Gobustan & the Burning Mountains: Mud Volcanoes, Petroglyphs and Fire Temples from Baku

You step out of Baku's urban drone into an open sky that feels too large for the city. The air shifts—salt from the Caspian and a faint sulfur tang—before the highway gives way to stony plains where rock faces keep record of people who lived here long before maps. On a single day this guided loop takes you through Gobustan's rock art and museum, across bubbling mud volcanoes, into the Ateshgah fire temple, and up to Yanardag's perpetual flame: four connected landscapes that make a geological and cultural argument for why this patch of Absheron matters.