Today was so much simpler than I had feared...

Our hosts, Nelly and Makho, in addition to getting up really early to prepare our breakfast, very kindly gave us a lift down to the yard opposite the market where the marshrutkas start from, picked out the one going our way, and arranged with the driver to take us the short distance beyond Lagodekhi town right up to the border with Azerbaijan (which he did, for no extra money).


It took a while, mind you. Lonely Planet estimates 1 hour 45 minutes for Telavi-Lagodekhi. It took us 2 hours 40 minutes, plus the extra 5 minutes to the border. But as marshrutkas go, this one was a prince. Seats that didn't slope forward; a little overhead rack for your smaller bag; nothing weird obstructing your leg room... Amazing.

Saturday's obviously a big market day in these parts. As we waited in Telavi for departure, taxi-drivers were hauling carcasses from the backs of their vehicles, and clients were massing for early vegetable-purchases (one customer suffered major onion-bag-breakage half-way across the road, setting onions bounding down the hill like kids out of school).

We shared our little bus with big bags of eggplants, capsicums, and carrots, and a few bunches of dahlias carefully fastened to the inside of the back windscreen (the lady who did this tapped us on the shoulder to make us aware of her handiwork).


All along the road, Georgia's abundance was in evidence, with piles of fruit turning every pavement into a cornucopia.

Waving goodbye to our marshrutka driver, we walked up to the Georgian immigration post. "Do you have a visa for Azerbaijan?" the official asked. We said we did. And that was it. Stamped, and through.

It's quite a few minutes' walk to the Azerbaijan border post. There, once again, no problem. The official looks at the visa document we'd downloaded and printed out, takes our photo, and we're done. No lengthy interrogation about Armenia, as I'd read others had experienced at other crossing-points. No inquiries into our plans. Stamped, and through.

The Azerbaijan customs guy, having herded Nigel away from the electronic declaration machine that we didn't need to use as we had nothing to declare, did ask us whether we'd been to Armenia. "Yes," we said. "Did you buy anything in Armenia?" "Only what we used while we were there," we said. "OK," he said. (We did actually forget to mention the Russian wafer biscuits we'd bought in Armenia, and haven't used up yet, but I don't honestly think he'd have been interested.) This official also asked us where we were going in Azerbaijan, but only out of a motivation to improve our itinerary ("Oh -- not going to Qabala?") So, bags through the X-ray, and we're in.

We might have paid a bit much for our taxi into town, but not horrendously so.

I'd decided we'd do best to overnight in Balakan, as I thought we probably wouldn't fancy another long marshrutka ride to Sheki in the same day (even assuming there was one).

The best-known hotel was full, so we booked a room in a guesthouse across the road. We knew it was going to be basic, and it is... The "official" entrance is through the galvanize bit at the back, but when we arrived, we were shown in through the downstairs car repair workshop, squeezing by with our rucksacks, and taking extra care not to tumble into the inspection pit.


But hey, it's clean. The aircon works (the wifi unfortunately doesn't). There's hot water. There's just about enough floor space to put both our rucksacks down at the same time. And it costs AZN 25 for the night (about MYR 60, or GBP 12).

I don't think many foreign travellers stop in Balakan, as we were the object of some interest as we pottered around today.

It's a low-key kind of place, but the mountain setting is lovely, and there's a fine mosque, and a spacious park.







What else? Well, there are plenty of the kind of cafes that attract groups of older men, busy setting the world to rights over their tea and dominoes.

There are a number of eateries that are very reminiscent of Turkey (lunch was a doner iskander, a meat-and-cheese pide, and a few glasses of ayran).

And there's a really awesome bakery, where we bought some things for tea (a kind of bread-cake bun, and a saffron-infused, nut-enveloping pastry scroll). When I indicated we wanted one of the scrolls, the young woman poked it with her tongs, decided it wasn't fresh enough, and went upstairs to get one from a new batch. And we somehow acquired a bonus bread-cake thing. All for AZN 0.60. Three huge and delicious baked items for MYR 1.50 or GBP 0.30...

So low-key has its advantages, and in any case we're moving on tomorrow.

Russian is still useful here. So are my few words of Turkish. As always, more would have been better.

But the key thing: we're in Azerbaijan!