Coppersmith in Lahic Village
Lachic, Azerbaijan
May 18, 2009
Lachic, Azerbaijan
May 18, 2009
The simple rainy days I spent in the mountain village of Lahic were the highlight of my trip to Azerbaijan. Getting there required a bumpy drive up a poorly maintained track that often impassible in the winter. Eventually the road brought me to the soggy bottom of this isolated village famous for it’s traditional crafts and lack of modernity. The streets (all two of them) are cobblestone, the water comes from spigots and the electricity comes when it feels like it. I’ve been to villages with a medieval standard of infrastructure before and most of the time it’s no more charming for the visitor than it is for the residents. But in Lahic people genuinely seem to like it this way.
I stayed in a room in a private house and bathed in the owners communal hamam. Bathing myself in the steamy stone cavern from buckets of hot water felt better than a hot tub at the Ritz. During the day I wandered the village stopping to smile at the craftsman hammering out copper samovars and the old men warming the benches of the tea house.
