It would be a shame to visit the remote mountainous regions of Northern Azerbaijan and not see these same mountains. And so it happened - the veil of fog sank almost to the ground and one could only guess about the presence of some mountains here. But when we woke up the next morning, we saw that the clouds had retreated and the slopes of the Main Mountain were revealed in all their glory. Caucasian ridge, surrounding ancient Sheki on three sides.

1. The morning sun gilds the slopes of the Greater Caucasus, the sky turns blue, the tiled roofs of Sheki and the tops of the minarets look much brighter.

2. Here they are - those very wooded slopes surrounding Sheki. Everything is green here in summer, but beautiful in winter too!

3. A 17th-century caravanserai, where a hotel operates today.

4. Minaret of the Gul Gara Mosque.

5. After yesterday’s gray day, we really wanted to photograph mountainous Azerbaijan in the sun’s rays, and fearing that the veil of fog swirling in the valley might return, we immediately went back to wandering through the streets of Old Sheki.

6. Sheki is a city imbued with antiquity. Very cozy place!

9. We are approaching the Nukha fortress. Remember, in the last post I wrote that the current Sheki is former city Nukha (renamed Sheki only in 1960), and historical Sheki was located higher along the Kish River valley and was washed away by floods in the 18th century.

10. At the walls of the fortress, unfortunately, the fears were justified. On this January day, the sun shone only in the short morning hours, and soon the fog that had receded at night and swirled in the valley began to envelop the city again. This is not uncommon in the mountains in winter...

12. Former garrison prison built in 1895. Nowadays there are souvenir shops on the lower floors.

14. The former garrison Church of the Three Hierarchs, converted from a mosque after the annexation of the Sheki Khanate to the Russian Empire.

15. The fog had almost completely covered Sheki, and the picture was rapidly approaching yesterday’s. In order not to wander around the dank, foggy city for the second day in a row, we take a car and go for a drive around the surrounding area. There is something to see in the vicinity of Sheki, and maybe we’ll catch some sun along the way! :))

16. Higher up the river valley is the interesting mountain village of Kish. This village is located at the very foot of the Main Caucasus Range. The mountains are partially hidden by fog, but in some places snowy peaks can be seen through the veil.

The main attraction of the village of Kish is an ancient Christian temple, one of the most ancient temples in Transcaucasia. The current church dates back to the 12th century, but according to archaeological research, religious ceremonies were performed on the territory where the temple is located much earlier. Both Armenians and Georgians consider it theirs (and each side gives its own historical arguments), and according to the Azerbaijani version, this temple is of the Caucasian Albanians and Udins, the ancient peoples of Transcaucasia who professed Christianity, and any influence of Georgians and, especially, Armenians completely denied. There is a lot of historical and political controversy surrounding church affiliation today.

17. Purely outwardly this ancient temple in the village of Kish is similar to the same ancient Christian churches that I had previously seen in large numbers on trips to Armenia and Georgia.

21. The village of Kish is higher in the valley than Sheki, and the cloudiness here is not so dense. The sun came out and it immediately smelled like spring. A walk through the streets of a colorful Azerbaijani mountain village.

24. Mosque (as I understand it, quite new).

25. And again we set off along the roads of Azerbaijan - to the villages of Gakh and Ilisu, located 20 kilometers from here in a neighboring mountain valley.

26. Not far from the village of Gakh, on a rock near the road there is a beautiful brick church.

27. This is a Georgian church of the 19th century. The Gakh region of Azerbaijan borders Kakheti, a historical region in eastern Georgia. The border between the two republics runs about 20 kilometers from here, along the Alazan River and the famous Alazan Valley.

28. Another active Georgian church is located in the village of Gakh, the center of the district of the same name. This is the Church of St. George the Victorious, built in 1855. Many Georgians still live in these regions of Azerbaijan today.

In Gakh, on occasion, it is also interesting to take a walk, but we are moving into the mountains, up the valley of the Kurmukhchay River, to the mountain village of Ilisu.

29. At the entrance to Ilis there is an old stone bridge Ulu-korpu (“Big Bridge”), built, as they say, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries by folk craftsman Omar.

30. Mountain landscapes Ilisu, shrouded in light fog.

Ilisu is an ancient mountain village on the slopes of the Greater Caucasus. Until the 17th century, the river valley where Ilisu is located belonged to the Kakheti kingdom of Georgia, which was defeated by the Shah of Iran. In the 18th century and until the mid-19th century, Ilisu was the capital of the Ilisu Sultanate, whose influence included lands both on this side of the Main Caucasus Range and on the opposite slope (now the village of Tsakhur in Dagestan). The Ilisu Sultanate was in close relations with neighboring khanates and feudal state formations on the territory of modern Dagestan and Northern Azerbaijan. At the same time, there were contacts with the Russians, who began the conquest of Transcaucasia at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1844, at the height of the war between the Caucasian mountaineers under the leadership of Imam Shamil against the tsarist troops, the Ilisu Sultan Daniyal-bek swore allegiance to Shamil, but Ilisu was soon taken by storm by Russian troops. Today, in addition to Azerbaijanis, Ilisu is home to the Tsakhurs, one of the ancient indigenous peoples of the Caucasus, living both in the north of Azerbaijan and on the other side of the ridge in Dagestan.

