Azerbaijan was the second country we visited in the Caucasus, though it became the final chapter in how we chose to write about the region. It doesn’t ease you in. Contrasts sit close together here — fire and stone, belief and industry, memory and modernity — without attempting reconciliation.
We moved outward from Baku rather than through it, tracing older roads and peripheral landscapes. Towns like Sheki revealed themselves slowly, asking for time we didn’t always have. Elsewhere, the land asserted itself more forcefully — mud rising from the ground, flames burning without source, rock carrying marks older than context.
What follows are days shaped by movement rather than mastery. We didn’t try to explain Azerbaijan as a whole. We let it remain uneven, occasionally uncomfortable, and deliberately unresolved. That felt truer to the place — and a fitting way to complete the Caucasus.