Qobustan sites

Our way south out of Baku along the blue shimmering Caspian Sea was in the sense of oil production. We passed countless kilometers of pipes, refineries and flames of the burning waste gases along the road. Yes, Azerbaijan is the land of fire!

The lazy two of us reached the Qobustan National Reserve one hour before darkness so that we had to camp in front of the gate. The policemen promised to take care during the night against a small obolus. Somehow we had mixed feelings but in the end it was the right decision to stay.

The next morning, the museum of the reserve turned out to be the best museum we've ever seen abroad - it was absolutely worth to make a slight detour to get there. We then climbed up the mountain behind the museum to see the prehistoric rock art of the people who had lived there at least 20,000 years ago. Not only the petroglyphs but also the bizarre rock formations are really fascinating.

Leaving the reserve, we just tackled some of the famous mud volcanoes when a taxi driver insisted on taking us the 10km up to them because it would be impossible with bicycles and the wild dogs would bite us. We declined with thanks and an hour later we had climbed the volcano site, without any bite :)

The funny noises of the bubbling mud which scared us easily with a fresh splash in the face, hardly made us to stop watching the
moving mud. At sunset, we had the volcano all to ourselves and were again fascinated by the surreal landscape.Read more