Day
2
(September 25, 2017) Azerbaijan: Gobustan National Park
Before
We’ll do our tout to Gobustan and Mud Volcanoes this morning
and,
in the afternoon, we’ll probably go to Ateshgah to visit the Fire
Temple by the evening.
After
After our breakfast where we can call our usual
place,
we’re at 9 AM ready waiting for being picked up for the tour. Our guide
appears and introduces us to our driver. We leave immediately and, in a
bit less than one hour, we get into Gobustan National Park through a
police control. It is there because there is a prison within the
National Park. In our way, the desert landscape is covered by gas
pipelines and oil drillers. They’ve set a nice wall to cover the ugly
parts, though.
Gobustan Museum prepares us perfectly for what
we’re going
to see in the actual site. Then we’re driven up to the hill covered by
rocks to walk seeing one petroglyph after another. The views are
wonderful from here.
Next stop is close to the prison to see a graffiti
left by
a Roman legion that pass by this place in times of Domitian.
From there, we take the motorway again just for a
little
bit before taking a horrible road. It’s that bad as per preferred to
drive out of it. It is heading to the Mud Volcanoes, which are at the
top of a hill.
Landscape here looks like from another world. Surprisingly,
the bubbling mud in the crater of these volcanoes is not hot.
Visits on this tour are being gentle and we’re
enjoying it
a lot. In our way back to Baku we make a stop by Bibi-Heybat Mosque,
which bright green interior is astonishing. It’s a very good end for
this wonderful tour.
It’s around 2 PM when we’re back in our hotel and we walk up
the
street just to get into a small restaurant which is not looking as a
touristic one. We get a yogurt cold soup and a sort of dumplings with
broth each by 29.50 AZN in total.
After having a rest in our room, we go out to take
the
metro in Icherisherer station, which is a glass pyramid with an
entrance looking like a carpet. It’s just four stops in this same red
line until Nariman Narimanov station, where the Haydar Aliyev Center
is. We get a card with the four trips we need by 0.80 AZN by using the
machine in the entrance.
Haydar Aliyev Center is bigger than I expected, whether the
building or gardens are massive and we just walk around the building
and avoid going to the park area due to the strong wind, which is
making difficult to walk in open areas. Then we take the street back to
the metro station but get into a supermarket in our way. There we get a
box of baklavas and a big piece of a kind of meringue and cream
mille-feuille by 8 AZN.
Back to the hotel we go for a walk by the seaside
area at night to see the lights of the building.
We pass through Small Venetian until the Carpet
Museum before walking back to the hotel.
