From Shaki, we took a cab ride a few miles up the mountain to the Kish Village. This village is one of Azerbaijan's most historically and culturally significant locations. Like nearby Shaki, it was part of the hub of the area's Silk Road passage. Kish offers incredible views of the Caucasus and has a serene atmosphere. Kish has cobblestone streets, traditional Azerbaijani houses, a scenic landscape, clear mountain springs, lush forests, and warm hospitality. We experienced all of this in the Kish Village.

It started with our cab ride. Here, you can see Vicky with our cab driver and her very own cab. I'm not sure, but before driving her cab, I think she might have been a race car driver.

Kish Village is best known for the Kish Albanian Church. It has also been known as Church of Saint Eliseus, the Holy Mother of God Church, the Caucasian Albanian Apostolic Church, the Chalcedonian church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Georgian Orthodox Church.

At any rate, it's considered the oldest Albanian church in the Caucasus. It's thought to date back to the first century AD. Objects, however, have been found on the site of the church that date to 3,000 B.C. Some of the ancient objects can be seen buried in the ground, through glass. On a side note, Thor Heyerdahl visited here in 2000. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded a joint project here with the Azerbaijan Architecture and Construction University. Our guide suggested that Heyerdahl was looking for some Norwegian heritage here.

This church is not very large and has obviously been renovated at some recent date.

In addition to information about the church, there were other information displays around the church area. I found some of them to be very interesting, such as the one below. Azerbaijan is no stranger to churches and monastery complexes.

Following our visit to the Kish Church, our cab driver turned into a cook and hostess for a mid-morning snack. She made us some bread that was very pizza-like. Then, after the bread was baked, she put onto it a combination of walnuts, onions, and sour cherry syrup. It was delicious.

In the photo below, you can see her kitchen. It was definitely not fancy but very functional. What I didn't notice until preparing this post was something in the upper left on the top of the refrigerator. You can see that it says, "USAID". USAID had a program of providing technical assistance for agrotourism to the "Old Kish" women's group and they made a matching contribution towards the purchase of kitchen and dining room equipment in 2023. The round structure on the right side is their oven, where they cooked the bread.

I can tell you this, these people are very Pro-USA. They really like the U.S. And since they are only a few miles from the Russian border, that seems like a good thing to me, and it seems like it was a worthwhile investment by USAID.

They served us the pizza-like bread with tea and other goodies.