So yesterday, myself, Anna, two other American girls, one Azeri girl, and a 55 year old Korean Professor (Oh Taw Dong, who was absolutely hilarious) left Baku around 6:30 in the morning (that meant a 5:15 wake up call for me) to head to Laza, a remote mountain village that was the beginning of what we believed to be a nice mountain hike though the Caucuses. Let me begin by stating that the hike was absolutely beautiful, hands-down the best scenery I have had during my time here (despite what my last post said) . I will put pictures up, but they dont come close to doing the place justice.
Well, so we started out, and it was great. Then, our guide decided we didnt have the correct permits to hike through what is apparently a National Park (no signs, no paths, no anything). So after two hours or so, we had to go straight, no paths, almost nothing flat, and no end in sight. Thus I named it.....
This is the mountain that never ends....Its goes on and on my friends....Some people started climbing it not knowing what to do, and they will keep on climbing it forever just because....This is the mountain that never ends....
Anyways, you get the idea. By the time we reached the top (definitely not the end) multiple (I stopped counting at two plus of walking straight up hills, no real switchbacks, paths, or anything) hours later, to say I was exhausted would be an understatement (like saying getting shot is merely a flesh wound....). My description of how I felt at the top went something like this..."Well, at first I felt great. Then, about 30 minutes later, my heart rate started rising. Sometime after that, my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. Awhile after that, I could feel my heart pounding in my temples. An hour later, I felt my heart beating in my calves. Finally, upon reaching the top of our hike, I felt like someone had taken a fillet knife to my calves, taken them out of my legs, put them on a cutting board, and taken a meat hammer to them for about 15 minutes".
Ok so maybe that is a flair for the dramatic, but I had to try to entertain myself after enduring those last couple of hours. The Korean professor, who has run 7 marathons in his life, told me he felt about like he does on kilometer number 30 out of 36 upon reaching the top (and yes, that's him, smoking a cigarette). Anyways, it was difficult, but quite rewarding. Right before getting to the top, we were covered by clouds for about 20 minutes that limited our vision to maybe 100 yards, thus showing why the place is appropriately named Cloudcatcher Canyon.
Then we began out hike down to our village, which our guide tried to tell us would take around 2 hours. Well, it was steep, and as we found out later, he took a a pretty slow route so as to avoid to "military", which we never saw but that he was continuously afraid of. The going was slow, with three girls in sandals and one who was terrified to walk downhill on her own right. Well two hours turned into four, and then darkness began to set in. I was back helping the one girl who didnt like to hike on her own, and I came up to the guide, and the girl (who was Azeri) translated for me and told me he wanted to wait till it was dark to finish our hike (sounds like a great idea right) so as to avoid the military a little more.
Needless to say that hacked me off, so we trudged ahead, and ending up hiking in the dark (with two or three cell phones as lights) for around 2 hours. The girls were rightfully terrified, and at one point, our guide wanted to take the horse (with one of the girls on it) on his own path, thereby spiting the group up (in the darkness no less, which he slowed us down for). Again, I was pretty ticked, yelled at him (in English, but I think he got the point), took the reins from him, and started back down towards the village we could see light up in the distance. At this point I would have liked smack out "guide" (if you can call him that) with a billy club, but a) I didnt have one, and b) decided that might not be very culturally sensitive.
Anywho, we eventually made it safe and sound, spent the night in the village, and left at 5 am this morning to head back to Baku. This is a pretty bad description of the day, but I'm pretty tired at this point, but alas, we all made it safely and Ill be back in the States tomorrow.
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