The mountain where wishes come true

Ogtay Ganiyev finds it hard not to live in the mountains. “These people are simple, honest and hardworking. From birth the mountains have been my home. If I don’t see them, I am missing them,” he says.

Ogtay remembers skittering around like a mountain goat as a youth in his remote village of Burovdal, in Azerbaijan’s Caucasus Mountains. It requires sure-footedness to reach Burovdal, which has a single…