Stone Nest
Houses rising in steps up the slope, where the roof is a yard.
A village built of stone
Khinalug is built of what there is plenty of in the mountains — stone. The houses cling to the steep slope in steps, like an amphitheatre, rising ever higher. They have flat roofs, and that roof is not just a covering: it serves as the yard, the terrace and even the street for the house standing above. So the whole village is bound into a single whole.
Inside the houses there is no usual furniture: people sit and sleep on rugs, palases and mattresses. In the treeless high mountains firewood is scarce, so the hearth is fed with tezek — dried bricks of dung, stacked in neat piles beside the houses. So the village has survived for centuries where no trees grow.
Millennia on the slope
House upon house
The chief feature of Khinalug is the way the houses stand one above another. Climbing the slope, you walk literally over the roofs of the houses below. The roof of the neighbour below is your yard; your roof is the yard of the neighbour above. This is not crowding but the wisdom of the mountains: so a whole village fits on a steep slope, and every house looks out over the valley.
Here the roof of one house is the yard of another, and the whole village holds together like stones in a single wall.