First Discoveries

Baku is situated on the Absheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan. We spent the afternoon driving back roads (or maybe they were main roads) looking for tourist attractions listed in our Mark Elliott Azerbaijan guide book. Mapless except for the 2-inch maps in the guidebook we did pretty well.

How to describe the Absheron Peninsula? Mark Elliott says it best in his book: If Azerbaijan is an eagle flying towards the Caspian Sea, the Absheron is its eczema-plagued beak. The landscape is faintly disturbing -- an eerily fascinating wasteland of parched hillocks and plains which sprout pylons, nodding-donkey oil derricks and pools of oily effluent amongst ragged scrub. It is not the most immediately appealing area for tourism. But with your expectations suitably lowered, there are a fair number of curiosities."

We lowered our expectations and went searching for something interesting yet easy to find. First stop was the castle in the village of Ramana. According to the guidebook, this castle is the most impressive in the Absheron. With that description we just had to see it. We walked around the perimeter in the rain and never bothered to find the guy with the key so we could go inside. Doesn't look too bad does it? Castle on a hill, green grass......

Now check out the view immediately behind us. That's our Pajero in the foreground.

Wow! Literally a 180 in both direction and content. That's a working oil field and the "ponds" are a sludgy mix of oil and water. Nasty.

Next stop was a little place called Yanar Dag. How to find it? Look for the fire coming out of the ground. The fire burns constantly because of underground gas leaking up to the surface. The gas was accidentally ignited in 1958 and has burned ever since. See what you're missing? In addition to warming up by the fire, we very nearly adopted a puppy at this place. If anyone is interested in adopting this cute little guy, let us know and we'll ship him to you.