32. Ilisu is a very colorful mountain village.

33. The village is located right next to the Main Caucasus Range.

34. The height of the mountains here is almost 4000 meters, and the border of Azerbaijan and Russia runs along the tops of the ridge. On the other side of the mountains, behind the ridge, just ten kilometers from here in a straight line - Dagestan and its colorful mountain villages of Muslah, Gelmets, Kurdul, ancient Tsakhur. The peoples living on both sides of the Greater Caucasus are historically related (one could say they are generally one people - the Tsakhurs), but today they are separated by a border. The Tsakhurs living on the Azerbaijani side have long been assimilated and for the most part consider themselves Azerbaijanis. At the same time, locals said that in the early 90s, when the Karabakh war was going on in Azerbaijan, many people, fearing being drafted there, and simply fleeing the hunger and horrors of those war years, risked their lives crossing the ridge covered with glaciers and went to the other side, to Dagestan. Today such a transition is hardly possible - the state border is strictly guarded.

35. Border military post at the end of the valley - there is no road further. Behind the post, the vastness of the Greater Caucasus goes up, and on the other side of the ridge is Dagestan, Russia.

37. Ilisu Friday Juma Mosque of the 18th century is an architectural monument of national importance.

38. Ruins of a 19th century fortress.

39. Ilisu is located 8 kilometers from the peaks of the Main Caucasus Range (along which the border passes) - in picturesque place where two mountain valleys meet. There are snow-covered mountains all around, and there is practically no fog here. Stunningly beautiful!

40. In the depths of the first valley through which the Kurmukhchay River flows, at an altitude of 1600 meters, there is the mountain village of Sarybash, inhabited by Tsakhurs. From there, the ridge and border are even closer, only 4-5 kilometers. The locals offered to take us there in UAZs, but it was time for us to go back.

41. And this is the second mountain valley, also coming from the Main Caucasus Range and connecting with the first.

45. On the slopes of the mountains, this interesting structure caught my attention.

46. ​​As the driver explained to us, this is an old brick kiln - a former local brick factory.

It was time to return to Sheki and then take the bus to Baku. Mountainous Azerbaijan is extremely interesting - it would be great to come back here and see other colorful villages: Zagatala, Jar, Khinalig, stunning Lahij, famous for its copper craftsmen; Guba with its unique Jewish settlement. And in general, there are still many things left unexplored in Azerbaijan - Mingachevir with a huge reservoir surrounded by mountains on the Kura River, the second most populous city of Ganja and Lake Goygol on the border with Karabakh (despite its front-line status, the lake is now open to tourists); It would be very interesting to go to the Nakhichevan enclave, separated from the rest of Azerbaijan and surrounded by Armenia, Turkey and Iran. But that’s for another time, but this week we’ve had a lot of fun traveling and seeing. Azerbaijan is a cool country where you want to return!


ZJuzer writes: asketic-travel
About five years ago I accidentally ended up at Illusion to watch a Turkish film, the name of which I no longer remember. What stuck in my memory the most is winter views provincial Turkish village where the action took place. The Middle East suddenly appeared before me not bright and serenely cheerful, but everyday, gloomy, chilled. There was some kind of revelation in this, as happens at a party, when everyone has gone away, but the host invited you to stay, and you no longer see the external gloss of the holiday, but the internal way of the family, real life. Since then I really wanted to see something like this with my own eyes.

The opportunity to realize this little dream presented itself as unexpectedly as the sale of Aeroflot tickets to Azerbaijan. Having left the Caspian Sea coast from chilly and windy Baku inland, to Sheki, I decided to get to the mountain village of Kish, famous for its ancient Albanian church. And this is what came out of it.

The search for a Russian-speaking aborigine in sleepy Sunday Sheki led me to a short, dry aksakal who stood in front of me and wrinkled his forehead tensely.
- How? Quiche? I don't know this one...
“The Albanian church should be there,” I said.
- A-ah-ah! Wow! - the old man was happy. - Kshch! Kshshch - it's over there, you need a minibus.

With its chains rattling, the minibus, but in fact an old GAZ bus, crawled out along the packed snow road and, groaning and sneezing, rolled into the mountains. On the way, I saw a minibus lying in a ditch, convincingly refuting the tourist myth that locals in their cars never fly off the road under any circumstances - they are so nimble. They're still flying out. While I was in Azerbaijan, news was constantly circulating on the local Internet about such flights on slippery and very dangerous mountain roads.

