Feb
27
2010
I was in Baku from Sunday 21 February through Wednesday 24 February and had the opportunity to take some time out to visit Gobustan. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site located about 60km south west of Baku. Less than an hour drive.
The site is on an elevated plateau looking down to the Caspian Sea. There are over 6000 images of bovines, equines, mother figuers, hunters, boats, etc. Some measure several meter in length. The animals depicted need a moister climate than today. This suggests that at the time of the drawings the climate was wetter with lush vegetation. The hills with the carvings were probably islands in the Caspian as the Sapian Sea was much higher than it is today. This would also be suggested by the numerous boats that are depicted. The earliest ox carvings on Kichikdash mountain date from 34′000 BC!
One of the better known carvings is the one several meters of the ground of a group of people in two rows. The way of representing people is quite representative for a lot of the carvings of people on Boyukhdash mountain near the visitor center.
One of the more interesting carvings is the one of pregnant women in profile. In addition pictures of tattooed women are widespread across Gobustan. They resemble statues that were found in Gobustan dating to the upper Palaeolithic.
There are plenty of carvings of boats indicating that the sea must have been much closer to the caves and rocks where people were carving as to give them a sufficiently close look. Therefore the Caspian Sea level must have been much higher than what it is today, probably by up to 80 meters.
Some of the caves show layers upon layers of carvings on top of each other. They depict people and animals. They show plenty of bulls in all sizes.
I managed to see only a small sampling of the carvings the site has to offer so I will be back for more.
Last Updated: 27-02-2010
Copyright © 2010 Hans Dewaele – All rights reserved
Dec
28
2009
From Sunday 6 December through
Wednesday 9 December I drove with colleagues of mine from Baku to Tbilisi. It was winter so the weather was cold and rainy. Yet, it was a great opportunity to get off the beaten track, away from the capitals and see the inside of country. We traveled in Northwestern Azerbaijan from Baku to Shemakha, Ismayili and Qabala where we stayed in the nearby Qafqaz hotel. From there we continued to Sheki and Zakatala to then return and stay the night at the hotel in Sheki. The next day we crossed the border into Georgia at Balakon. Quite an experience in itself. In Georgia, on the way to Tbilisi we stopped in the idyllic restored mountain top village of Sighnaghi. Bringing the GPS along helped to record the route and the locations visited. You can find a copy of the actual route on Wikiloc
Ismayili is a non-descriptive little town like so many others in Azerbaijan. Like many other city centers in Azerbaijan it has its Haidar Aliyev Park and Government and administrative buildings which all have a new and clean appearance standing out from the surrounding areas. They seem to provide the locals with an island of cleanliness, manicured gardens and modernity brought to them by the father of the nation.
Sep
26
2009
On Thursday and Friday 24 and 25 September I traveled with colleagues to Kokshetau and Petrovavlovsk in the north of Kazakhstan. We flew to Astana from Almaty and then drove by car to Petropavlovsk while stopping over in Schuchinsk, Borovoye and Kokshetau on the way. In all we drove well over 1′000km in these two days.
The first stop on the way was Lake Borovoye where we stopped at the Goluboy Zaliv bay from where you have a good view of the Zhumbaktas sphinx which sits in the water and which with some imagination resembles the head of a young lady.