM flight, and I was grumbling and grumpy.

However, as promised, the view from the top was a not-to-be-missed spectacular panorama of the capital and largest city in Azerbaijan. (Actually, there are no other large cities in Azerbaijan.) Most of the city actually lies below sea level, making it the lowest-lying national capital in the world:

The real reason people climb those bazillion steps at night, however, is to see the iconic Flame Towers, a trio of skyscrapers constructed between 2007 and 2012 that includes the tallest building in the country (about 600 feet - not so big by California standards). They have a wonderful, wavy shape, much like the flame on the tip of a candle:

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN: SITES AROUND TOWN

Warning. Long post, but LOTS of pictures, not so much text.

1. THE WORLD'S FIRST INDUSTRIALLY DRILLED OIL WELL

. . . is in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Who knew??

This well hit oil at only 21 meters deep. By 1901, Baku was producing 11 million tons (212,000 barrels) of oil per day, more than 50% of what was being produced worldwide. During the first year of the World War, Azerbaijan produced a record 25.4 million tons of oil. Hitler aimed to capture Baku so as to control this vast resource, but the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad in 1942 forced a retreat from the area, and Hitler never realized his goal. 

Production declined after the war, but oil production is back up now, and crude oil is pumped to Europe in the second-longest oil pipeline in the world, which has the capacity to transport 1 million barrels/day.  These days they are producing about 875,000 barrels of oil/day. That doesn't touch the 10 million barrels/day produced by the US in 2107, but remember, it's a country the size of South Carolina. 

Considering all the natural gas leaking out of cracks in the rocks in the area, it shouldn't be a surprise that there is plenty of petroleum down there as well.

Marco Polo wrote: "Near the Georgian border [somewhere in Azerbaijan] there is a spring from which gushes a stream of oil, in such abundance that a hundred ships may load there at once. This oil is not good to eat; but it is good for burning and as a salve for men and camels affected with itch or scab. Men come from a long distance to fetch this oil . . . ."

AZERBAIJAN: BIBI-HEYBAT MOSQUE, JUMA MOSQUE OF SHAMAKHI, JUMA MOSQUE OF BAKU

Azerbaijan is almost completely Muslim (99.2%, according to the Pew Research Center), with two-thirds belonging to the Shia branch and one-third belonging to the Sunni branch of Islam. However, while there is a Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom, few locals are "religious" because of the Soviet prohibition of religious practice during the seventy-one years Azerbaijan was part of the USSR. In other words, most of them have lived their entire lives without religion and appear to be fine to have it continue that way.

Still, Islam is a significant part of their ethnic/national identity, and slowly, slowly, young people are being drawn back.

We visited two important mosques built since Azerbaijan became an independent nation in 1991: the Bibi-Heybat Mosque in Baku and the Juma (or Friday) Mosque of Shamakhi. We also visited a third mosque that was remodeled at the end of the 19th century, the Juma Mosque of Baku.

1. Bibi-Heybat Mosque

Although this mosque was built in the 1990s following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is a recreation of a 13th-century mosque by the same name that was blown up in 1934 by the Bolsheviks as part of their anti-religion campaign. It is the first Stalin-destroyed mosque to have been rebuilt in the post Soviet era.

It sits on one of the major highways of Baku alongside the Caspian Sea:

View from across the highway

View from the courtyard on the Caspian Sea side

AZERBAIJAN: TWO NATIONAL PARKS--SHIRVAN AND GOBUSTAN

We visited two national parks back-to-back in Azerbaijan: Shirvan and Gobustan.

1. Shirvan National Park is a small (about 200 square miles) park 60 miles southwest of Baku that was formed primarily to protect the goitered gazelle, seen atop the tower below:

There are other animals there, of course, but none so important--or visible--as the gazelle that gets is name from the way its neck puffs out during mating season. The park has had a very successful breeding program--they started with 131 gazelles in 1961 and now have over 8,000. We saw quite a few:

AZERBAIJAN: LAND OF FIRE

If you ever think about taking a 3:30 AM flight, I have three words for you (take your pick):
       • You are crazy.
       • Don't do it.

I know what I'm talking about. That's what we did at the end of twenty-two days of arduous travel along the Silk Road. We were crazy enough to book a flight from Ashgabat to Baku that left at 3:30 AM, and since it's an international flight, we had to be at the airport by at least 1:30 AM. The flight is only 1 hr. 35 min. long, so there's really no time to sleep, and of course, it's our policy to hit the ground running.

It was grueling.

But before I get to that part about hitting the ground running, here are a few facts about Azerbaijan, a country I knew ZERO about before this trip:

• In 1918 it became the first democratic state in the Muslim-oriented world, but it was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920 as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.

• It declared its independence in August 1991, about four months before the official dissolution of the USSR, and was admitted into the United Nations a few months later.

• The capital city, Baku (population 2.4 million), has the best harbor on the Caspian Sea

• Around 97% of the population is Muslim, with a Shia majority, but most Azerbaijanis are non-practicing. The government is secular and religious freedom is guaranteed by the constitution.

• It is a small country, with only 33,400 square miles and a population just under 10 million. Here is a good visual of the size from a site call MapFight, with Azerbaijan in red and South Carolina (32,020 square miles) in blue: However, South Carolina has only half the population that Azerbaijan has:

• Some of the oldest civilizations in the world have ruins in this country.