In other shower news, we've started using our summer shower, which means no more bucket baths! Still have to light something to get hot water, but now we've got a real shower head and pretty decent pressure if you time it right (mostly mornings). My host family says they shower pretty much every day during the summer. Music to my ears.
And now for something you'll really like.
Last weekend, we went to Lahij (spelled here Lahic, because c’s are j’s here), a very old, small town near Ismayilli, that is a popular tourist visit during the summer and utterly cut off from the world during the winter. The reason being that the way one gets to Lahij is a windy, bumpy, unpaved road that creeps around the mountains of a river valley. During the winter, and in fact, any day with bad rain, the road becomes perilous (the fact that drivers hug the edge doesn’t help much either).
The day we set out looked like it would be one of these days. When I told my host mother we were going, she made us watch the weather report for about half an hour. Finally, she gave up and let us go. She was baffled by our decision to go, in part because we weren’t going guesting there; we were just going.
The road was exactly what we’d be warned. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, in fact quite literally as we bumped along the way. But as we climbed northward, the clouds dissipated and we could see the mountains betwixt we drove; towering mountains, with steep cliffs, sometimes due to dynamiting for the road.
Lahij is not much. It is basically one main road, a historical museum that was once a mosque, a communal hamam (shower/bath house) because they have only recently gotten running water, with no real hotel, no gas, and only two restaurants, one of which is a dark chayxana (tea place). What Lahij is, though, is relaxing. The streets are paved with river stones, and mostly too small for cars to pass. It is surrounded by beautiful green mountains and looks down on a once mighty river which sadly due to dams placed upriver has become distinctly diminished. Along the main road are a number of copper workers, for which Lahij is historically known, and stores with sheep wool hats, rugs, and coats. It reminded me of Colonial Williamsburg without the historical plaques on the buildings.
When we arrived we were escorted to the museum by one of the men who was on the marshrutka with us. There we encountered a group of government workers from Ismayilli who knew us all by name (eerie) and an impressively helpful and knowledgeable tourism office (helps to actually have something tourists come to see).
After the museum, we wandered down the main road towards the restaurant and village school on the other side. Un-amusing, we were not allowed to go into the school, which is just about the only school in Azerbaijan with murals on the walls, but amusingly, it turns out that the old woman who guards the school would also block the volunteer who worked there for two years from entering, until the school director would remind her that it was alright for him to come inside. Can’t imagine that was fun in February.
Lunch was kebab and fresh tomatoes and cheese, with sugary pear juice washing it all down. We sat on the top of a hill overlooking the river, covered by a green shade. By the time I got home, I was still filled with a lovely feeling of relaxation, which, try as it might, the bus ride home was unable to dislodge.
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