05-JUL-C-8

RIDE OUT AT A GALLOP AND TROT DOWN THE BABACHAY RIVER CANYON TO THE VILLAGE OF “DARK”,

FAREWELL TO GUIDES, RIDE TO GUBA,

LUNCH TWICE AT BABA OCAGI WITH THE BIG BOSS,

AND ARRIVE BACK IN BAKU AT ANOTHER ELITE HOTEL

FOR A MUCH-NEEDED SHOWER AND LAUNDARY,

NOT TO MENTION, LICKING WOUNDS

July 31, 2005

I am being hustled off the mountain with the claim that the Azeri guides have not seen their families for an extended period and must get home to do the haying and other farm chores that are due while they are tied up in the last of the hunts in guiding me. My alleged ten day expedient into the Big Caucasus which is part of the Boyuk Qafqaz Daglari range is now reduced beyond even the five day hunt that was explained as aborted by the single successful shot that scored the trophy Tur. There was a push over night to flesh out the cape and to boil the skull and to get all in readiness for the transit to Gina Tyler’s Eastern Shore Taxidermy along with the proper data for the plaque that will be part of the exhibit. I tried to see if there were a few or even just one of the guides who might want to stay behind for a few days since I did not believe we needed more than a day or two in Baku to have time for the minimal tourism necessary for the capital. We had been told to get off the mountain so as to be able to empty the camp so that it could be closed out since I was the last hunter. It turns out that there were two more arriving later, one Vladimir from Moscow and a Gary parker from Nebraska, so that did not turnout to be the right story either. What seems to be the case is that Bahlul wanted to get a quick kill as soon as possible to get the most tips and least time out of the hunter, and he was the one who forbad the TV cameraman to accompany me. He had also asked me for the Bushnell range finder since he added that they did not have such devices in Azerbaijan and he surely would be able to use it. After giving it to him, and his thanking me for it, I suddenly realized what he was doing—he was designating his own rather generous tip for cutting my hunt short, declaring how the hunt would be carried out, forbidding a spot and stalk, and also interdicting the single most important reason for my being up here, to shoot a Tur on TV for the DVD and TV special. So, I said I did not want to leave my equipment scattered all around and would take the range finder back to Baku myself.

Emil was the translator who had stayed with George when he was here, and now was supposed to accompany me and Patrick out of the mountains and the one who was absolutely obsessed over the tips he had gone out to negotiate with the many guides and helpers he designated for me. He counted up fourteen people whom I had to tip at fifty dollars per day, and insisted I rollout the cash before any of them went down mountain. I explained I did not have that much US currency rolling around like some of his prior contacts, and that I would do the right thing by them, but not to promise that they would be getting any cash more than I was prepared to give however not on the mountain where I was not standing next to an ATM machine. /What I DID have were several envelopes of
AmEx traveler’s checks, and I gave those to him to distribute according to a list of names and who had deserved extra help. He renegotiated with the group who did not understand the process, and remained standing by expecting US currency to be spontaneously generated. He kept adding other charges and asking only that I write another one of those checks—even after I had told him multiple times that he had ALL the guaranteed AmEx bearer checks that were guaranteed that I had got for both Azerbaijan and Africa and he now had all of them including all those for Africa as well. ”Ok, so write a couple more for the drivers and for me and for Bahlul”--- “you mean the one who shortened my hunt and spoiled the filming of the most spectacular shot that would have made superb video?”

We had worked out that I would pay the remaining cash I had for a single guide to accompany me and Patrick on a two day climb around the mountain to see if we could spot and stalk, and mainly just get good video. So, since he knew I was holding out a couple of US $100 bills, he suggested that I give them up now so he could distribute them among the hunters who would not string him up if he did not produce what he was over-promising them==and then don’t forget the drivers you haven’t yet met.

Besides, a big four day rain was coming, and the mountains are very treacherous when that happens since they are so slippery that the hunters cannot go out. Before you arrived there were two Polish hunters who never got out at all since it rained the whole time. For the record, it was a sunny day with no rain for the final day and each day subsequently so this was a false prediction made up at the moment to move us off the mountain for our safety sake. One look at me would convince someone that I did not intimidate easily.

Last night there were two bits of entertainment for the guides who remained. Since they were still convinced by Emil that there was US cash money forthcoming if he negotiated further, some of them who were allegedly ready to go down mountain stayed back—rather giving up on the rain threat story. One was Akhbar John who was treated to the viewing of himself in the Scree Scramble on the TV replay. The second entertainment which fascinated the guides was to see Patrick going along at the generator powered lights and picking off moths and eating about twenty of them, which taste like nuts, he had said.

During the day that I was on the mountain with all the guides that were available, Patrick was exiled to the camp, and climbed up to a waterfall at which he had shot some good footage, but he recorded over it when he returned to Baku when he went out in pursuit of action and “got lucky.”

RIDE OUT AT A HARD TROT

CONCLUDING AT A FULL OUT GALLUP

The trophy was still being worked on at the last moment before it was put into a sack, and packed up in the panniers with my backpack, now split along one seam which will need to be repaired as soon as I get to a point either here or in Eritrea. As I had to flog the horse at first to get him to walk among the roller bearing rocks of the river bed, he was much more enthusiastic the closer he got to the home village of Dark. AS we passed the confluence of the canyons at Kalaj, I realized that the Fuji camera I had carried on a lanyard around my neck had a battery going dead. As I drove another couple of miles, I got to a sandy and more muddy track along the rocky river bed, and the horse began to trot. There were two problems with this speed. First, I had picked up a large splinter in the left thigh trousers which then started lacerating my skin as the horse was in a trot, which I could only modify a little by “posting” in an Azeri saddle. The second problem was that I had some items that I use often in pockets at close range—like the digital camera and tape recorder. But in the hammering of the trot breaking out in a gallop, the items worked their way out of the pockets and could not be stuffed back in. It is not a pretty sight to try to juggle such devices as one is reining in a horse eager to get rid of the rider. Rahim, one of the guides I do not know well whom I am nonetheless tipping generously by Emil’s arrangements took a header over the front of his horse in the muddy track as his horse lost his feet on a gallop—a source of good fun for the others.