The journey did not last long; after just twenty minutes, the car with a hysterical roar reached final stop- a small area on the mountainside. A couple of shops and a slippery path leading up. The rest was hidden in a light haze.


As I walked up the path, I saw around me exactly what I was going to see, and a joyful anticipation filled me.


In the photo it looks like there is smoke coming from the right. Before my eyes, a fog did not descend on the village, as happens in cities, but a fog crept in, as happens in the mountains. Just a minute passed, and visibility was reduced to hundreds of meters.

In such conditions, it was out of the question to see the church from afar, as travelers who have already visited Kish write. But the church was not my only goal and I simply delved into the labyrinth of confusing village streets and wandered through them until I came across Alik. Alik - local. About forty, thin, short, wearing training pants, a sheepskin coat and a cap. Of course, Alik’s brother works at the market two steps from my house in Moscow. First, Alik offered to come over for tea (I ask from the bottom of my heart), then he walked me to the church, because in my wanderings I had gone to the opposite end of the village.

Probably the last thing you expected was to meet Thor Heyerdahl here! Nevertheless, this is exactly him, a great friend of the Azerbaijani people. Having examined the monuments of Caucasian Albania, Thor Heyerdahl put forward a bold theory that the Norwegians are descendants of the Caucasian Albanians. Azerbaijanis are very flattered by this theory, because it is nice to have such a nice and prosperous people as the Norwegians as younger brothers.

Thor Heyerdahl visited Azerbaijan and Kish itself and participated in supporting the restoration of the church, the completion of which he did not live long enough to see.

Here is the church itself. Her appearance has been the subject of intense controversy since it underwent extensive restoration a few years ago. Many argue that due to the excessive zeal of the restorers, the historical appearance of the church and the original finishing details were destroyed. It is difficult for me to judge this; I can only provide a link to a photograph showing the appearance of the church before restoration.

Pay attention to the transparent canopies at the bottom of the picture and under the southern wall of the temple. Beneath them lie the bones of the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis, Caucasian Albanians. This, in a way, is also a surprise: to dig up the bones of our ancestors and leave them lying open to all the winds - somehow this seemed to me not like us, not like the Caucasians.

Previously, it seemed to me that such fun with bones was characteristic primarily of Catholics: the Parisian catacombs, the army of Palermo mummies led by the charming little Rosalia Lombardo, Czech and Polish ossuaries... However, a couple of years ago in Murom I had a chance to visit the ossuary of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery , and now in the Caucasus I came across this strange decoration.

Cozily curled up, a Caucasian Albanian smiles benevolently from a stone bag at the entrance to the church. All the Azerbaijanis with whom I had to communicate on this trip reported to me in detail that, firstly, all (all!) Caucasian Albanians were two meters twenty centimeters tall, and secondly, they were blue-eyed blonds. Both remarks are quite remarkable.

As for height, Caucasians like to decorate their stories with “absolutely accurate” figures, such as the height of Albanians, the speed that a month ago the son of a local oligarch achieved in his BMW before crashing into a pillar, the amount that the oligarch dad paid for this BMW , the weight of the giant record-breaking flag fluttering over Baku, etc. All these bright and stupid figures are carefully stored in the people's memory, passed from mouth to mouth with impeccable accuracy and are never questioned. Let it be obvious that the entire nation could not have a height of 2.20 m - it doesn’t matter, it says 2.20, it means 2.20. And don't argue.

It’s also interesting about blondes. The point is not whether the Albanians were blondes or not (apparently they were), but the pride with which Azerbaijanis talk about the anthropometric perfection of their ancestors (and many other Caucasians too). I used to think that local beauty standards should be determined by the type of appearance that prevails in a given area at a given stage in history. That is, if everyone is small and narrow-eyed (dark-haired and hook-nosed or black and curly-haired), then the local perception of beauty is formed within the framework of this particular type.

But no. Every now and then I heard dramatic confessions from the Chinese, Thais, Arabs, Turks, many representatives of the indigenous peoples of Russia, and Central Asian Turks on the topic of how imperfect they are in comparison with European people. This idea was most succinctly expressed by one bilious Turk, whom I met on a November trip. Once at dinner, as usual, he said gloomily, looking at his wife sitting next to him: “My wife is a freak... Yes, I’m a freak myself. Strictly speaking, we Turks are all freaks.”

But the Azerbaijanis were lucky: their ancestors were blue-eyed, blond, two-twenty tall.

