Pelotome –
around Azerbaijan on a bicycle.
“Mine is the first bicycle the Tiflis & Baku Railroad has ever carried.
Having no precedent to govern themselves by, and, withal, ever eager to fleece and overcharge, the railway officials charge double rates for it; that is, twice as much as an ordinary package of the same weight.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1888).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
June 1886 – Published 1888.
Around the World on a Bicycle.
“From Teheran to Yokohama” was the second illustrated volume of Tom Steven’s pioneering ride around the globe and covers the second half of his journey on a fifty-inch Pope “Columbia” high-wheeler, from Persia to Japan.
Arriving at “the great petroleum port of Baku” on a Russian Caspian Sea steamer from Bandar Gaz in Iran, via Türkmenbaşy in Turkmenistan, after he had been refused passage through Afghanistan, the Englishman visits a barber and explores the city by foot for a few hours before catching a train to Tibilsi, Georgia, on his much diverted onward journey towards India; commenting on the “peasants, ragged and more wretched-looking than any seen in Persia,” and the “most unlovely clusters of mud hovels imaginable” passed along the way.
- By Thomas Stevens.
- Published by Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London.
ROUNDABOUT TO INDIA.
“Baku looks the inartistic, business-like place it is, occupying the base of brown, verdureless hills.
Scarcely a green thing is visible to relieve the dull, drab aspect roundabout, and only the scant vegetation of a few gardens relieves the city a trifle itself.
To the left of the city the slopes of one hill are dotted with neatly kept Christian cemeteries, and the slopes of another display the disorderly multitude of tombstones characteristic of the graveyards of Islam.
On the right are seen numbers of big iron petroleum-tanks similar to those in the oil regions of Pennsylvania.
Numbers of petroleum-schooners are riding at anchor in the harbor, and two or three small steamers are moored to the dock.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1888).