A Day of Culture and Mud

So yesterday we had a cultural day. The entire group traveled to Qobustan, a short drive from Baku and our PST sites, to visit two sites: the petroglyps (cave drwaings) of Qobustan and the famous mud volcanoes. The petroglyps are supposedly from a group of Stone Age hunter-gatherers, depicted clearly by a number of dioramas in the museum (3 manat entrance fee, 2 manat for cameras). Lonely Planet informs me that a Norwegian ethnologist named Thor decided that the similarities meant that Scandinavians came from Azerbaijan. This does not explain why the dioramas often included brilliantly red-haired Stone Agers hunting and playing the first instrument (a rock). Mark Elliott’s book adds that a number of the outer caves have collapsed, allowing easier access to the carvings, which I will note, relieves some of my skepticism of the easy access. My anthropology sense was tingling as we walked through and listened to the interpretations from our tour guide.


The best part was the opportunity to climb on the huge rocks. My inner Billy goat sprung forth, despite the fact I had been sick the night before. I flashed back to Devil’s Den on the Gettysburg Battlefield. We were “omaz”-ed at least once (Omaz being the Azerbaijani word for “not allowed”) for climbing where we shouldn’t have, but it was worth it. I was driven to find the way to the highest rock, only to see there was still one higher or more difficult to reach.

Almost more exciting than the climbing—what can be more exciting than climbing over huge rocks—were the mud volcanoes. After our bus refused to drive down the dirt road, we set out on foot to climb a large dusty hill. At the top we found a collection of bubbling pimple-like hills protruding from the summit. The hilltop was otherwise empty of any development or, for that matter, anyone else. Silent except for the fierce winds and the faint murmur of the mud bubbles, and with nothing in sight except for some factories out on the Caspian Sea. (An interesting aside, on the way to Qobustan, we saw a Halliburton factory. Sigh).


Now, I was split on whether mud volcanoes sounded interesting. On the one hand, they’re mud, so they’re boring. On the other, they’re volcanoes, so they’re exciting. With some of the volcanoes sticking out of the surface of the hill about 20 feet, the latter description is much more fitting. Most shocking was the fact that the volcanic mud was cold. Yes, I stuck a finger in. Anyone who knows me knows that there’s no way I would be able to help it. Of course, afterwards I realized I had no way to clean off my finger. Who else saw that coming?