While walking through Baku's Old Town our first afternoon we made arrangements to go on a day trip east of Baku to the Abseron Peninsula because of the huge number of sights there. We met the guide and the van at 8 in front of the Old City's Double Gateway and then proceeded to spend the next 90 minutes driving all over town picking up the other tour participants. What fun, I say sarcastically, as we had to get up very early in order to make the trek into the city from our hotel in the boonies. Speaking of hotels, this was the Trump Hotel in Baku.
On our way to the former agricultural area which was now filled with all important oil rigs, our guide mentioned there had been twelve Islamic kingdoms in Azerbaijan and that the Mongols came to the country three separate times beginning in the 12th century. As we knew from our visit to the museum, Azerbaijan gained independence twice, in 1919 for a year and again in 1991.
Out the van windows, we could see more oil rigs at the edge of the Caspian Sea. The guide said much further out were Oil Stores, a 'city' of oil rigs in the middle of the Caspian where foreign workers return to Baku by helicopter every three months for a break while locals work for a full year if I heard him correctly!
Infertile women go to the Bibi Heybat Mosque to pray to have children, our guide said.
One of the most rigorous universities to attend in Azerbaijan is the Academy of Oil. These rigs were the training rigs for the Academy's students.
The price of gas in Azerbaijan is very cheap, only .36 a liter, about $1.30 a gallon. Azerbaijan, the thirteenth largest oil producing country in the world, only exports its oil to Georgia, Turkey and Europe.
Baku is a stunning and very lush city with beautiful parks and fountains everywhere. However, just 30-40 minutes outside the city, we were greeted with a barren, and almost desert like landscape.
The once agricultural land was blanched by salt lakes and sodden with oil runoff.
The sights were definitely not pretty but seeing and smelling the gas burning was very different from anything we had come across before. The burning pipes went on and on for several miles.
We later passed a huge cement works factory en route to looking at mud volcanoes at Dagsil Hill.
The guide pointed out the two different pipe lines: the silver one transported oil and the yellow one carried gas.
As we drove along this very bumpy road, the guide talked about courtship, Azeri style. After seeing a special woman for six months, the man visits her family to ask for her hand in marriage. If two sugar cubes are placed in a cup of tea, it means the family accepts his wish. However, if the sugar is left on the plate, there is no marriage!
We finally reached the barren Dagsil Hill with baby mud volcanoes as far as the eye can see.
After each mini volcano when mud would gurgle and rise up several inches, small rivers of mud would flow down the sides!
It was a little like watching a pot boil, hoping we had gathered at the right spot that would produce a volcano!
Finally, a mini, mini mud volcano! The guide said the warm mud was very good for one's skin and to make you look younger. Did I need a barrel full of that, then!
There were so many volcanoes, it was fun walking around looking at others even though it was hot and dusty.
This was the biggest one. Though I heard lots and lots of gurgling, I didn't see any actual volcanoes erupt from this spot even though I waited for what seemed like ages! I didn't realize til much later that Steven was taking a picture of my taking a picture!
When mud finally did spurt up, we had to be careful not to be too close so we wouldn't get sprayed with it!
It was way more entertaining than I can adequately describe it even when activity was at a low ebb, we still got the eerie feeling the volcanoes were alive!
After we left the mud volcanoes, our guide pointed out the patches of oil that had risen up through the ground.
How shocking it was to see ungodly amounts of trash people had tossed out car windows. We shouldn't have been surprised as we had seen both our English-speaking guide and the Russian-speaking guide, also in our van, toss candy wrappers out the car windows earlier without hesitation.
We had a very rushed visit to the Qobustan Petroglyph Reserve Museum next before seeing the up to 12,000 year old petroglyphs nearby.
These fragments were dated from 15,000 BC!
Arrowheads from the Bronze Age:
One of the Qobustan petroglyphs created during the Iron Age depicted a chariot with two wheels.
Azerbaijan is located near the probable routes of migration by human ancestors and early humans from Africa into Eurasia. The first evidence of hominids existence in Azerbaijan dates to 1.5-1.3 million years ago.
