Qobustan mud volcanoes, Azerbaijan

Mud volcanoes of Qobustan - darkometer rating : 3 - A really bizarre sight that is almost unique to Azerbaijan : bubbling, spitting, leaking, oozing, grey mud volcanoes. One set of these, near Qobustan, is even on the tourist trail and should definitely not be missed. A tour to Qobustan also allows good views of some of the oil industry south of Baku . > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Nowhere else in the world are there so many mud volcanoes as in Azerbaijan – which has literally hundreds of these strange things, more than in the rest of the world put together. Mud volcanoes are a strange phenomenon of water and soil mixtures pressed out of the Earth's crust by gas field pressure. Unlike proper magma/lava volcanoes, the mud from mud volcanoes is usually cold. They can, however, also spit fire, literally, when gas vents ignite (see Absheron peninsula ). Occasionally they even explode in big eruptions (as in 2001 – see this report ) … although none are as devastating as the artificially triggered one at Sidoarjo in Indonesia . Not that many of Azerbaijan's mud volcanoes are accessible to the casual tourist in any case – some are not even on land, but form new islands in the sea (as has happened quite recently off the Caspian shores of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan ). The easiest ones to access are the mud volcanoes near Qobustan, which are also normally quite peaceful. But it's an utterly eeri thing to look at all the same. These mud volcanoes are a tourist attraction mainly because Qobustan is on the tourist trail anyway for its remarkable ancient petroglyphs (rock engravings) in the same area.