Azerbaijan's outdoor landscape spans from the Greater Caucasus to the Caspian shore and the mud volcanoes of the Absheron Peninsula — one of the strangest geological landscapes in the world, where cold mud bubbles continuously from hundreds of craters across a flat plain. The Ilisu Nature Reserve and Shahdag National Park in the north carry alpine hiking terrain above 4,000 metres with Caucasian tur, brown bear, and bezoar ibex on trail-accessible ridgelines. The Hirkan National Park in the southeast is a Tertiary-era temperate rainforest surviving as a botanical relic of remarkable biodiversity — the Caucasian iron tree, a species that survived the Ice Age, grows here. The Goygol National Park protects a volcanic crater lake of extraordinary clarity surrounded by beech and hornbeam forest. Tours by locals who know the landscape beyond the obvious map pins reveal the hidden gems. It really hits differently.