We took a day trip to see some of the sites around Baku.
At Gobustan, ancient rock carvings were discovered at the site of a quarry. They were carved many thousands of years ago by the cave dwellers here. They show many animals like horses, donkeys, deer, and boar which, due to climate change a long time ago, could no longer exist in the desert conditions of today.
Nearby are the mud volcanoes which bubble with escaping gas. The mud is cold though.
Fire represents God in many religions. So pilgrims following the Silk Road saw the burning mountains created by escaping natural gas and believed this was a holy place.
We visited the Atesh Gah fire temple. This was built on a site where there were natural fires from gas escaping from the ground. The fires no longer burn naturally at the site as the pressure has dropped from all of the drilling nearby.
Zoroastrian and Hindu religions were represented here together.
On the way back into Baku we stopped at Heyder Eliyev Merkezi which contains a couple of museums.
Azerbaijan is a secular country where there is not a single government religion and various religions co-exist. So you get extremes where women wear skimpy western clothes alongside burkas. (Skimpy images not provided!).
