Yanar Dag

Yanar Dag —which in Azerbaijani means burning mountain— is neither a volcano nor an industrial facility. It is a strip of rock about ten metres long on the hillside of the Absheron Peninsula where natural gas saturating the subsoil escapes to the surface and burns continuously. The flames have been burning for decades. Nobody lights them each morning: they simply have never gone out.

At night the effect changes completely. Yellow and orange flames flicker over the black, oily Absheron rock, the heat reaches the wooden railing where you stop to look, and the smell of gas is noticeable but not unpleasant. During the day Yanar Dag keeps burning, but sunlight steals its drama and the visit is less striking. If you can choose, go at dusk or after dark.

The site has a car park, toilets and a small visitor centre with explanatory panels in several languages, including Spanish. The visit itself takes no more than 20 or 30 minutes: you walk the path bordering the combustion zone, feel the heat, take photos and move on. Yanar Dag works better as part of a half-day excursion around Absheron than as a standalone destination, and fits perfectly alongside the Ateshgah temple and the beaches of the Caspian Sea.

The Absheron Peninsula has been synonymous with fire for centuries. Oil and gas surface at dozens of points across it, and medieval travellers —among them Marco Polo, who passed through around 1271— already described in their chronicles the eternal fires of this land that Zoroastrian followers venerated as divine manifestations. Fire was sacred; what rose from the ground was a sign, not an anomaly. Yanar Dag as seen today was discovered or reignited in the 1950s, according to the most widely told version, by a shepherd who ignited the gas by dropping a cigarette on the ground. The Government of Azerbaijan declared it a nature reserve in 2007.

• Yanar Dag flame strip The permanent combustion of natural gas is the reason for the visit. At night the flames are more spectacular and the heat more perceptible; during the day they remain active but are overshadowed by sunlight.
• Visitor centre A modest building with an exhibition on the geology of Absheron and the gas seepage phenomena in the region. Panels are in Azerbaijani, English and Spanish.
• Ateshgah temple About 10 km away, this Zoroastrian compound built over another natural gas vent is the natural pairing with Yanar Dag. It is worth setting time aside for both on the same day.
• Absheron Peninsula landscape The surroundings have an arid, almost lunar look: ground darkened by decades of oil extraction, abandoned wells and a flat horizon. Not a conventional landscape, but one with an industrial honesty that is hard to forget.
• Caspian coast A short distance to the east, the beaches of the Absheron Peninsula allow you to end the day by the Caspian Sea, the world's largest lake.

Photo gallery

Yanar Dag is about 25 km north of central Baku, on the road to Nardaran. By taxi from Baku the journey takes about 25–30 minutes. By public transport, take bus number 184 from Koroglu station to Mashtaga and then a local taxi to the site. Most visitors include it in a half-day circuit of Absheron together with the Ateshgah temple.

Yanar Dag is open every day of the year. An evening or night visit is most recommended: the flames gain visual intensity without sunlight competing. In autumn and winter darkness falls earlier, making it easier to see them at a reasonable hour. In July and August temperatures on Absheron frequently exceed 35 °C, heat that adds to that radiated by the flames themselves. Spring and autumn offer the most comfortable conditions for a visit.