Description
Just over an hour’s drive north-west of Baku along the Guba highway is a 382-metre high mountain whose bizarre shape long ago led to it being called Mt. Beshbarmag, which is Azerbaijani for ‘Five-finger Mountain’. Legend has it that sometime in the ancient past a prophet called Khidr ventured here in search of a ‘potion of life’ and having drunk from a spring at the summit achieved immortality. Today the mountain is shrouded in mystery with locals coming here to pray for strength and good fortune. As a tourist attraction, it’s well worth climbing to witness a number of age-old spiritual rituals as well as for the fantastic views of the Caspian Sea from the summit. What's more, the general area is also one of Azerbaijan’s best birdwatching sites, with the corridor between the mountains and the sea acting as a bottleneck for hundreds of migrating bird species.
