Honestly I'm not 100% I went to the right place although I think I did. Pictures just look different than the previous reviews which could come down to them being at the wrong place or it just looking so various at different seasons. For the second I can't say much and the first is tricky. There are MANY mud cones around Azerbaijan and Baku alone. You tend to visit this by coming to the rock art with mud cones in the first place and there are rock arts at the north of the city next to the tar lakes - well I think you understand that these mud cones aren't special enough on its own. I think it's cool to visit one either way. Google map didn't have ANY information on this place so I just guessed it. Turns out OpenStreetMap has the place in a funny way and it's quite accurate. Surely the parking lot is just a large area of gravel rocks that are used by the trucks to get refilled but the parks are maintained, the gazebo is open. You cannot officially walk up to the volvano (oh sorry...mud cone) but obviously you just do it anyway. I confirmed beforehand with a trucker filling his car who unfortunately guessed I'm American but yes, you are at a mud cone and you need to walk over the hill to see it. Before you get here, by the way, the road takes you through lots of gas pumps, a …

I visited this tWHS on the way to the Gobustan Rock Art WHS. Even though there is no mobile signal around, and there is a police checkpoint just before reaching the site which is quite notorious for bribery scams, currently the site is free of charge, signposted and very easy to get to. So if you have a rental car, the most popular half-day or day trip from Baku including the Gobustan Rock Art WHS and the Lok-Batan mud cone, is not necessary and you'll be able to spend more time at the sites proper plus make sure you're taken to the most active parts of the mud cone.

You'll see that most guides do their best to light a flame on the babbling mud cones. Make sure not to step on the fresh mud and keep a safe distance from the most active cones (the amount of fresh mud oozing out of them should be a clear indicator!). The mud cone or "volcano" erupted in 1977 and again in 2001, producing large flames many meters high in the latter eruption. I had already seen other smaller examples of mud cones in Turkmenistan, and although Azerbaijan claims to have around half of the world's mud volcanoes, their association with oil and gas fields, together with the rather dubious boardwalks and "mud spa centres" currently being built and developed, while trying to artificially control nature, I think don't bode well for any possible future inscription.

It was interesting to …