Georgia & Azerbaijan 2019- Page 2Album

We took a night train from Baku to Sheki, then asked the host to arrange a taxi to pick us up (10 Manatl. The host's son tag along, as he is the only one who could speak English. The house is clean and comfortable, and the host family is very friendly. A strong father, a mom who cook great food, a beautiful daughter and an energetic son.

Sheki Town itself could be explored easily by foot.

This is a small Palace, with no crowd during our visit. Cost 5 Manat to enter, same as the Summer Palace. If you visited Summer Palace before coming here, you might be disappointed by its size and simplicity. I am not a history or architecture buff, so it is a small two storey building with beautiful glass windows and carvings.

This place is a historical building + hotel + restaurant. Doesn't seems like a luxurious hotel despite it's size, probably due to lack of maintenance and upgrade. Still a nice place to drop by since it is free to visit.

The Palace is within Shaki Fortress, which is a big compound with few buildings such as Museum, Art & Crafts, etc. The entrance fee is 5 Manat, and you could pay extra for a guide. This Palace is bigger and more beautiful than the Winter Palace, with a much larger crowd as well. I would say it is a beautiful and interesting building.

We head South towards the mountain, as OpenStreetMap shown a short hiking trail. It is sunny and a great day to have a nice view of Sheki Town. It is a simple but nice hike. We didn't go all the way towards the next town as we would need to find a taxi back to Sheki. We turn back half way through.

Discover this one day hiking route on OpenStreetMap (not much information about Azerbaijan hiking on the Internet). We packed bread, nuts and fruits from the day before for lunch. On the way up, we saw some locals with donkies and horses dragging some firewood downhill. The mountain is quite pretty, with plenty of flowers (one of them looks like Lotus), and we found a field full of flowers. There is an intersection near the peak. One route lead to Kis village, and another further up with a small rest stop probably operated by the shepards. We saw a van driving up some local tourists from Kis. We try to reach the peak rest stop, but gotten too tired halfway through, and decided to have a picnic style lunch by the road side. We manage to reach the rest stop after energised through our lunch. The place have a round campfire place and a shed, but no one is around. There is a small hill, but we are not interested to go higher as the weather did become cloudy. Soon we decend to Kis.

After desending from the mountain we end up in a resort, which is quite a distance from Kis village. We could took a cab to visit the Albanian Church in Kis, but we are tired and it will get dark soon. We took a cab back to Sheki for 5 Manat instead.

The driver drop us at the modern part of Sheki Town, which we didn't explore earlier. It seems Sheki is quite a popular town.

The host cook us some good Dolma for dinner, with minced lamb meat stuffed in pepper or eggplant.

Final meal at Shaki Host House, Sheki and Azerbaijan. Bid farewell to the wonderful host family.

Our host in Sheki arranged a very affordable private taxi to the Balakan border crossing into Georgia.

After exchanging Manat to Lari at the border, we paid 6 Lari for the taxi to our guesthouse in Lagodekhi. Our "hotel" is a bungalow (in fact every house here is a bangalow). It is nicely renovated, with a garden. The male host is more hospitable, the female host is nice as well. They run a vineyard, so you get to enjoy unlimited wine here.

Since we still have half a day, we went to the nearest Black Grouse Waterfall. A very comfortable hike with good weather. The Waterfall is not huge, but the water is strong and windy, and the water is freezing cold. I did manage to go in for a quick dip under the Waterfall, which is quite challenging.

We have dinner at the host place, which is really great. First time tasting Georgian food, and it is very good. And Georgian wine, a sweeter young wine, which I enjoy very much. We have skewed bbq meat, though the meat is a bit tough. Eggplant with walnut sauce, big mushroom with cheese, potato and Kachapuri (Georgian bread with cheese, the national dish) are absolutely amazing. I have a feeling we shall like Georgian food very much.

Saw a fountain in a park while exploring Lagodekhi.