Land of plenty...

This scenery opens up before you when you drive to village of Ivanovka in Ismailli region of Azerbaijan. People in Ivanovka, Molokans, were deported from Russia in XIX century or so and spread to many places including this village in Ismailli. This field of wheat is amazing and stops one's breath...

Seven waterfalls

As I mentioned earlier Qabala has beautiful waterfalls that are called "Seven waterfalls". Road to those waterfalls is quite difficult as it is a village road and one has to pass even through a small spring or river...but roads never scare locals (because they take thing easy by nature) and foreigners (because they usually drive jeeps). Waterfalls are quite high and one sees as far as he/she can and what is above higher in the mountains I do not know. But there must be other waterfalls so that there are seven of them.

People in Azerbaijan believe that anywhere one goes there must be tea place and this place is no exception. Tea place is available by the waterfalls as well and whoever desires makes a stop to listen to sound of water and enjoy the scenery that nature has granted.

Peace...

There are waterfalls in Qabala called “Seven Waterfalls”. To reach those waterfalls one has to go through a village that has beautiful landscape that I am trying to convey via these pictures. To me this village seemed as peaceful as any place could be…so green…so quiet…so beautiful…so big and so free…well maybe village inhabitants have a quite different view with harsh living conditions especially in winter (this is my personal opinion of someone coming from the city spoiled by heaters and air conditioning…maybe villagers do not think so...) although with such mountains around them winter must be really harsh actually…

In any case the place is beautiful…one wants to stay on the grass and just watch the mountains and sky…but we did not do so as we were in a hurry to see the waterfalls…pictures of which will be posted tomorrow...

Fish feast in Qabala

This weekend I visited Qabala and had fish by Nohur lake (about which I wrote earlier.) Although local people were calling that small fish as “river fish” to me they seemed very much like sprats. Interestingly they were selling it in kilos. So you had to buy a kilo of fried fish and then if it wasn’t enough another kilo or half a kilo…and so on :)

P.S. Just had a comment from Kris McCracken asking how this fish taste...They taste good and it is fun to eat them :)

Kur River

Two biggest rivers that go through Azerbaijan are Kur and Araz. Strange/bad thing that happened during Soviet times is that all Azeri words were translated first into Russian and then further to other languages. This resulted in total mispronouncement (if I may say) of Azeri words. For example in Azeri we call capital of Azerbaijan Bakı, in Russian it is called Baku and now in all languages the city is called Baku…the same is true for river Kur. We pronounce it Kur, in Russian it is pronounced Kura, in English and other languages I am not sure…

These are pictures that my husband Teymur took for me in Zardab region of Azerbaijan which he recently visited. Zardab is located in so called “aran” region of Azerbaijan (means lowland in Azerbaijani), is located in centre of the country and Kur River passes right through it. As you see I have enlisted all my family members in my blogging so that I have enough pictures to share with you :)

Hope you enjoy! :)

Fog in Quba...

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Lake in Quba...

Continuing on lake theme...

My sister just came back from Quba, region in north east of Azerbaijan and brought some photos. Here are the photos of a beautiful lake the name of which she and her friends never asked :(

Sometimes I think that if there were no photos and videos how well would one remember places he/she saw, experiences he/she lived...sometimes when I see something very beautiful or I am too excited at some event, there are things that I do not notice, details that I do not catch and later when I look at photos or watch videos not only memories come back but I also notice something new...

Hope you enjoy...

Nohur lake in Qabala

This is "Nohur" lake that we saw on our way to Sheki. It is located in Qabala, another region of Azerbaijan that one passes when travelling to Sheki. Lake is not on the way but if you go a bit deeper towards the mountains this beautiful view opens up in front of you. I heard from people who are originally from Qabala that this is not a natural lake...but in any case it seemed beautiful to me...

I am also posting a photo of a nice house that I saw by the lake. Maybe I am violating the privacy of the owners by posting this photo but the scene looked so nice that I decided to share it with you.

Photo session from Sheki bazaar...II

In Azerbaijan people eat herbs a lot. We just put them on a plate and eat them in combination with cheese, cucumber and other dishes. Might sound wild if you never tried this but actually it brings a lot of flavor and is very healthy.

This is a photo of a woman who is putting bunch of herbs together to be sold at her counter. Size of bunches in Sheki is usually much bigger than in Baku…must be because herbs are in abundance in Sheki…I asked the granny if I could take her photo and she started to praise me without even asking why I was taking the photo and tried to pose…very kind and touching…

This is the picture of the counter…not the best photo I took but hope it conveys the idea…

Have a good day, everyone...