Sheki

En route to the Azeri-Georgian border, we spent 2 nights in Sheki. Sheki is cupped in beautiful wooded mountains with an 18th century palace, picturesque old town (with plenty of melons being sold by the roadside for dirt cheap prices) and a characteristic caravaneserai (travellers' inn which olden day Silk Road traders would stop and stay at). Unfortunately, the caravaneserai was full so we homestayed with a family nearby instead. We enjoyed an evening meal at the garden restaurant at the caravaneserai on the first night with Bjorn and Christian, two German backpackers who also stayed at the same homestay as us.

The great thing about a homestay is that we could catch up with our chores and use the family's big buckets and clothes line to hand wash and dry our clothes. There are plenty of unglamorous aspects to backpacking too!

Kenneth got addicted to the sweet coated nuts that the little confectionery shop along the old town shopping strip produced. We also sampled extraordinarily schweeeeeeeeet baclava from this shop. The charm of this street lies in the fact that the cobbler, the music instrument mender, the butcher, the tailor, the confectioner, the copper tooler, the antique restorer ... all still go about their day like they did during the glory days of the ancient Silk Road.