When I got just below the town, I thought it would be a good idea to use the digital camera to take a picture or two of me on the horse before giving up the mount. Rahim decided he wanted to use the camera. Somehow he pushed the dial to portrait which made everything into vignettes and none of the pictures were seen as anything but a whiteout, so we had to remount and try again. There were handshakes and farewells among the guides and the single hunter—me. They looked warily at me, since they are walking away without any cash, whereas all the checks, a couple hundred US dollars and about fifty dollars worth of Manat were being held by Emil, and I think they may have trusted me more than Emil, but would have more recourse on Emil who will be back up here next week. So, we got into the pickup truck with a new driver, and drove down the mountains along a different route since the way we had come up earlier had “slipped.”

This meant that we could see large sheep herder encampments leading large herds of sheep down to the Babachay River to drink. The tents of the shepherds were up on the high banks and the sheep would follow each other in a cascade of choking dust. We accelerated as we came further down mountain until we came to an area where we were seeing ordinary sedans coming up for a Sunday picnic in the mountains with family groupings. As we came around a corner, we entered into a “Glenwood Canyon –like” cleft which let the road through to reach the first pavement we would see. We raced along at the same breakneck speed the prior driver had used in coming up the mountain when the radiator boiled. We were headed to Quba and there we would go to a wooded area that was in a shaded grove to sit at a table high on a hillside, which would be death to anyone other than young boys who were our waiters running back and forth up steep steps. The name of our outdoor restaurant was “Gechresh” a famous glade where people have come for a special dinner form Russia 100 km from the border, and up form Baku to escape the summer heat. The name of the specific restaurant is “Baba Ocagi” Father Ocagi—now I understand why Akhbar John referred to me as Baba, whereas in Kilimanjaro’s climb I was BAbu= Grandfather.

We had fruit and veggies, with a “banana beer” as well as juice and sparkling water along with the usual kebab dinner. We had a plague of bees who fell into the sweet drinks I had and I had noticed along the glade in coming in to Baba Ocagi that there were netted gazebos for this reason. In the parking lot were the reflections of the “Great Divide” of Asia and Europe here at the Quba region---half of the parking lot were Ladas and the other half Mercedes.—the technology reflects the geography division here in Azerbaijan. We had quite a long time to admire these differences, despite looking rather grubby as the unwashed hunters coming down from the mountains, since we found that the keys had been locked inside the pickup truck. So, there was a process for several hours as they tried to jimmy the door. In that time, we were summoned to the special table of Yullat and one of his production managers who was dining here this evening near his home in Quba, before going on to Baku the following day and then to Moscow in a few days. His company holdings of AYF include meat packing, manufacturing, tourism, hunting and a half dozen other business interests. He saluted me as a humanitarian operating around the world, and he wanted to show me pictures he had taken of himself an former president George Bush on the occasion when he had visited the SCI convention in Nevada. We exchanged toasts and had to do vodka shots, and even eat a few mutton kebabs after just having completed the same process of eating and drinking to satiety. During our time in staying there in the hillside tables, it rained on us, and we departed in the darkening skies as we drove through the industrial wasteland of the Soviet era petrochemical “new city” of “Sumgayit”—still the second biggest city in Azerbaijan despite the shrinking of its polluting industry since the Soviet collapse.

At one point when Patrick wanted to make a pee stop, we pulled up alongside the marshy papyrus reeds, and I gave a little TV interview on “Death in the Long Grass” and described the Sudh I had just been in in Sudan along the White Nile. I had also done a little comic relief in the parking lot of the Baba Ocagi in pointing out that all the cars seem to have driven over form Arizona, since they all had AZ license plate designations. I figured the market around New Mexico from which Patrick comes might like a little local humor.

ARRIVE AT HOTEL ELITE

FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS OF UNKNOWN “TOURING”—

AT LEAST A CHANCE TO RE-GROUP FROM THE HUNT,

AND FOR PATRICK TO GO PROWLING TO SCORE

On entry into Baku, we got back to the same hotel Elite I had entered upon arrival in Azerbaijan originally although it hardly looked the same. As soon as I got the chance, I walked into the shower fully clothed with the outfit I had needed laundered and hung it out to dry. I grouped the film and digital photography together and unpacked the hunting gear which I put away unlaundered for a later attack at the larger problem of repairs and tidying up the gear—likely to occur when I go on the next hike up the mountain in Asmara to visit the males only fastness of the special church at the summit.

Patrick made his own connections. After going to the bar in the Hotel Elite he was directed to a Discothèque by taxi and there he found what he was looking for and returned with her to the Elite, and was not seen again until late in the afternoon the following day. He seems to have lost all his money and cannot tip or pay for any of the services he is still continuing to exploit here at the Hotel Elite, where the staff is quite aware of what tricks he is playing and planning, It seems that the most I might hope for here is a time to re-group on my own to prepare for the next adventure in Africa after putting together an account of the Azerbaijan Tur Hunt, and then to see if there is some minimal Baku Tourism to be enjoyed before the grand climax—dinner at the Karavanserai with belly dancers and whatever can be gleaned from the Azerbaijani capital in the rather longer unscheduled interval since we were pulled off Bobadog Mountain early—the Big Caucasus—a measure of successful prowess exhibited there. At least this may afford time to lick wounds and patch a few, and send out a few messages by email and postcard with promises of later show and tell!

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