We spent our final night in Baku, knowing the day ahead would circle the city rather than leave it behind. The route moved south first, then east, tracing the edges of the Absheron Peninsula — a day shaped less by distance than by texture.

The road to Gobustan National Park cuts through a landscape that feels stripped back to essentials. Rock replaces vegetation, colour drains from the ground, and the air carries a faint sense of exposure. Gobustan is known for its petroglyphs — thousands of them — but what registers first is not age, but silence.

The carvings themselves are scattered across low rock faces, some easy to miss unless you slow down. Figures of people, animals, boats — gestures rather than narratives. They don’t announce meaning. They simply persist. The nearby museum provides context, but outside, among the stones, it’s the continuity that stays with you: this place has been looked at, marked, returned to, for far longer than any explanation can account for.

From Gobustan, we left the paved road behind and headed towards the Dashgil Mud Volcanoes. Reaching them required an off-road transfer — once the domain of ageing Ladas, now handled by more modern vehicles, though the driving remains equally improvisational. The terrain feels unfinished, pocked and uneven, as if the ground itself is undecided.

The mud volcanoes don’t erupt dramatically. They ooze, bubble, sigh. Grey pools swell and collapse gently, releasing gas with a soft, rhythmic insistence. It’s oddly absorbing. Nothing explodes. Nothing resolves. The earth here seems content to express itself slowly.

We returned towards Baku by mid-afternoon, stopping first at the Bibi-Heybat Mosque, set close to the water’s edge. Rebuilt in the late 1990s after its destruction during the Soviet period, the mosque carries the weight of loss and restoration without dwelling on either. It is an active place of worship, calm and composed, its pale stone catching the light softly. Whether approached as a religious site or simply a place to pause, it offers a sense of grounding after the rawness of Gobustan.

Further along the peninsula lies the Ateshgah Fire Temple, where fire has long been central to belief. The temple is enclosed, almost domestic in scale, its courtyard framing what was once a naturally fed flame. Though the fire today is sustained artificially, the idea remains intact — that this land has always been marked by energy rising from below.

The day ended at Yanar Dag, the Burning Mountain. A low hillside, unremarkable at first glance, interrupted by a line of flame that refuses to go out. Gas seeps from the ground and ignites on contact with air, burning steadily regardless of wind or rain. People stand quietly here, more contemplative than animated. There is nothing to do but watch.

Fire, mud, stone. By the time we returned to Baku, Azerbaijan felt less like a country we had visited and more like a set of forces we had passed through.