Hamam Day in Baku

Welcome to the Taze Bey Hamam, near (but not in) the Old City of Baku

Light vacation posting today, which is, sadly, my final day in Baku and Azerbaijan.

The posting is scant because today was a work day..  It happens.  Which is why retirement keeps calling my name louder and louder.  I want vacations that are pure vacation.

I had only one mandatory agenda item for today -- apart from the "digital nomad" day of working remotely via laptop -- and that was to visit a hamam.

A hamam is a Turkish bath house/spa. The Azerbaijani have the own (slight) variation on this theme.  The chosen hamam came highly recommended by my hotel and by tour guide from yesterday: Taze Bey.  It is, I believe, the oldest operational hamam in the city, although I might have pulled that out of a place known for lacking in sunshine.

The walk from the hotel to the Taze Bey was not long at all.  It took me past the beautiful Ismailiyya Palace building:

I soon was walking up the street where google maps on my phone was telling me the Taze Bey would be.  Then I saw it:  a boatload of beautiful golden kitsch:

So golden!  So kitschy!

It had to be the place and it was.

Kitschy kitschy ya-ya dahhh,

Let's go in, shall we?

And then the kitsch became overwhelming:

The decor did not appear to be traditional Azerbaijani, as one would have expected from the oldest operational hamam in Baku. But it was spectacularly beautiful in its own bizarre way.

Are we going to have a look inside the hamam itself, beyond the entryway?  No.  Not allowed.  And for good reason:  too many men wearing nothing but towels.  And who wants to see me wearing nothing but a towel?  Or, worse yet, nothing but soap bubbles.

The place was an assembly line of hamam pampering.  First came the dry sauna.  Then the cold plunge.  Which was really really cold.  So cold that the only option was a full plunge rather than a gradual descent.  Then it was time to lay down on a marble slab where what felt like rainwater poured down on me from the ceiling.  Next was the Turkish sauna, or steam room.  Not too hot.  Not too steamy.  In the steam room, you get beaten with eucalyptus branches.  Not too hard.  I guess it's for the circulation.  Or it could be that this is way for the steam room attendant to get his jollies.  Then came the body scrub, known as the kisechi.  (The word for that in Turkish hamams is similar, but a little different.)  Then the most powerful jacuzzi I have ever been in ever.  Then the massage.  Finally, the process concluded with getting soaped down.

In all honesty, I don't think I've felt this clean in some time.  And my skin feels smooth from the scrub.  PS:  I screwed up the process by not tipping my scrubber, my masseuse or my body-washer (who also was the body scrubber, but not the masseuse).  I didn't tip because I had been told repeatedly that Azerbaijan is not a tipping country.  Well, there are exceptions to every rule and tipping your attendants at an Azerbaijani hamam is one of those exceptions.  Next time I know.  If they let me back in for a next time given that I failed to tip my hamam attendants.

It being night when I left the hamam, the path I walked to get to the Taze Bey now was lit up for the evening.  For example, above. the Ismailiyya Palace.

Or this:

The Fountain in Sabir Bağı park.  Lit up for the night under the glow of the crescent moon, which is perfect for a modern Islamic country.  Tomorrow:  Tbilisi.

Fire Mountain, Fire Temple, Petroglyphs and Mud Volcanos

The Fire Temple. With the fire that it is constantly burning. 24/7/365. 24/7/366 leap years.

A day of tourist joy.

Today I had a tour guide drive me around to the top four must-see tourist destinations in the Baku environs. There is more to Baku than what is in Baku.

First stop: Fire Mountain.

Fire Mountain is a mountain -- probably more of a hill, actually -- that is literally on fire. From within. Baku is a mass of land floating on a sea of oil and gas. And sometimes the perpetually-seeping natural gas causes mountains to burn from within.

Here is a tourist warming himself next to the flames of Fire Mountain.

This is probably a tourist attraction that gains a massive amount of popularity when the whether turns colder. It is hot next to the fire. I would say it's like a bonfire, but it is a bonfire. It's not "like." It "is."

Hashtag YANARDAG! That's the translation of Fire Mountain into the Azerbaijani.

Speaking of fire ...

Atashgah!

This is the Fire Temple or, specifically, the Atashgah Zoroastrian Fire Temple.

It's got a temple, Zoroastrian of course, and fire. What else do you need to make a memorable tourist attraction?

At the center of it all is a small stone temple with a -- not a plot twist at all here -- a perpetually-burning methane-fueled fire.

Here is a tourist enjoying his tourism at the Fire Temple.

