Hi Ben I was also on Steve's trip. The problem was the organiser of the trip bailed out at the last moment - I found out at Instanbul airport, I suspect they never intended to go at all. We also found out, waiting for the flight to Baku, we not all on the same flight, as expected, the rest were arriving 12 hrs later, the next morning, and we had nowhere to stay in Baku. Thankfully for booking.com found someone whose wife worked for the UN, and he meet us at the airport, stayed at his B&B, and he took us to meet everyone when arriving at Baku the next mronging. The organiser had not kept contact with the ground agent (too busy taking a small couple of groups around Cyprus), leading up to the trip, and local guy who was drinver/translator Elvin was brilliant - but he told me the ground agent had been emailing the organiser and getting no replies - many times - the problem at Khinaliq - was that we did not stay at place suggested by Kai, because the house we did not stay (the on the floor job) in was one of the park rangers who was un-coperative afterwards, refuding us higher access and it got quite difficult - neither did the orgnaiser book the Russian 4x4 as we should have (advised by Kai). We did not get far enough up, taking standard 4 x 4 was at best very risky and only got us badly part of the way. We had little hope, for June we were no way far enough up. The situation re the car deposits - not sure whose fault it was, but we had not pick up back at Baku after Natchivan - one of those emails never answered probably - not even sure we had a hotel booked - it was a complete mess - only saved by Elvin the guide/translator - we only saw Shrika, after Elvin and I one night using Kai book and google earth managed to find the location - as Elvin area of specialism was history tourism. The organiser waffled on about how ground breaking ti would be - ground breaking on how not to organise a trip - it was na interesting country, but a real missed opportunity and should have been done at the later part of May