Your typical road trip: volcanoes, flaming mountains, and the Evil Eye

P and I set out on our road trip in her vintage Russian UAZ. Hot car. Bad driver. We are barely out of the city before she is lost. I commandeer the jeep and the map and we set off again.


Baku is a port city ringed by mountains, amphitheater-like. Just beyond that ring there is another set of mountains, appropriately nicknamed the Candy Cane Mountains.


We stopped to snap some pics at Yanar Dag (Mountain of Fire). Escaping natural gas at the bottom of a cliff has been burning for centuries. Similar spots abound in Azerbaijan which made it very popular with Zoroastrians and pyromaniacs. Next to the fire, villagers have set up a couple of benches and tables, where they sit at night drinking vodka until someone throws a rock at the limestone, kicking up a new batch of flames. Idiots. They should be drinking vodka and blogging.




We stopped at a roadside café for vodka tea and cakes. A little farther up the road we reach our destination and the purpose for our trip, the mud volcanoes. P has heard about the benefits of the volcanic mud. S would never agree to come with her so she waited until I got here to nag badger hassle poke prod invite me to go along. The mud is cold. It bubbles up with natural gas. There are NO SMOKING signs in several languages because a mud volcano can explode, shooting flames hundreds of meters into the sky. The mud is also rich in minerals. We fill the containers we brought with us with the mud. P is now happy. She has her beauty supplies. And we can now return to civilization and caviar.




We race back to Baku, pausing once to pick some camel’s thorn which local superstition says will protect against the Evil Eye and to flirt with photograph a local cowboy.




Later last night as we were strolling through a nearby street market I see a woman with a table piled high with jars of volcanic mud. It seems we never needed to leave the city at all. P should pray that the camel’s thorn protects her. My eye is twitching.