An Unexpected Host In Gabele

Stew and I arrived in Gabele a few days ago, we headed straight to a cafe for dinner.

The staff in the cafe didn’t speak any English so I signalled that we wanted food. Namik (pictured) stood up to help us. He took us through to the kitchen and showed us all they had to offer. We chose our food and sat down to eat.

Namik sat down to join us, it turned out it was his cafe. Namik was a single man and lived near his mother who ran the pharmacy next door. His two sons were energetically moving the pharmacy stock from one store to the other (one store was closing).

Namik told us about his sister who lived in Finland. She spoke very good English and later he put her on the phone. She explained that Namik wanted to host us for one night. She said he had a house less than 10kms away. We were thrilled. She explained that we needed to go to a petrol station 5kms away (back in the direction we’d come in – and downhill). When we got there we’d need to call someone. This posed a problem as we hadn’t managed to get a SIM card for Azerbaijan. Plan B was to head for the garage and look out for a man who would flag us down. This man was called Nazim.

We headed down the hill hoping and hoping this plan worked out because if it didn’t we had to go back up the hill! The pin took us to a spot that was not a petrol station as we expected, oh great. Using good ol’ common sense we fearfully carried on downhill another 1km. Please don’t be that we have to cycle back uphill, not tonight. A man waved us down. Phew.

“Nazim?” We questioned

“Car…house…” he said with his little English.

We followed Nazim along a gravel path to a huge house with a beautiful garden. We were showed the downstairs and there were beds everywhere. The house was undergoing a full renovation and the walls were mostly plaster or in need of major works. I assume people worked on the house until late then just slept there.

Nazim took a glass to the sink and signalled that we should not drink the water – he was right aswell as the water had a bit of an odour. Still good enough for s cold shower! Nazim took a glass to the tap outside, filled it and drank from the glass to show us it was okay. Bless him!

With such a lot of space we emptied all of our things and repacked our panniers so we have more space for food now.

Sleeping in a large, empty, under-renovation house was a bit spooky! The beds were single but I squeezed myself into Stews bed, meaning that poor 6ft4 Stew didn’t have the best nights sleep!

The next morning we cycled up to the cafe to see Namik before we left. Sadly he wasn’t there but the staff looked after us very well. We left a note and some gifts to thank him for his kindness. We left our details too so hopefully we will hear from Namik again.