Travel to Qax, Azerbaijan.

Travel to Qax, Azerbaijan.

Dear guests, today I am starting a new blog about my travels over the world, starting from my own beautiful homeland Azerbaijan. 

I want to debut with a travel to Qax, that is the mountain region in the North-West part of Azerbaijan.
It is close to border with Russia and Georgia. Most interesting place in this region is the small village, named Ilisu. It is located in the deep dale, hidden between Caucasian mountains. As I heard it is impossible to see the Moon in winter nights in Ilisu. This village famous with it's signaling towers and with Soviet movie "Don't be afraid, we are together" which was recorded here. Unfortunately this movie in Russian language, and all links about it also in Russian.

This is the most famous signaling
tower, named "Sumu Qala". Qala actually means Tower.
It was reconstructed after 2000.

As it said tower was built in 17th century.

Below is another tower, unfortunately it is ruined. I am not sure about name, probably it is Javanshir's Tower.

And here is the view from tower to valley

There were more towers in ancient times, from main tower watchmen observer single road to the village. When enemy had appeared watchmen started to signalling from tower to tower, until the village center. Where special arsenal tower and canons were located, soldiers charged canons and fired the road. Usually one or two shots were enough to stop small horde. Since the village location and special signaling system it was impossible to attack it easily.

Arsenal:

Here is an ancient bridge, in ancient time single road to the Ilisu starts from this bridge. Now there is also another new road to the village.

People called it "Ulu" it means an ancient.

There are also a lot of nature beauties except historical sites. There are two rivers near the village. One is called "Qarachay" and second is called "Agchay", names are translated as Black river and White river. As it is easy to understand from the name black river is really black. In rain season a lot of soil get into the river, and change it's color to really black.  

Unfortunately, we had to cross this river, due to reach beautiful waterfall, on another side.

Waterfall located in very peaceful and quiet place, since it is location hard to reach, and just locals know the path to it. Waterfall has a number of steps, we could reach 4th step. Locals reach 6-7 steps, but no one reached the top step of fall. Here we approach it, the first and the smallest step.

Between step 2 and step 3, there is an interesting lodge, water made a deep hole in stone. One person could easily take a sit there, thus it is really looks like natural Jacuzzi in stone.

And here is this, step number 4. It is really cool! In the center of July when the weather is more than 30 degree, take a shower of cold as ice water. :)































Next we went to the biggest waterfall in the region, and probably the biggest in country. People called it Ram-Rama, I think it means roaring water, or something similar.

This photo was taken from the top of opposite mountain.



































Later we went to another waterfall, this time near the white river.

 Water in this river is always clear and fresh. If continue going across this river to the north. We could reach Holy place, called "Xamam" it means bath. There is a natural hot mineral springs. That is why it has so strange name. The path there is really hard, and takes about 6-10 hours to reach. Plus it is really hard to get there and could be dangerous. Thus local people consider this location as Holy place. It is prohibited to drink any alcohol there, as rumors said, once a company of young people went there with the wine and beer. They took the bath, and got drunk. As the results no one returned back, all of them were died in Agchay. This is only rumor, but since the road is really dangerous, drinking alcohol is very bad idea.

I could not know the name of this waterfall, I think it is not so popular.


































Close to the evening, we went to photo ancient temples.




There are a lot of ancient Albanian temples in this part of country. This temples are Christians temples. Actually it is possible that they are among the first Christian temples in the World.

This temple located on the top of hill, there is a beautiful view from the hill, and the temple very nice. But you should be careful, especially in summer time, there are could be a lot of snakes near the temple.

Another temple, located in the center of Qax city:

Below is just a few random photos from Ilisu village:

On the last day we saw a real night storm. Firstly the weather was fine, you can notice it with below pictures:

But, everything had changed in twenty minutes.

Dark clouds cowered the whole sky, it became as dark as darkest night, it started to roar as loud as thousand heavy trucks signalling together. Then it shoot with lighting, then it rained, despite of summer rain was cold. Storm was continuing for a 14 hours till the next afternoon. We were lucky, since we could reach house before it started.

Well, I finish now my short story about my travel to Qax. Next I am planning to write about my travels into Sheki and Ismayilli.

Thank you very much my dear readership.