Our last few days in Azerbaijan took us out into the sun-baked oil-rich dessert plains. Often we could see the black gold oozing out from the ground, and the only feature on much of this huge expanse of desiccated ochre was hundreds of abandoned oil-rigs.

We took a very sweaty and unpleasant trip into the interior in a tiny bumpy little van, however we were rewarded with the chance to explore a field filled with bubbling mud volcanoes. There were large thick puddles that were slowly oozing down the slope, tiny ponds simmering energetically, and even one vent that occasionally made a sound like a very old man every and then shot crumbling dirt high up in the air.

Nearby, we also had the chance to view an astonishing array of petroglyphs at Gobustan, at least 4000 years old. By this time it was high noon, and the sun was unbearable. I could only manage to dash out for a few minutes to examine these carvings before again seeking refuge in the shade. It made me remember my Australian summers, and I wondered how I coped with months of this endless heat.

The natural gas deposits were incorporated into the religions of the Zoroastrians and the Indian. While John and Adrian rehydrated themselves, I visited the Atəşgah fire temple in Surakhani that was used first as an ancient Zoroastrian shrine and then as a Hindu temple. It was actually cooler to stand in the shade next to the fire than out in the sun filled courtyard. The current stone temple that envelopes the “eternal flame” was built around 1745. This flame is now less eternal, as the vast number of oil rigs around the site exhausted the natural gas deposits in 1969, and now the gas is supplied by an artificial pipeline and switched off every night.

From paata.ge

Back in the wealthy capital of Baku, the weather became enjoyable sometime after 9pm. We soothed our parched selves with some fresh pineapple juice and strolled along the beautiful promenade by the Caspian Sea. We said farewell to John and started packing our bags for our departure from the Caucuses.

The smelliest part of our trip was in Namafjall Hverir, where fumaric acid bubbled out from pools of hot grey mud. While these are geothermic ponds, they are not quite suitable for bathing like the ones at the Blue Lagoon. The only warning that the area might be hazardous to our health was a small sign with a thermometer reading “100^oC”. Icelanders are big believers in people using their common sense and taking personal responsibility for ones own safety.

These mud ponds were really fun to watch – reminding me of the Bog of Eternal Stench. They were constantly simmering, bubbling up with big bursts of fumaric acid that would sound like “bloob bloob bloob”. It was stinky and messy and grotty and I really enjoyed exploring the region. The whole area smelt like rotten eggs, and the landscape was coloured with the various sulphur oxides. There were also steam vents pumping out water vapour, like a warmth breath from the interior of the earth. John decided that if the black barren landscape we had encountered previously was the moon, then now we must be on Io (the volcanic moon of Jupiter).