Hirkan National Park

Listen first. Water drips from leaves high above you. Somewhere a bird calls, and the sound comes back softly through the trees. The air is warm, damp and heavy, and it smells of moss, wet bark and rotting leaves. Under your feet the ground is soft and dark. Light comes down in pale green patches. You are standing in one of the oldest forests on Earth, in the far southeast corner of Azerbaijan.

This is Hirkan National Park. It sits in the Astara and Lankaran districts, close to the border with Iran. To the east, the land falls toward the Caspian Sea. To the west, it climbs into the Talysh Mountains. The park takes its name from Hyrcania, an ancient name for the lands along the southern shore of the Caspian. That name is older than most of the countries on today's map.

Here is the first surprise. The forest around you is not simply old in human terms. It is a relict forest. That means it survived from a much earlier age of the planet. Millions of years ago, during a warm period that scientists call the Tertiary, forests like this one covered much of Europe and northern Asia. Then the ice ages came. Glaciers and cold killed those forests across most of their range. Here, they lived on.

Why here? The answer is the shape of the land. The Talysh Mountains form a wall on one side, and the Caspian Sea sits on the other. Moist air rises from the sea, meets the mountains, cools and falls as rain. The ice sheets never reached this narrow strip. So the forest kept its warmth, its rain and its trees, while the world around it changed. You are walking through a small piece of a lost landscape.

Protection here began long before the national park. A nature reserve was created in this area in the Soviet period, in the 1930s, to guard the forest and its rare trees. In 2004, Azerbaijan turned the reserve into a national park, and the protected area was later expanded. Then, in 2023, UNESCO added this park to the World Heritage listing for the Hyrcanian Forests. That listing had first covered forests on the Iranian side of the border.

Now look at the trees themselves. One of the most famous is the Persian ironwood. Locals call it the iron tree, and the name is honest. Its wood is extremely hard and heavy. Look for smooth, patchy bark in grey, green and cream, a little like camouflage. Often the trunks twist, and branches from neighbouring trees grow together. In autumn, the leaves of the ironwood turn red, orange and gold, and the forest floor glows with colour.

Other trees here are just as rare. There is the chestnut-leaved oak, a tall oak with long leaves that look like chestnut leaves. There is the Caspian honey locust, with sharp thorns along its trunk. There is the Hyrcanian box tree, a slow-growing evergreen with small, glossy leaves. In many places, these trees grow nowhere else in the world. Botanists come here to study plants that most people know only from fossils and old textbooks.

Here is a second surprise, and it may be closer to your home than this forest. Many gardens in Europe and beyond grow a tree with soft pink flowers like little silk brushes. It is often called the silk tree. Its relatives grow wild here in the Lankaran lowlands, and in this region it is known as the Lankaran acacia. The Persian ironwood also became a popular garden tree far away. A walk in a city park somewhere else may carry a small echo of this forest.

The forest also shelters animals, though most of them stay out of sight. Wild boar, badgers, jackals and brown bears live in these hills. Lynx move through the higher slopes. The rarest of all is the Persian leopard, also called the Caucasian leopard. Camera traps in this region have recorded leopards, and every confirmed sighting is news for conservation workers. You are very unlikely to see one. But it is worth knowing that a big cat may share these hills.

Birds are easier to notice. Listen for woodpeckers knocking on dead trunks. In the morning and evening, the forest fills with song. Along the nearby Caspian coast, large numbers of water birds rest during migration in spring and autumn. The wetlands and the forest work together. Rivers carry water from the mountains through the trees and down to the sea, and life follows that water from the ridges to the shore.

People have lived beside this forest for a very long time. The Talysh people are one of the communities of these mountains, with their own language and traditions. In the villages around the park, you may see small farms, beehives, fruit trees and fields of tea. The Lankaran and Astara area is known for tea, which grows well in this warm, wet climate. Families often serve it strong and hot, with jam on the side.

The climate shapes every visit. This is one of the wettest parts of Azerbaijan. Rain can come suddenly, and mist often hangs between the trunks in the early morning. Paths turn muddy and roots become slippery. Summer is hot and humid. Spring brings fresh green leaves and flowing streams. Autumn brings the colour of the ironwood. Each season gives the forest a different face, and none of them is dry for long.

Before you move on, stand still for a moment. Put your hand on a trunk and feel how cool and damp the bark is. Look up at the layers of green, one above another, almost closing out the sky. Notice the ferns, the moss on the stones, the fallen logs slowly turning back into soil. This quiet process has continued here, almost unbroken, for millions of years.

When you walk back toward the road, listen once more. The dripping water, the distant bird, the soft sound of your own steps on wet leaves. These are the same sounds this forest has made since long before the first people arrived. You are only a short visitor in its long life. And as you leave, the forest simply goes on growing, as it always has.