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Gobustan – Mud Volcanoes Tour (Half day)

Gobustan – Mud Volcanoes Tour (Half Day) – Designed for tourists and visitors who are interested in the Stone Age period of humanity, Unesco’s World Heritage, and the history of Gobustan, also tourists will have a chance to see a group of Mud Volcanoes, Bibiheybat mosque, and the world’s 1st industrially drilled oil well. The tour lasts 4-5 hours and is run on the 1st part of the day.

HIGHLIGHTS

Mud Volcanoes

Whenever we reach to Gobustan area, we will change our transport ( because, the road leading to Mud Volcanoes is in bad condition, so only specific cars especially Russian cars can get there) and lead to the Mud Volcanoes.

Home to nearly a third of the world’s mud volcanoes, Azerbaijan features a messy, bubbling, and sometimes explosive landscape. Mud volcanoes are closely associated with hydrocarbon and petrochemical stores underground, hence the gas trying to escape to the surface. A few of these gas leaks are constantly on fire, shooting small perpetual flames into the air and some believe that these perpetual flames are strongly connected to the appearance of the Zoroastrian religion in Azerbaijan some 2,000 years ago. Thus, Every 20 years or so, one of these mud/gas volcanoes will ignite deep below the surface and create a massive explosion. While generally not dangerous to people, as they are far outside of most city centers, it is believed that six shepherds and over 2,000 sheep were killed by a mud volcano in Bozdagh, Azerbaijan.

Gobustan Museums and Rocks

After coming back from Mud Volcanoes we get back to our car and go first to the Gobustan museum, and then spend some time there we were led to the Gobustan Rock Art (open-air museum). Additionally, Gobustan State Reserve located west of the settlement of Gobustan, about 40 miles southwest of the center of Baku was established in 1966 when the region was declared a national historical landmark of Azerbaijan in an attempt to preserve the ancient carvings, mud volcanoes, and gas-stones in the region.

Gobustan State Reserve is very rich in archeological monuments, the reserve has more than 6,000 rock carvings, which depict primitive people, animals, battle pieces, ritual dances, bullfights, boats with armed oarsmen, warriors with lances in their hands, camel caravans, pictures of sun and stars, on the average dating back to 5,000-20,000 years.

Bibiheybat Mosque

On the way back from the Gobustan area we will pass through the Bibi-Heybat Mosque, where we will stop for a while. Furthermore, The Bibi-Heybat is a historical mosque in Baku, Azerbaijan. The existing structure, built in the 1990s, is a recreation of the mosque of the same name built in the 13th century by Shirvanshah Farrukhzad II Ibn Ahsitan II, which was completely destroyed by the Bolsheviks in 1936. Today the Bibi-Heybat Mosque is the spiritual center for the Muslims of the region and one of the major monuments of Islamic architecture in Azerbaijan.

The World’s First Industrially Drilled Oil Well

For the first time in history, the industrial production of oil started in Baku. This event was known in Azerbaijan but documentary evidence has been found recently in the archives. As a result, the world’s first oil well of 21m deep and drilled in 1846 in the village of Bibiheybat near Baku was founded and restored, which became an open-air museum.