Southern Route: Salyan

Population of the district: 115,600; district centre, the town of Salyan: 36,100.

The SALYAN district is located in south-eastern Azerbaijan, in the LANKARAN-ASTARA region, which is distinguished by its distinctive cultural and historical traditions and its unique plant life, is famous for its long-lived people and its distinctive cuisine with an abundance of fish dishes, and has been inhabited since the most ancient times.

The Salyan district is a kind of gateway to this unique region: the republic's transport arteries run through it, the highway and railway linking the whole of Azerbaijan with its southern regions and with the countries of the Middle East.

In deep antiquity various tribes settled in this region, succeeding one another in the waves of history, and they became one of the components of the ethnogenesis of the Azerbaijani people. The area got its name from the self-designation of one of the ancient tribes, "sal".

One of the country's main rivers, the KURA, flows through the Salyan district, and to the east it is bounded by the Caspian seashore. The proximity of the sea and the river shaped the local cuisine, which abounds in recipes for fish dishes with a special stuffing of walnuts, unusual seasonings and other ingredients. And not only fish: these unusual dishes are also made from chicken, waterfowl and meat.

The State SHIRVAN NATIONAL PARK is located here (converted in 2003 from the nature reserve of the same name). The reserve itself was established in 1969 to protect and restore the characteristic plant communities of the Shirvan Lowland (semi-deserts and wetland ecosystems). The "BANDOVAN" sanctuary, established in 1961 over an area of 30 thousand ha, is also located here. It covers parts of two administrative districts, Salyan and Garadagh, and was created to preserve and restore the numbers of goitered gazelles, waterfowl and little bustards.

This area is also interesting from the point of view of archaeology and its surviving historical and architectural monuments. Here, in the 1970s-80s, a number of sites from the medieval period, dated to the 9th-17th centuries, were discovered. These ancient settlements were once developed centres of trade and crafts, as confirmed by large numbers of finds of ceramic, glass and stone artefacts. Due to the rise in the level of the Caspian, these settlements ended up underwater. To study this so-called "Caspian Atlantis", a permanent underwater archaeological expedition was set up under the leadership of V. Kvachidze. The finds of this expedition can be seen today at the Museum of History of Azerbaijan in Baku.

There are also a number of archaeological sites in the district covering the period from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages. Among them are the MARYMLY necropolis, the jar-burial necropolis in the village of GURSANGA, and the ruins of ancient settlements in the present-day villages of NOKHUDLU and MAHMUDABAD.

5 km from the district centre lies one of Azerbaijan's many mud volcanoes, BABAZANAN, which attracts local residents with the healing properties of its mud.

Before you reach Salyan, in the DASHGIL area, not far from the seashore, you can see a mud volcano. The "Dashgil" sanctuary is also located here, a place for waterfowl hunting and for fishing for kutum, carp and other Caspian fish.

SALYAN is the administrative centre of the Salyan district, 126 km from Baku. There is an old 19th-century mosque here, an architectural monument protected by the state. For travellers and tourists, a modern CARAVANSERAI has now been built, where you can try dishes of the local, traditional Azerbaijani cuisine.