Rural pitch

I'm back posting to my journal after a two week hiatus during which I sorted out my laptop (I bought a new one).  Lots to catch up with.

On this second day of my trip to Azerbaijan, I went out to Agcabedi, a town some 400km from Baku.  The area is close to Nagorno Karabakh a region still mired in a 20+ year conflict between neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan and with the eve-present potential of getting very nasty.  Armenia controls the area now but if the Azeris find out you've been there (entering from the Armenian side), they won't let you into the country.  It rained all day and we returned in the dark with a driver trying to break speed records - at times up to 180kph.  He slowed just enough for me to take this shot of these sheep going home.

Back in 1917:  Nicholas II abdicates and hands the ball to younger brother, Grand Duke Michael, who promptly boots it into touch; Michael decides he will serve as tsar only if the people decide it shall be so: ".. (I will assume) supreme power only if such is the will of our great people, who must now by universal suffrage and through their representatives in the Constituent Assembly establish a form of government and new fundamental laws for the Russian State."  A noble gesture but the Bolsheviks shot him anyway the following year.