However, let's return to the purpose of the trip. Here is the interior view of the church. Now there is something like a museum here. The museum, frankly speaking, is very poor, you can’t even call it an exhibition; rather, it is illustrative material on the topic of Caucasian Albania. Disputes regarding the damage caused by the restoration also affect the interior of the church, which is said to have also been badly damaged.

When I went outside, I saw that the fog had almost cleared, and the slopes of the mountains became visible again.

A typical gate with a small door.


The young man squatted down in the middle of the street for a reason. He dragged a huge log onto a high hill, which would later be sawn and go into the oven. But the journey was not yet completed, and the young man sat down to rest before dragging the log further along the street, then fifty meters down, then to the side, and then onto another high icy hillock. I just followed in his footsteps, it turned out that it was not an easy path. Still, patriarchal life in the fresh mountain air has its drawbacks.

A solid village fence has little in common with the usual dacha picket fence.



Those who have read Leonid Solovyov’s outstanding book “The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin” remember the characteristic character described in “The Enchanted Prince”: the water distributor. The most honest and careful peasant was appointed as the distributor of water from the village ditch, who made sure that everyone got a fair amount of precious moisture from the Bai spring. Now this process, thank God, is somewhat automated.



An interesting school poster: the poster, judging by Heydar Aliyev’s signature, is relatively new, but the school uniform is still Soviet-style.



My walk is coming to an end. I walked out onto the path leading back to bus stop. On the opposite slope there is a wide village cemetery.

There is already a mashturka downstairs, it comes from the Sheki market, and someone brought fresh food, and someone brought fresh news.

An old tradition of building public water sources in a modern design. In the upper right corner is a commemorative granite slab with engraved text.

Well, right at the stop, the last vivid impression from Kish is the men's salon. It is here that the beauties of Kishi get their hair done in the latest Kishi fashion.

How to get there
From the northern part of Sheki to Kish there are minibuses No. 15 (on besh) and No. 23 (yirmi uch). Travel time is 15-20 minutes, traffic interval is also 20-25 minutes. The fare costs 20 gapiks (about 8 rubles). IN good weather the church, they say, is visible from the road. In bad weather, you can follow the signs or ask the locals about the Albanian church - Alban Mabedi. Entrance to the church is 2 manats (about 75 rubles), filming is the same.

About five years ago I accidentally ended up at Illusion to watch a Turkish film, the name of which I no longer remember. What stuck in my memory most were the winter views of the provincial Turkish village where the action took place. The Middle East suddenly appeared before me not bright and serenely cheerful, but everyday, gloomy, chilled. There was some kind of revelation in this, as happens at a party, when everyone has gone away, but the host invited you to stay, and you no longer see the external gloss of the holiday, but the internal way of the family, real life. Since then I really wanted to see something like this with my own eyes.

The opportunity to realize this little dream presented itself as unexpectedly as the sale of Aeroflot tickets to Azerbaijan. Having left the Caspian Sea coast from chilly and windy Baku inland, to Sheki, I decided to get to the mountain village of Kish, famous for its ancient Albanian church. And this is what came out of it.

The search for a Russian-speaking aborigine in sleepy Sunday Sheki led me to a short, dry aksakal who stood in front of me and wrinkled his forehead tensely.
- How? Quiche? I don't know this one...
“The Albanian church should be there,” I said.
- A-ah-ah! Wow! - the old man was happy. - Kshch! Kshshch - it's over there, you need a minibus.

Rattling with chains, the minibus, but in fact an old GAZ bus, crawled along the packed snow road from Sheki and, groaning and sneezing, rolled into the mountains. On the way, I saw a minibus lying in a ditch, convincingly refuting the tourist myth that locals in their cars never fly off the road under any circumstances - they are so nimble. They're still flying out. While I was in Azerbaijan, news was constantly circulating on the local Internet about such flights on slippery and very dangerous mountain roads.

The journey did not last long; after just twenty minutes, the car, with a hysterical roar, reached the final stop - a small platform on the mountainside. A couple of shops and a slippery path leading up. The rest was hidden in a light haze.


As I walked up the path, I saw around me exactly what I was going to see, and a joyful anticipation filled me.

Pay attention to the transparent canopies at the bottom of the picture and under the southern wall of the temple. Beneath them lie the bones of the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis, Caucasian Albanians. This, in a way, is also a surprise: to dig up the bones of our ancestors and leave them lying open to all the winds - somehow this seemed to me not like us, not like the Caucasians.

Those who have read Leonid Solovyov’s outstanding book “The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin” remember the characteristic character described in “The Enchanted Prince”: the water distributor. The most honest and careful peasant was appointed as the distributor of water from the village ditch, who made sure that everyone got a fair amount of precious moisture from the Bai spring. Now this process, thank God, is somewhat automated.

An interesting school poster: the poster, judging by Heydar Aliyev’s signature, is relatively new, but the school uniform is still Soviet-style.