Rygsækrejsen 2015-2016: Petroglyphs

lørdag den 16. maj 2015

Morning hike and drive to a wild camp in Cholpon-Ata

Several from the group decided on a morning hike instead of going with the Russian trucks all the way. We ended up walking 3 hours before the trucks came. We drove to the hotel where our truck was parked and quickly got all our things back in the truck. Then we drove to town for some more food shopping for this night's wild camp and to have lunch.

On the way to our wild camp we had a quick stop at an open air museum with petroglyphs. There weren't that many so it was mostly to show us that that they actually have some here as well. The Russian had helped keeping the number of petroglyphs down since they decided to construct the city airport in the middle of the site when they did it in the early 1950's. History wasn't that important back then.

We were at our camp site next to Issyk-Kul Lake in the afternoon and enjoyed the nice area in the afternoon and evening. Decided to go for a swim in the morning.

The supermarkets don't lack vodka - or vodkas with great names

Cholpon-Ata petroglyph

lørdag den 11. april 2015

Petroglyphs and escaping from camping

Rain, rain, rain. Azerbaijan is not showing itself from its best side. Add a lot of wind to the rain. Miserable.

Drove to Gobustan through a quite flat and rather boring landscape. In the middle of nowhere a museum shows up and it's time to learn about petroglyphs. The museum was new and with interesting information and interactive features. From the museum we went out in the rain to check out the real petroglyphs.

Because of the rain unfortunately we couldn't go and see the small mud vulcanoes in the area.

A quick decision was made no camping today, too much rain and heavy wind. The tents would all fly away. Instead we headed for Baku which is the next stop - maybe for several days while we wait for the supposedly unpredictable ferry from Baku to Turkmenbashi.