Gobustan National Park and Mud Volcanoes Tour (Baku, Azerbaijan)

The Gobustan National Historical and Art Reserve, located 70 km south of Baku is a unique monument of world importance and in 2007 was included to the UNESCO World Heritage List. On the territory of the reserve with a total area of 4,537 hectares is concentrated one of the world's largest collections of ancient rock paintings - there are more than 4000 thousand petroglyphs covering the period from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages. In the Gobustan National Historical and Art Reserve you can also see the settlements of ancient people, the remains of a large prehistoric cromlech, barrows and other evidence of material and non-material culture of the Stone Age period and subsequent periods. The Gobustan petroglyphs were repeatedly explored by the famous Norwegian explorer and traveler Thor Heyerdahl, who recognized the cave images of boats present there as the oldest known boat image in the world. Gobustan Museum was opened in 2012 after a thorough reconstruction. Today it is a modern interactive museum complex in the collection of which are collected over 100,000 archaeological materials. In 2013 the reserve museum became one of the winners of the contest "The Best European Museum of the Year", which is held by the European Museum Forum and is one of the most prestigious competitions in the world in this field. There are 850 mud volcanoes in the world, and over 300 of them are in Azerbaijan. Most are located on Absheron, around Baku. There are 100 near the Gobustan reserve alone. Azerbaijan is also unique because it has all kinds of mud volcano, making it possible to study various aspects of mud eruptions. There are active, dormant, buried and subsea volcanoes in Azerbaijan, as well as those on islands and spewing oil. For instance, there are many subsea mud volcanoes around the Baku archipelago. The Goturdag volcano in Gobustan is the only mud volcano of its kind – it has been issuing mud for 100 years. They are also renowned for its healing qualities which is very popular both among foreigners and local people. They use it either for bathing or as a mask for face.

Mud volcanoes are particularly diverse in Azerbaijan. There are giant volcanoes, such as Toragay and Great Kanizdag in Gobustan, Otmanbozdag and Bozdag-Guzdek on Absheron, with a total elevation of 400 meters. Volcanoes are also registered on islands in the Baku archipelago. Eight of these islands, including Khara-Zira, Zenbil, and Garasu, are volcanic. There is a volcano called Goturdag, which is the world’s only continuously erupting volcano; mud squeezing as the specialists put it, has been observed there for many years. There are volcanoes on the coast of the Caspian: Bandovan, Hamamdag, and Bahar. I often travel to the sites of mud volcanoes with specialists from oil companies and scientists from Europe and America. They are all very pleased to go because mud volcanoes are very informative for geologists and experts in the transportation of oil and gas.

The Bandovan volcano is particularly interesting. There was a city at its foot in the Middle Ages. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of dwellings, ceramic crockery, and tools only 100-200 meters from the sea. This coastal city may have been destroyed not only by the rising level of the Caspian but also by a volcanic eruption. It is possible that Bandovan was the Etna of Absheron, while the flooded city at its foot was the Caspian Pompeii.