Skirting the Gulf with a day in Baku
I arrived in Azerbaijan on the evening of Nowruz. The timing was unintentional; in fact, had I realised my trip was to coincide with the weekend of the New Year, I probably would have arranged things a little differently. My original plan had been to fly to Islamabad via Sharjah on Sunday, but when Iran – in response to the recent US-Israeli offensive – began to launch strikes against its neighbours, my flight was cancelled. I scrambled at the last minute to figure out an alternative route, which eventually yielded the option of flying around the affected zones: From Baku to Tashkent and from Tashkent to Islamabad. Due to the timing of the flights, I ended up having one day to explore Baku and another two days in Tashkent.