Alat (Alyat)

Alat is a rather dull small town, with an economy based on oil extraction and on stone quarries. The town is divided in two by the main Baku-Ganja road.

The coastal railway, going south till Astara, also has a station in Alat. There is a nice place for tea and a couple of places to get some basic food.

The town's main attraction are the mud volcanoes that dot the landscape just north of it, particularly the Firuz crater. These miniature volcanoes splutter mud, gases, water, the occasional rock and sometimes mud mixed with oil.

Often with multiple vents, usually they are not dangerous, but occasionally can have rather violent eruptions, some times the terrain around them can be the real danger, specially for vehicles.

In the western direction there are beaches used by the local people, but that don't seem to attract other visitors. (Foreign tourists either come for the mud volcanoes or simply stray to Alat when visiting, or looking for the petroglyphs of Gobustan.)

After Alat the main road turns west in the direction of Kurdamir and Ganja and a new road starts for traffic going south to Lenkoran.

(70kms southwest of Baku)