Playing with fire at Yanar Dag, Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan is known as “The Land of Fire”. So a visit to Yanar Dağ, or Fire Mountain, was obviously going to be on our agenda.

Located on the Absheron Peninsula, a 20-minute drive outside Baku, Yanar Dag usually gets overlooked by tourists who visit the nearby Baku Ateshgah, or Temple of Fire. However, the three of us decided to see what the big fuss was about at Yanar Dag — after all, it must have been spectacular if an entire bus full of our peers decided to leave us behind because they just couldn’t wait to see it.

Mountain might have been a slight misnomer.

The story goes that a wandering shepherd accidentally ignited this fire with his cigarette in the 1950s, and the flames have been burning ever since due to the natural gas reserves that lie beneath the hill. “Even when it rains!” the locals kept proclaiming.

Right, so here’s the flame from the front.

Here’s the flame from the side.

Here’s me at the flame, wondering who wears a scarf and blazer while standing in front of a roaring fire.

I will admit, it was strange to see flames shooting out of a hill with no visible source of fuel. It was like someone had stuck a sandstone facade over a fireplace, so that all you’d see was the flames and not the burning wood.

And to its credit, the fire may be small but it sure was mighty — I could feel the heat coming off it as soon as I turned the corner and was just at the top of the stairs.

After we exhausted all of our photo options (90% of which you have just seen above), we returned to our bus and headed back to Baku.

I think we spent more time getting to Fire Mountain than we actually stayed there.

However, I was still glad we made the trip out. We were able to witness the Land of Fire’s famous flames — and the drive home turned out to be just as memorable (if not slightly more interesting).

There was such a marked difference between life within the capital and outside — even just ten miles outside. I felt as if I were watching an old reel of what Baku looked like before the development and modernization — as well as a preview of what Baku and Azerbaijan hoped to become.

The adventure was short and sweet, and culturally relevant. If you have a spare afternoon in Azerbaijan, Absheron is worth a visit.