After the rather touristy Baku Atashgah, I took a taxi out to see a more modest, but more authentic natural flame, at “Yanar Dag” (Fire Mountain). The story is that several decades ago a wandering shepherd accidentally set light to a small natural vent. And to general amazement, that small vent has kept steadily burning […]
Browsing Posts in Travel
Baku's "Fire Mountain" Yanar Dag
October 30, 2007
Baku's Atashgah (Fire Temple)
October 29, 2007
After failing to find a suitable bus, train, or marshrutska, I eventually took a taxi out to the Baku Atashgah (Fire Temple). The taxi driver chatted with me in weak English. He complained about government corruption and how there should be lots of money in Azerbaijan but it didn’t make it down to the people. […]
Tbilisi's Atashgah (Fire Temple)
October 27, 2007
On my third try, after much searching, I finally found Tbilis’s Atashgah, or Fire Temple. The two LonelyPlanet maps show slightly different locations for the Atashgah, both of which are close but slightly too far East. You can’t access the Atashgah from the path to the Narikala fortress; rather you must come to it by […]
Gori: Stalin's Home Town
October 24, 2007
Most relics of Stalin were swept from public view in the USSR in the years after Khruschev’s 1956 denunciation. But not in Gori, Georgia. This small provincial town is Stalin’s birthplace. I suspect that Stalin is pretty much the only interesting thing ever to have happened here, so, despite everything, he is still commemorated as […]
Down the Potosi Mine
April 9, 2007
Potosi in Bolivia sits below the Cerro Rico mountain, which is a treasury of metallic ores and riddled with mines. During the Spanish colonial period it was a fabulously wealthy silver mine, generating vast fortunes for the Spanish Crown. The mine is still mostly hand worked. I took a small group tour with Koala Tours […]
© 2024 The Wandering Scot
Design by SRS Solutions