Outside this improbable spa in a remote part of the former Soviet Union, oil rigs bob on a hardscrabble plain of rocks, shrubs and rusting industrial equipment that could easily pass for a stretch of West Texas.
Inside, Ramil Mutukhov, a lanky 25-year-old, prepares to be pampered and preened, scrubbed and peeled — in a bath of pure crude oil.
He undresses, hangs his trousers and sweatshirt on a peg, pulls off socks and underwear and folds a wad of brown paper towels. He will need them later. Then he steps into a mess of what looks, smells and flows like used engine oil. "It's wonderful," he says, up to his neck in oil in a sort of human lube job.
The petroleum spas of Naftalan in central Azerbaijan, one of the little-known but once popular vacation spots of the Soviet Union, are making an unlikely return in a country so awash in oil these days that people are swimming in it.
Here in Naftalan, visitors can bathe once a day in the local crude. They and doctors here say it relieves joint pain, cures psoriasis, calms nerves and beautifies skin — never mind that Western experts say it may cause cancer.
Hoping to tap into the worldwide spa boom, Health Center, where Mutukhov took a dip in crude recently, opened a year ago. Another spa is under construction and two more are planned. "Two years ago, all this was ruins," Ilgar Guseynov, the owner and director of Health Center, said in an interview. "Every day, every month, Azerbaijan is growing richer."
At their peak in the 1980s, Naftalan spas had 75,000 visitors a year. That flow became a trickle after war broke out between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians in nearby Nagorno-Karabakh in 1988 — and after the Soviet Union stopped offering free trips. In this depressed atmosphere, five of the six Soviet-era resorts were converted into glum housing for refugees. But this summer, about 350 people visited the Health Center, Guseynov said, up from 250 last summer. A 15-day course costs US$450, including meals.
"Azerbaijan is standing on its own feet now," Amir Aslan, the deputy mayor of Naftalan, said. The town is banking on growth tied to the oil spa, which he said would pull this dusty place out of poverty. Aslan has his own plans for a US$3 million, 20-bath spread.
In her office overlooking the oil field that supplies Health Center, Gyultikin Suleymanova, the lead doctor, said that the local crude was unusual because it contained little natural gasoline or other lighter fractions of petroleum, and as a result was safe.
Naftalan crude contains about 50 percent naphthalene, a hydrocarbon best known as the stuff of moth balls. It is also an active ingredient in coal tar soaps, which are used by dermatologists to treat psoriasis, though in lower concentrations.
The National Agency for Research on Cancer, an American government agency, classifies naphthalene as a possible carcinogen, though Suleymanova said that is not the case when people bathe in it. Baths are lukewarm and last 10 minutes.
The therapeutic benefits are a product of natural antibiotic and anti-inflammatory agents that seep into the skin though osmosis, Suleymanova said.
Arzu Mirzeyev is the bath master. With a green frock, jeans stained with oil spots and a mustache, he looks for all the world like a gas station attendant and has a job to match. He changes the oil.
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