Azerbaijan, Land of Fire

Gurban, our Azeri guide met us in Baku, cheerfully letting us know he was at our disposal 24/7! We quickly discovered he loves his tea and also drinks it with a sugar cube behind his teeth. We had a busy program but he constantly reassured us there was “No rush, no hurry”.

In Baku, the flame towers are the most spectacular at night with the flame projections on them.

 

But the most impressive building is the HeydarAliyev Cultural Centre which had different countries’ flags converted into wrapped lollies out the front.

An easy drive from Baku lies the Absheron Peninsula, where fields of nodding donkeys extract oil from the ground.

At the “burning mountain”, Yanar Dag, flames about 6m wide were blazing.

 

And at the Ateshgah Fire Temple, sacred to the Zoroastrians, a natural fire vent once blazed. Now it’s exhausted and they use the natural gas supply to keep it flickering.

It wasn't quite comparable to the Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan. However, nearby they did have a stall selling draft beer where locals couldn’t empty out their water bottles quickly enough to fill them up with beer, myself included! Mmm... draft beer and chips for the road!

Gobustan is another easy drive from Baku and Gurban worked here for 15 years so he knew it inside out. He plucked some fresh figs from a tree for us then explained all the petroglyphs.

Knowing I liked rock climbing, Gurban took me on a kind of rock scramble up to the top of the mountain (wearing his suit!) He hadn’t climbed up here for over 5 years so he’d forgotten the way down and had to keep peering over the edge to find the right way. After more scrambling and a few slides we finished off with a swing from a tree branch.

From there we drove to the bubbling mud volcanoes, where it was so windy we could hardly stand still and mud splattered onto our clothing.

Here I picked up 10 pieces,

then Gurban whipped out his saz (musical instrument) and started serenading us!