It is hard to determine the exact social structure of the Stone Age communities. Contemporary scientists doubt people can clearly distinguish between periods of matriarchy and patriarchy in social development. However, I read that it is obvious that there were periods when images of women had important symbolic meaning and there were societies where women had important social status. These pottery items were discovered in Qobustan.
The museum made a valid point that interpreting petroglyphs as merely art and pendants used by prehistoric peoples as jewelry is problematic, because they probably had an additional magical or religious meaning.
The guide pointed out that the colors of the petroglyphs had been enhanced to accentuate the design on the rocks more clearly.
This was the ideal shape of a woman in prehistoric times!
These camel, horse and dog bones were found nearby in 2015.
Yalli Dancing was a motivational dance performed before the men went off to hunt.
There are several petroglyphs in Qobustan depicting one or two lines of people, sometimes with joined hands. These petroglyphs were created in the Neolithic era. It is possible that these are images of a dance, an universal characteristic of human culture that has many ritualistic and social meanings.
Most often, prehistoric artists in Qobustan engraved the contour of an image on rocks. Two stones were used, one as a chisel and the other as a hammer stone in a method called Pecking and Chiseling. One of the oldest techniques used by prehistoric artists, called Dots and Grooves, involved outlining the image with dots and then connecting them by chiseling grooves. Sometimes artists pecked out not just a contour but also the whole surface of the image, thereby creating a kind of reversed bas-relief. This was called Counter-Relief as the images are deeper than their background.
Many of the world's most famous monuments of rock art were created by applying color to the surface rock. In Qobustan, there is very little evidence of painted images or pictographs. Sadly, one painted image of a leopard chasing a deer was demolished.
Again, an idealized woman but without a head!
Petroglyphs of spindly reed boats at Qobustan led controversial Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl to compare them with similar ancient designs in Norway and led him to suggest that Scandinavians may have originated in what is now Azerbaijan!
This copy of a petroglyph showed a dolphin from the Caspian Sea but they are now extinct there.
At the entrance to the reserve was this limestone rock which had three purposes: it was a musical instrument, it was an ancient telephone to communicate danger far away and shamans used it call for rain.
The Viking or reed boat just as we'd seen in the museum!
If you look pretty carefully, I think you'll also be able to see stick figures of hunters and deer, about the limit of my artistic ability, too!
A goat was easy to see.
An ox:
Horse figure:
During the volcanoes in the 1st and 2nd centuries, these rocks fell against each other.
Pretty sure the guide said these were oxen and horses but they looked more like ladybugs to me!
This was called the Stone of Happiness: if you can fit through the hole, you're ready to get married!
I could clearly see the many ox figures here!
I can't remember now what the guide said this was but it looked like the Tree of Life, just like we'd seen the previous day at the marvelous Carpet Museum.
Some petroglyphs that had been here were destroyed in an earthquake just ten years ago.
Lots more horses:
The guide said this showed a dog running from a pig!
I think this was about the clearest depiction of a horse yet.
The larger rock was the 'answering phone' to the rock by the entrance.
These holes were used for cooking.
As we made our way back to Baku for lunch, we passed cement factory after cement factory.
In the distance we could see the Baku Eye, a 60 meter tall Ferris wheel that opened in 2014. That would have been another great thing to see after dark when light shows are performed.
Our day tour included lunch in Baku's Old City before most of us in the group saw other sights in the afternoon.
This archaeological site, dating back to the Middle Ages, was discovered in 2010 during restoration and reconstruction works associated with laying out a new park. Enameled ware fragments, hookah beads, copper coins and glassware associated with several historic periods were found in the site. The rock shell layer in the bottom of the excavation suggested that this area had been under water.
The restaurant was in the middle of the ruins. To use the bathroom, we had to pass the ruins and then return to the restaurant!
The restaurant catered to large tour groups with every guest getting the identical typical Azeri meal of three different meats, rice and cold vegetables. The meats were flavorful but very tough.
