December 9th, 2006 | categorizilation: all categories,Azerbaijan
Achim, a regular visitor and comment-poster on this site, has been extremely pro-active on my behalf, and a while ago contacted the Baku Bicycle Club and let them know that I was going to be travelling through the area. Andy Buckworth from the club kindly contacted me, and to cut a long story short, I am now staying with two of the club’s members, and last night had the opportunity to share some of my photos and experiences from the trip so far with the club members at a slide evening. The slide evening was organised to show slides from a recent mountain biking trip in Bhutan, to which four of the club members took part in.
The club is very active, with rides every weekend. I was lucky enough to strike a Saturday where the mountain biking route was flat and non-techincal, so I had the opportunity to join in on the fun.
The terrain here around Baku is generally hard-packed clay, and very flat. There are of course no fences, which makes cycling off-road a real joy. There are also some hills interspersed between the flats, which I can only imagine, and the club members assure me, is great fun on a mountain bike.
The ride followed the recently completed BTC Oil Pipeline for about 20km before leaving the maintenance road and looping back to where we started (near the BP Sangachal Terminal).
During the ride I discovered that Kyrgyzstan isn’t the only place with angry dogs. They must breed the dogs here in Azerbaijan with only one setting – attack! The fella below has been named ‘Spike’ by the Baku Bicycle Club – look at his collar to find out why.
What did the other cyclists think of the recumbent vehicle?
what do these people do for a living?
Do trees ever grow in these places? How do they manage to live in such barren landscapes? I still don't see how you can ride up hills on your bike. It defies logic!
Aunty Lyn, the other riders liked the bike, but did admit that it looked a little odd. I agree too. When I see photos of me on the thing, I think I look rediculous!
Carl, I intended to include that piece of info, but forgot. They all work for BP. BP has a big as oil rig in the Caspian that pumps more oil out of the seabed than all the other oil rigs on the Caspian combined. So there are about 1000 foreign BP employees in Baku.
Aunty Jenny, trees don't appear to grow at all. But the sheep seem to love it. So if you can stomach lots of mutton, you're set.
