Gobustan's 6,000 Engravings, and the Flames Marco Polo Wrote About

Baku Old City

The morning start is around 8:30; the exact time comes from the guide the day before, at the meeting point.

Bibi-Heybat Mosque

Bibi-Heybat mosque, built between 1267 and 1300, holding the tomb of Ukeyma Khanum, a descendant of Muhammad, and known locally as the mosque of Fatima. The building standing now is a 1990s recreation of the original.

Mud Volcanoes

Weather permitting. Azerbaijan holds 350 of the 800 mud volcanoes known in the world, most of them around Gobustan, and local names for them run older than the geological one: Yanardagh (burning mountain), gaynacha (boiling water), bozdag (grey mountain). Some are protected as natural monuments. The road is poor, so a special taxi, a Soviet Lada SUV, takes the group out to see them close up.

Costo extra

Gobustan Rock Art

The indoor and open-air museum, then the Rock Art Cultural Landscape: more than 6,000 engravings and 40,000 years of rock art, with inhabited caves, settlements and burials from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. They record hunting, animals, plants and how people lived in the wet period after the last Ice Age.

Costo extra

Absheron Region

Lunch at a traditional restaurant. It costs extra.

Yanar Dag

Yanardag, 23 km from the Old Town: a hillside with a wall of flame fed by gas leaking through the rock. Marco Polo wrote about these fires when he passed through. The area became a historical, cultural and natural reserve in 2007.

Costo extra

Ateshgah - Fire Temple

Ateshgah, the fire temple, once sacred to Zoroastrians and fire worshippers, and a stop for pilgrims and merchants for centuries.

Costo extra