The Fire Temple site originally was developed by the Zoroastrians in the latter part of the B.C. era. After the practice of the Zoroastrian faith went into severe decline after the Arab/Islam conquest of the territory of modern-day Azerbaijan in the early 600's, the area was taken over by Hindu transplants into the area. The Moslems of the day were cool with the Hindus, according to the displays in the stone rooms surrounding the Fire Temple, because Hinduism was not a proselytizing religion.

But there is more than one perpetual fire in the complex.

At one point, when the oil and gas industry was developing in Azerbaijan, the temple area became a drilling site, as depicted in this old photo.

Yes, an area with multiple naturally-fed perpetual fires was sitting atop a field of oil and natural gas. Who knew?

But, as you can see, the oil derricks are now gone.

One of the few places around Baku where the oil derricks have been, how you say, "extracted."

One last look at the tourist warming himself by the fire of the Fire Temple.

All this tourism fun for a mere 9 manat, if you are foreigner, and only 2 manat if you are local. Nine manat is only a little more than five bucks. That is beyond a bargain.

Incidentally, if you are keeping score, and I am, the Atashgah Zoroastrian Fire Temple is officially the farthest east I have traveled in my life. Yes, I have traveled to China and Korea and Thailand, which, culturally, are considered the "east." But I traveled west to get there. I traveled to Azerbaijan by traveling eastward. And this is farthest east I will get in this trip.

Next stop: Qobustan!  Qobustan is a long drive westward from the Fire Temple, through the City of Baku, then southwestward.

Where they have a rock that you can play and it sounds like a Jamaican steel drum. How cool be that?

One does not visit Qobustan for the musical rock. One visits Qobustan for the ancient petroglyphs.

Sometimes the petroglyphs require some combination of a keen eye and a vivid imagination to see:

But some are more obvious:

I see a cow!

Need a closer:

And here, I see a horsie!:

Walking through the rocks of Qobustan is quite entertaining:

This is snake country:

So stay on the well-trod path, please.

So after navigating the walking loop -- and encountering no snakes because, like the good guided-tour tourist I am, I stuck to the well-trod walking path -- it was time for the next stop in ancient Qobustan.

There is a museum complex on the premises, although the walk through the petroglyph-saturated rock formations is the entertaining reason to visit.

The museum had a "recreation" of an ancient village on site:

But the museum itself was sleek and modern:

The people of Azerbijan consider Qobustan to be hugely important.

It really was the start of civilization in the area of what is now Azerbaijan.

And while we are in the neighborhood, let's visit the Mud Volcanos!

You here the term "mud volcano" and I know what you're thinking: a giant mountain the size of Mount Fuji that, instead of lava, is constantly spewing a river of mud. And you'd be wrong.

This is a mud volcano:

A little hole in the ground that is constantly gurgling with percolating mud.

It's cool. But it's not the Kilauea of Mud.

That one might be shaped like a mountain, but it's only a foot or so in height. But it is loud with the gurgling noise. It sort of sounds like stomach distress.

I've already recovered from my own travel-related, exhaustion-fueled, jetlag-induced stomach distress, thankfully.

This is a particularly large gurgling mud pool:

And this one was particularly photogenic:

Stay on the boardwalk since the crust is thin and you don't want to fall into a hot cauldron of mud. It would be messy. And scalding hot.

One last look at the mud volcano walking route:

The mud volcano complex -- by the way the most expensive of the day's tourist stops at 15 manat for foreigners (nine bucks) and 4 manat for locals -- has a souvenir shop (of course). But here, you can buy original works of art hand-painted with ... petroleum!

I don't think you can get that even in Texas. They even sold larger ceramic mugs hand-painted with petroleum, showing romantic scenes of oil derricks and oil wells. I passed because they were not "dishwasher safe" and, besides, much as I love petroleum I did not think it would enhance the flavor of my morning coffee. I did buy a hand-painted refrigerator magnet hand-painted with ... with what? Petroleum!

And to end the day of tourism, my guide took me to a local fish restaurant.

Baliq Evi is the name of the restaurant. It is located right along the shore of the Caspian Sea.

It even has beach access!

My guide recommended this restaurant very highly, both because of the location and the quality of fish. And my guide is the restaurant manager of my hotel, so he knows food.

I had a local beer.

Xirdalan. It was you basic pilsner style. Yes. Azerbaijan is an Islamic country with a local beer and plenty of local wines and brandies.

We tried the dorado, a.k.a. mahi-mahi.

And the trout, caught in local rivers, which I forgot to photograph until only fragments remained.

A delicious way to end the day.