Mountain Biking in Azerbaijan

My husband has a very serious (and expensive, I suspect) hobby these days. He loves to mountain bike.

In Qatar, where we live, there aren’t many mountains. In fact, there are none. He still manages to go out on his bike every weekend, but the only choice is a desert. Or another location with another desert. So, he and his friends started travelling abroad to explore other locations. 

So far, they visited Oman, Saudi and Georgia (three times, as they love it there) and finally decided to go to Azerbaijan.

Husband and his friends discovered that they could take the bikes with them as oversized luggage that basically fits in their kilos allowance on Qatar Airways. They bring minimum clothes in their backpacks, some suspicious-sounding cream… and off they go.

Since meeting me in Baku, marrying me and whisking me away, Husband has barely been back. So, I was quite curious how this trip would go.

Twenty years is a very long time, and Baku as well as Azerbaijan, changed dramatically since then. 

When I lived there, I avoided travelling outside Baku due to conditions being quite underdeveloped. And even though in the recent years things improved in the most amazing fashion, and I enjoy taking trips to various regions whenever I go back, I still imagined that, for Westerners, the locations these guys chose would still feel very uncivilized. 

But, I am happy to report…They loved it.

A local guide, a young Azerbaijani guy called Abdulla, created a sleek and professional (Yes, alright, I do sound surprised but that’s because I was not expecting this level. And this is another sign that things have changed a lot back home) PDF with a description of their daily itinerary. 

After the first day in Baku, and after a dinner in my favorite Marivanna restaurant, the guys woke up early and headed towards Khinalug village. The altitude around that area is around 2600 meter, according to the guide’s brochure. The route they took for biking the next day was an antient caravan route towards Shahyaylag. They then continued to travel to Alik village and towards the village of Habit, along the Alik river. The next day they continued to historic village of Griz, located in the heart of the mountains. Their destination was the village of Laza, where, with the help of the 4x4 vehicles, they reached Mikhantoken ridge with an altitude of 2700-3000 m. Eventually, they finished the tour descending to the village of Kuzun, from where they safely made it back to Baku, to enjoy more good food and nice weather, sitting outside the Sirovaryna restaurant, crowd-watching for hours.

 

My husband’s biking buddies were particularly impressed with just how many gorgeous women there were in Baku. Their only negative comment was too many lip fillers but that’s sadly the current Instagram look all around the world, and the Azerbaijani beauties have simply fallen victims to the trend. 

I was extremely pleased all three of the guys came back alive, and happy with their tour. And didn’t even once complain about the uncivilized conditions, such as an Asian style outdoor toilets they had to use in Xinalig and Griz.

(Thats the toilet!) 

The photos, as I will let you judge for yourselves here, are stunning. In fact, the views and the mountains were so gorgeous that even the guy from Switzerland was impressed. And he, of course, knows what beautiful mountains look like.

Abdulla, the local guide to whom I am immensely grateful for keeping my husband, the father of my children, alive throughout this crazy journey, reckons there was not any MTB (or mountain biking) at some of the spots they visited, ever before. The routes Abdulla chose for this trip are mainly used these days for trekking and local shepherds. 

So, perhaps this is the beginning of something bigger, that is potentially going to turn into a fabulous opportunity for my home country? Will Azerbaijan become a new hot spot for mountain biking? Who knows? A few more modern bathroom facilities would probably be a plus, but otherwise, the feedback was fantastic. People as my husband noted, were incredible. Friendly, generous, with good sense of humor, they made their journey even more pleasant. One night when our bikers, exhausted after a long day staying alive fancied a beer, some local guys working on construction next to their guest house quickly took a Lada down to nearby shop to bring them a box of the local Xirdalan. 

Another night the local owner of the guesthouse slaughtered a sheep to make them fresh shashliks. (Azerbaijan probably not the best destination if you are a faint-hearted vegetarian) 

So, there we go. Some photos for you of my beautiful motherland. Untouched in so many ways.