Ganja

After leaving Johnny, I head to Ganja where the first hotel I walked into was incredibly expensive. The receptionist realises that there’s no way that I can afford to stay there (maybe my smell gave it away), she tells me about  the cheap hotel in Ganja (Hotel Kapaz) – Next to the statue of Nizami.

Unfortunately for the staff at the hotel, I meet a local Sabuhi, who invites me to stay with him (forewarning me that he lives like a poor student).

Poor guy, I help him devour some of his pomegranates and grapes.

In the evening, we proceed to make shashlyk and feast like kings. Left to right, Myself, Sabuhi and his room-mate Cesaret.

During the day, we take in most the sights of Ganja:

The puppet theatre – Sabuhi tells the performers who are rehearsing a new show that I’m a tourist and that I’m leaving before their next show. They let me watch the rehearsal and meet some of the stars of the show.

Senor Rooster at the Ganja Puppet Theatre.

The bottle house of Ganja, a sight that many locals don’t know. The owners said that the house was built as tribute to the son lost in WWII. Rocks and bottles were imported from various regions of the USSR. This place is seriously cool, I tried to get the owners keen on the idea of hosting Couch Surfers, they were more interested in smoking.

Look, it’s a flamingo chilling, I can watch these for hours.

The absolute must see sight of Ganja, Azerbaijan is the Mausoleum of famous Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi.

 

The story goes that they built the tomb on the sight of his father’s home town. They wanted to move the mausoleum into the centre of town (making it more accessible to tourists and others wanting to pay their respects). A series of misfortunate accidents occurred while setting up the mausoleum closer to the centre, so they left the mausoleum where it is now.

I also visited the museum in Ganja, where there is an exhibit dedicated to the Khojaly Massacre. Cesaret, Sabuhi’s room mate was from the region where the massacre occurred, and it was deeply saddening to see his reaction as he walked through the exhibit.

Addendum: After visiting the museum, I subsequently visited Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. While on a tour of the museum of Nagorno-Karabakh in Stepanakert, I asked the tour guide (a young 21yo girl) about the massacre and what her thoughts on it were. She adamantly stated that there was no massacre, that the civilians were shot by Azeri soldiers and that she couldn’t care less about what happened, a saddening truth highlighting how neither government is doing anything to prevent the youth feeling anger and wanting to gain “justice” for the war – I’d met plenty of Azeris and Armenians who had nothing but pure hatred for the other side and wished they would all be wiped out. Young and old had stories about how the other side persecuted them, justifying their hatred.

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