EGN NEWS DESK
CNN
—
There are plenty of locations around the globe famed for the longevity of their residents.
In Japan, Okinawa’s sprightly centenarians have earned it the nickname “Land of the Immortals.” Campodimele, Italy’s “Village of Eternity,” is testomony to the Mediterranean eating regimen. In the sunny Californian city of Loma Linda, a neighborhood of Seventh-Day Adventists reaping rewards of fresh dwelling.
There’s one long-lived nook of the globe you received’t have heard talked about as a lot, and it’s residence to the world’s solely Museum of Longevity. That’s Lerik in southern Azerbaijan.
The South Caucasus nation is residence to a number of areas identified for producing residents who reside to triple-figure ages, together with Lankaran and Nagorno-Karabakh. But one other, Lerik, is reputed to have the very best focus of centenarians.
In this emerald land excessive above the clouds within the Talysh Mountains, reached by loop after loop of a serpentine street, individuals appear to have found a secret to an extended and wholesome life.
The two-room Museum of Longevity, inbuilt 1991 and renovated in 2010, holds greater than 2,000 reveals documenting the lives and recollections of the area’s oldest inhabitants.
It charts particular person lifespans with the home items that they’ve outlived, reminiscent of three generations of clothes irons. There are chests full of headscarves and shirts, silver pitchers and bowls, superbly knitted socks, and hand-dyed rugs which are nonetheless brightly coloured regardless of their age.
And then there are the letters, written in each Azerbaijani and Russian – private artifacts so previous that the ink is beginning is fade.
Perhaps essentially the most charming options are the portraits of centenarians that cowl the museum’s partitions. These photos, courting from the Thirties, had been donated by French photographer Frederic Lachop.
The museum, and official Azerbaijan statistics, outline “centenarian” extra loosely than you’d count on: Here, it means anybody over 90 years previous.
However, again in 1991, there have been greater than 200 individuals in Lerik registered as being greater than 100 years previous, out of a inhabitants of 63,000.
Numbers have been much less spectacular since then, which locals blame variously on radiation from communication towers and environmental decline, however may simply as simply be all the way down to extra rigorous record-keeping.
Today, there are 11 individuals greater than 100 years previous, out of an area inhabitants of 83,800.
Lerik’s present oldest citizen is Raji Ibrahimova, at 105 years. That’s a tremendous classic, however it pales compared to the age seemingly reached by space’s most celebrated centenarian, Shirali Muslumov, a shepherd who supposedly lived to be 168.
The telephone book of his passport declare that he was born in 1805 and his headstone states that he died in 1973. If true, it might make the the oldest individual to have ever lived.
Unfortunately, again within the early nineteenth century, start registrations not often came about in such distant villages as his birthplace of Barzavu, so there isn’t a certifable file of when he was born.
Countless letters despatched from all around the world on his varied birthdays depart little question that he was certainly of a really respectable age, however it’s maybe finest to consider a minimal 20-year margin of error.
Among these corresponding with Muslumov had been Vietnamese communist chief Ho Chi Minh, who despatched a postcard greeting him with the endearment, “Dear Grandpa.”
This longevity gene appears to run within the household. His 95-year-old daughter, Halima Qambarova, tells CNN Travel that – whereas she won’t reside to 168, like her father – she not less than hopes to reside to the age of 150, like her grandfather, or 130, like her aunt.
When the climate turns chilly, most centenarians relocate to the kinder coastal climes of Lankaran, however Qambarova was nonetheless within the Lerik village of Barzavu when CNN Travel dropped by her father’s modest two-story residence, surrounded by huge apple and pear timber (in all probability contemporaries of her well-known father).
Sitting by the window, wrapped in a scarf, she speaks with a slight accent, switching typically to her native language of Talysh, a dialect spoken by simply 200,000 individuals and categorized as “susceptible” by UNESCO.
She exhibits off her passport, which doesn’t listing a month or date of start, solely the 12 months: 1924. She could also be 95, however she is totally current, interacting together with her great-grandchildren, and demonstrating her vigorous humorousness. When requested her age, she cheerfully replies, “15.”
“Stillness of the thoughts is a part of their secret,” the museum information says. “They keep away from stress, interested by life fairly philosophically, dwelling someday at a time, with out a lot planning or fear for the longer term.”
Good diet and pure cures
Qambarova’s day begins at daybreak; she doesn’t let herself sleep in. “I rise up as quickly as my eyes open,” she says.
She spends the entire day working within the backyard or round the home. Her room is small, with a thick tender carpet and pillows on the ground. Many individuals right here choose sleeping on the bottom, with only a skinny blanket as a substitute of a mattress, because it’s believed to be the healthiest strategy to relaxation the again.
Contrary to fashionable perception, the centenarians of Lerik do eat meat, however they inherited a choice for recent dairy merchandise reminiscent of shor (cottage cheese), butter, milk and the yoghurt drink ayran from earlier centenarians, for whom the abstinence from meat was extra on account of financial circumstance.
Qambarova’s daughter-in-law brings in an enormous plate with pears and apples from their backyard and a few fragrant tea.
It’s natural, floral and refreshing. Back on the museum, the information exhibits a desk with the varied herbs native to Lerik.
“The secret of lengthy life is nice diet, the minerals within the spring water and the herbs that we add to tea to stop diseases, so individuals don’t should take any drugs, solely utilizing the pure cures,” says the information. Indeed, Qambarova insists she’s by no means taken any remedy.
Beyond her home windows, it could appear that the village is quiet and nonetheless. But the bodily work that villagers put in daily is immense. From dawn till sundown they work in gardens and fields in addition to round the home. They sew and knit and handle large households.
Such was the life-style of Mammadkhan Abbasov, a 103-year-old from Jangamiran village. Sitting on the carpet, throughout from the window, the centenarian has virtually fully misplaced his sight and may barely hear his son telling him that friends have arrived, however when he lastly catches it, he begins singing, providing prayers and good needs.
At Abbasov’s aspect is his nice grandson – a century hole between them.
Just like Qambarova, Abbasov has been a busy villager his entire life, working within the fields till about seven years in the past, when his imaginative and prescient deteriorated.
“He has all the time been a great man and lived his life correctly,” his son says.
In phrases of meals, he eats “no matter God offers” with only one restriction – he by no means drinks alcohol.
Abbasov attributes his lengthy life to each day bodily exercise, to not the purpose of exhaustion, however sufficient to problem the physique.
Along with the great diet from the farm merchandise, he additionally used to drink liters of ice-cold spring water, which is wealthy with minerals mentioned to contribute to longevity.
The headache-inducing altitudes of mountains may be an element.
A 2017 research by the University of Navarra, Spain, discovered that dwelling at excessive elevation decreases the danger of coronary heart illness, stroke and diabetes. A 2011 research by the University of Colorado Denver discovered that these sky-high residents additionally reside longer.
The ages of a few of these celebrated centenarians should be disputed, however right here in Lerik their legacy lives on by means of the individuals that also abide by the straightforward secret of Lerik’s longevity: bodily exercise, good diet, a number of water and an perspective to life that claims: We solely reside as soon as, but when we do it proper, as soon as is sufficient.
Museum of Longevity, 22 A.Asadullayev avenue, Lerik, Azerbaijan; (025) 274-47-11
