There Will Be Krov: Oil-soaked Travels Through Azerbaijan

(the original article appeared in The Exile magazine’s issue 285 for March 20 – April 2, 2008)

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — This is it, I thought. I’ve found it. The Holy Post-Soviet Travel Grail...

I stood atop a massive concrete block, several feet off the ground deep in the Balakhani oil fields, just north of Baku, the seaside capital of Azerbaijan, just voted the world’s most polluted city. Before me the rolling hills of the city dump smoldered, churning enough fume across the horizon to erase the city skyline. Behind the shrouded Baku apartment blocs I knew spread an improbably blue Caspian Sea. But the Caspian felt like several planets away as I surveyed a deathscape of trash fires, abandoned oil derricks, ghost processing plants, and crumbling concrete structures with no obvious purpose. In every direction, garbage, oil pipes, and the decaying carcasses of Baku street dogs and other mammalian vermin who came here to scavenge and never left.