The Caucasus Region includes the countries of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia and are marked by the Lower Caucasus and Greater Caucasus Mountains. The region is sandwiched between the Black Sea to the West, the Caspian Sea to the East, and bordered by Russia to the North. To the South lies Turkey (on the West) and Iran (to the East). All three countries were part of the former Soviet Union, and won their independence in the early 90’s. The region is multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, and has been beset by conflict throughout the ages, the target of conquest by Russia, the Ottomans and the Persians.
We wanted to visit Georgia, [see “Why Travel”] and in our minds, no visit to the Caucasus region would be complete without visiting all three countries.
It was striking to us how different each of the three countries were, despite their being geographically connected. Georgia and Armenia are Christian countries and both proudly proclaim being the first Christian Nation. Azerbaijan has a predominantly Islamic populace, but has a secular government and did not have the call to prayer calls throughout the country as we have seen in other Muslim nations. Azerbaijan was very wealthy due to rich oil deposits and was starting to model itself after the Gulf region countries of UAE and Qatar with shiny glass towers sprouting up everywhere. Armenia was much poorer and still struggling to find its footing after its independence. Armenia and Azerbaijan were in a war with each other, and the Azerbaijani’s we met called Armenia “our enemy country” in normal conversations. Georgia fell in the middle economically and did not have a beef with either Armenia or Azerbaijan, and reserved their political enmity for Russia.
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