Classic Azerbaijan in 7 days: Baku, Gobustan, Lahic and Sheki

The structure exists for a reason. Azerbaijan tempts people into a chain of one-night stops, because the map makes Shamakhi, Ismayilli, Qabala, Sheki and Quba look like beads on a string. Five beds in six nights is a bad week in any country. We settle in two places outside the capital and drive out from them.

Who it suits: first-time visitors, couples, pairs of friends, and anyone who wants a compact country with rock art, an eighteenth-century palace, a copper village and good food. Two optional walks of about an hour, nothing harder.

Your specialist: a named Azerbaijan specialist here, with our long-standing Baku partner running the ground.

Day by day

Day 1: Arrive Baku. Most flights into Heydar Aliyev airport land in the morning or the late evening, which is a considerable improvement on the rest of the region. Private transfer, about forty minutes. If you land early we hold the room from the night before rather than making you wait until two in the afternoon. Evening walk along the seafront Boulevard and dinner, which we book, because the first meal in a country should not be the one you find at random.

Day 2: Baku on foot. A morning in Icherisheher, the walled old city, starting at nine before the group traffic arrives. The Maiden Tower, whose original purpose is still argued about, and the fifteenth-century Palace of the Shirvanshahs, which is the better building of the two and gets less attention. Out through the walls to the nineteenth-century oil-boom quarter, where the stone mansions were built by people who made money out of the ground in a single generation. The Carpet Museum in the afternoon, which sounds dutiful and is not: it explains a craft you will see for the rest of the week and the building is shaped like a rolled rug. Evening around Fountain Square.

Day 3: The Heydar Aliyev Center and the Absheron peninsula. Zaha Hadid’s white curved building in the morning, with two hours rather than a photograph from the car park, because the interior and the exhibitions are the point. Then out onto the Absheron peninsula: Ateshgah, the fire temple at Surakhani built around a natural gas vent and used by Zoroastrian and Hindu ascetics, and Yanar Dag, a hillside that has burned continuously for as long as anyone has recorded it. Both are small, both are strange, and the drive between them is through oil infrastructure, which we mention because nobody else does. Back for a last Baku evening.

Day 4: Gobustan, then west to the wine country. South out of the city for an hour to the Gobustan reserve, where thousands of petroglyphs are cut into the rock over a span of perhaps fifteen thousand years, with a museum that is genuinely well made. Then the mud volcanoes on the flat below, reached by a rough track in an old Lada because nothing else gets there, where cold grey mud bubbles out of cones a few feet high. Lunch, then west on the main highway with a stop at the Diri Baba mausoleum at Maraza, built into a cliff face, and Shamakhi with its Juma mosque and the Yeddi Gumbez tombs. Into the hills at Ismayilli for the night, with a tasting at one of the modern estates that have grown up here in the last fifteen years.

Day 5: Lahic, then on to Sheki. Up the Girdimanchay gorge in the morning, about 12 miles (19 km) on a single-track road with drops and no barrier, forty-five minutes each way. Lahic is a coppersmith village on a cobbled street where the Tat language is still spoken and men still beat metal in open workshops. Arrive before the day traffic. Then the drive to Sheki, about two and a half hours through the foothills. Two nights.

Day 6: Sheki and Kish. The Palace of the Shaki Khans in the morning, an eighteenth-century summer residence whose shebeke windows are made of coloured glass held in a wooden lattice assembled without nails or glue, and which is on the UNESCO list. The caravanserai in the town below is still a working building. Lunch is piti, mutton and chickpeas baked in a clay pot, which is a ritual as much as a dish and which your guide will show you how to eat. Afternoon up to Kish for the church associated with Caucasian Albania, the early Christian kingdom that preceded the Islamic period here, and then a halva workshop, because Sheki halva is a different thing from anything you have eaten under that name.

Day 7: Back to Baku, or on. The drive east is four and a half to five hours on the main highway, broken with a stop at a village lunch. Afternoon in Baku for whatever you did not do, and the airport. If your flight is late, we hold a room for the day rather than making you sit with luggage. If you are continuing to Georgia, this is the day you cross instead, and our 14-day route picks up here.

What is included

Six nights of accommodation with breakfast, a private car with an English-speaking driver on every day of travel, the local vehicle for the mud volcano track, licensed English-speaking guides on four days, all site and museum entries, a tasting at a working wine estate near Ismayilli, the piti lunch in Sheki, the halva workshop, a day-by-day document with honest drive times, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Baku partner team for the whole trip.

What we would change, and when

• Have three more days? Add the north. Quba, Laza and Xinaliq with two nights up there is the best addition to this route by a distance, and it is what our 10-day walking route is built around.
• More interested in eating than in architecture? Swap the Absheron day for a Baku market and kitchen day and add a night in Sheki. That is our food and culture route.
• Travelling in July or August? We reverse the emphasis: less Baku, more altitude, and we schedule the capital for early mornings and after dark.
• Travelling in winter? Lahic in ice is unpleasant and we may cut it. The winter version of this route is Baku, Gobustan, Quba and Qabala, and we say plainly what is not in it.

Honest notes

Baku is not the country. It is a wealthy, restored, well-run capital and it sets an expectation that Ismayilli and Lahic will not meet. The hotels outside the capital on this route are clean, well-run and simple. That is the market rather than a compromise we failed to negotiate, and travellers who know it in advance enjoy the second half of the week more than the first.

The Lahic road frightens a small number of people. It is single track in places, it has drops, and it has no barrier. Our drivers do it several times a week. If it is not for you, say so at the enquiry stage and we build the week without it, and nobody minds.

We have left Ganja out on purpose. It is a long drive west for the Nizami mausoleum and a lake, and on a seven-day trip the same hours spent going north to Quba and Xinaliq deliver more. If you want Ganja, we will build it, and we will tell you this first.

The mud volcanoes involve a rough track and an old car, and in wet weather they can be inaccessible. We check the morning of, and there is an alternative written into your document.

The land border with Armenia is closed and this route does not approach it. If you want two countries in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan pairs overland with Georgia.

Built by your named Azerbaijan specialist, checked against notes our founder made in the field.

Related

• Azerbaijan: the complete guide
• Food and culture in Azerbaijan, 9 days
• Azerbaijan and Georgia, 14 days