Day Trip in Baku

Your Tour itinerary: Gobustan Museum & Petroglyphs; Mud Vulcanoes; Fire Temple; Fire Mountain

1. Gobustan Museum & Petroglyphs 

İt is full of archaeological monuments and has over 6,000 cave painting. In the Gobustan Museum, you will see ancient human bones & prehistoric life, work tools used during the Mesolithic period. Then, you will advance to the mountain in order to see real rock paintings in the open air museum. Distinctive, highly stylized thousand images showing of early man, animals, hunters, ritual dances, bulls, camel caravan, and depictions of the sun and heavens, called petroglyphs, distinguishes Gobustan art. Most of these images made by pecking, grinding, or scratching and carved a design into a rock’s surface. Petroglyphs dating back between 5,000-20,000 years left by the hunter-gatherer people who populated this region in times past. This is one of the largest known concentrations of petroglyphs in the world. Rock art provides a window into the past rituals, beliefs, and artistic abilities of its creators. Because of its scientific, aesthetic, and religious significance, Gobustan becomes a most popular state park and a valuable mine of Azerbaijan. People interested in visiting the petroglyphs can take our half day tours to Gobustan all year long.

2. Gobustan Mud Volcanoes

After visiting Gobustan museum you will continue the tour to the Mud Volcanoes with Russian Cars. Azerbaijan keeps the first place in the world by the number of mud volcanoes. About 300 mud volcanoes are located in Azerbaijan – at the shore, in the sea, and on islands. During this trip, you will get a great chance to see these amazing active volcanoes from a very close distance. You need to have a love of volcanoes to fully understand the magic that this place gives off and the sensation you get when you’re here.

3. Bibi Heybat Mosque

The magnificent sight of Baku mosque Bibi Heybat, unfortunately, has not survived to our time in its original appearance. That structure, which can be seen today, is only its copy recreated in the 90s of the last century.

The real mosque, built in the 13th century, was destroyed by the Bolsheviks at a time when the struggle against religion was going on throughout the territory of the Soviet Union. The mosque is a complex, which includes the graves and tombs of revered people. Also here is the grave of Ukeyma Khanum, which is considered a monumental monument of the Islamic architecture of Azerbaijan.

4. Fire Temple (Ateshgah) 

The earliest references to fire from underground in the Absheron Peninsula are found in Prisk Paniisky (Vth c.), In Arab sources of the 7th-10th centuries. Zoroastrians, who lived in the South Caucasus, honored the unquenchable fire and built temples. One of these temples is Ateshgah, which can be translated as “Place of Fire.” But it is not solely a temple, although this opinion wanders from source to source. This is a monastery complex. The plan is a pentagonal structure with a toothed external wall and an entrance portal. In the center of the courtyard is the quadrangular main altar, inside of which is an unquenchable fire, to which the fierce Absheron winds were not terrible. Centuries passed before, in the Middle Ages, trade and the Silk Road did not associate Hindu merchants from the Punjabi Kangar with the abandoned Zoroastrian complex in Surakhani, and the 16th century. Hindus are drawn here on a pilgrimage.

The central altar, built in the Persian architectural layout in the form of Chahartagh – four arches facing the four sides of the world, combines the attributes of the Hindu religion, among which can be identified a trident (Trishul) and an inscription in Sanskrit. The altar was restored, as the inscription decorated with the image of a swastika says, at the expense of the merchant Kanchanagar in 1810. Since Ateshgah was built by residents of the surrounding settlements, its appearance combines the features of local architectural traditions and elements of ancient altars of the sacred fire.

The declining Ateshgah began to be restored in the 30s, the bulk of the restoration work was carried out in the 60s. As a result, in 1975, Ateshgah was opened to the public as a cultural and tourist site. In the XXI century. Ateshgah received the status of historical and cultural reserve.

5. Fire Mountain (Yanardagh) / Burning Mountain

The “fault” is the geological processes of the peninsula, which gave rise to natural outcrops of natural gas and gas condensate, the Kirmakinskaya oil valley and oil shale, with which Azerbaijan is rich. One of the most spectacular places like this is Yanardag.

“Yanardag” in translation – “Burning Mountain”. Our ancestors, not knowing how to explain the numerous fires, the emergence of unreasonable, in their opinion, fire, deified this phenomenon. Fire is nothing else than plasma, the fourth state of matter is in addition to the liquid, solid and gaseous.

In a person who observes a flame for a long time, specific hallucinogenic processes are created in the cerebral cortex, which also played a particular role in the formation of these beliefs. Zoroaster built his philosophy on the idea of ​​the eternal struggle of two principles: good and evil, his teachings had clear rules and canons, and that is why we can safely speak of Zoroastrianism as the most systematic and organized religion in the history of humankind. Almost monotheistic. The religion of this in ancient times was pervasive: it covered nearly the entire Middle and Near East. From ancient times, its adherents gathered in Baku from all over the world, especially from India, Iran and other countries.

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