Azerbaijan

Baku caught me off guard. I'd expected something quieter — a post-Soviet city with oil money slapped onto it — but walking out of the Old City gate onto Nizami Street on a clear morning, that limestone boulevard stretching ahead under a deep blue sky, I realised this place had been carefully put together. The old tsarist-era buildings with their carved balconies stand maybe a hundred metres from glass towers shaped like flames. That contrast kept hitting me at every corner, and I kept stopping to photograph it.

The Heydar Aliyev Center is the kind of building you don't fully believe until you're standing in front of it. Zaha Hadid's flowing white curves rising out of green lawn — it looks like something rendered, not built. And then just nearby, the Carpet Museum shaped like a rolled-up carpet, with the Flame Towers floating behind it in the haze. Baku is genuinely proud of its architecture, and honestly it should be.

I had tea at a place with a proper Azerbaijani spread — black tea in those thin-waisted armudu glasses, rose petal jam, sugar cubes, the cast-iron pot still warm on its stand. That table was one of the more quietly satisfying moments of the trip. The city outside moves fast, but the tea ritual slows everything right down.