Sculptures in the plaza where the restaurant and ruins were:
Mid afternoon we reached Suraxani Fire Temple also known as Ateshgah, originally a place for worship for Zoroastrians though the current fortified complex was built in the 18th century by Indian Shiva devotees. But Ateshgah may be much older. Some records suggest the temple dates back more than 2000 years to the days of the Silk Road, the network of trading routes connecting Asia and Europe that Azerbaijan was part of for centuries.
Travelers stayed in the small rooms or cells surrounding the flaming hearth for up to a month at a time. The altar:
One of the wells in the courtyard:
It is hard to determine to what extent the people of Azerbaijan embraced Zoroastrianism in ancient times as it did not displace local traditions and religious culture. In present-day Azerbaijan, the Zoroastrian celebration of Novruz, the new year, continues to be the main holiday in the country. Clothes for weddings and other ceremonies:
In the ceremonial room to make fire, participants went around the fireplace praying.
In the center was the altar with temple rooms on the left and hotel or travelers' room to its right.
In the Last Room known as the Big Fire, Zoroastrians came to die.
An ancient underground fridge:
The depiction showed the Hindu god Shiva who, when he was angry, destroyed the world.
Our next stop was Mardakan Castle, a 22 meter square plan tower located in the town of the same name. It was built in the 12th century by Ibrahim II.
A small mosque was just beside the castle.
We had to be careful walking around the castle because there were 99 holes used for refrigeration in ancient times.
Steven and I decided to climb all five flights of stairs to the top of the castle.
Naturally, the stairs were unlit but we didn't mind that.
But we did have to be careful where we walked at the landings!
A bevy of doves - a phrase I've never had to use before - had made their home on the roof.
There were many beaches along the Abseron Peninsula which looked pretty for swimming.
We hiked up the steps to get views of the scorched hills.
We could never have easily seen all the spectacular sights in the Abseron Peninsula outside of Baku using public transportation but it was a very frustrating tour with a guide whose English wasn't very good, who was terribly disorganized not having told people when they were supposed to be ready to be picked up, by rushing us through each and every sight but then making sure to leave himself time for constant smoke breaks with the result we didn't even see everything we had paid to see! However, the mud volcanoes were a hoot, the petroglyphs were an insight into an ancient world, and Yanar Dag made us appreciate Azerbaijan's natural history.
Now knowing something about what to look for, we were curious to see the actual UNESCO-listed Qobustan Petroglyph Reserve!
The ancient doodles and Qobustan's eerie landscape toward distant oil workings in the turquoise Caspian made for a fascinating couple of hours.
It was probably merchants who learned about the eternal fires of Suraxani first. The Ateshgah temple was rebuilt by fire worshippers from different countries including India at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries and it continued to grow and function until the 19th century.
Different rooms told the story of the relationship between fire and Zoroastrianism in Azerbaijan.
The Trading Room was used half for people and half for animals with a stable at one end.
We were both glad to get some fresh air once we reached the top after that scary ascent!
In the 13th century, Marco Polo mentioned numerous natural gas flames spurting spontaneously from the Abseron Peninsula. The only one burning today is Yanar Dag or burning mountain, a bizarre natural wonder that lives up to Azerbaijan’s nickname as the Land of Fire.
It was so neat seeing underground gas seeping out of the mountainside stretching approximately 10 meters, knowing that it burned continuously! According to some sources, Yanar Dag ignited after a shepherd in the 1950s discarded a cigarette.
Next post: One of the most architecturally beautiful buildings we've ever seen, the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center!
Posted on September 18th, 2018, from Karakol, Kyrgyzstan.
I can't believe how much you saw in that one tour! Mud volcanoes, oil coming out of the ground (reminds me of the Beverly hill billies 😊) and the ground on fire! Amazing!
ReplyDeleteChristine, You're right - that was one long day tour, especially after driving all over the city to pick everyone up to begin with! The mud volcanoes were such a hoot and seeing the oil oozing out of the ground should also have reminded me of the Beverly Hillbillies show! One thing I will always remember is my very erudite father practically guffawing at Jed Clampett's antics - thanks for bringing back such a happy memory of my youth! Annie
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