What we would skip in Azerbaijan

Nothing on this list is worthless. Everything here is either overrated relative to the time it takes, or badly matched to the trip most people are actually taking, or good only under conditions nobody tells you about in advance. Where we would skip something, we say what we would do with the day instead. If you disagree, tell us and we will build it anyway.

A beach holiday on the Caspian

The most common mismatch we correct, and the easiest to fix early.

The beaches on the Absheron peninsula near Baku are functional at best. The peninsula is an oil landscape with beach clubs on it, the water is shallow and warm rather than clear, and the season overlaps exactly with the humid months. If a beach is part of what you want from a holiday, this is not the country, and we would rather say so at the enquiry stage than build it and hope.

Instead: put those days into the northern mountains, which are ten to twenty degrees cooler and are the reason to come. Or, if you want water, spend the time at Laza under Shahdag, where the waterfalls at the head of the valley are worth a morning.

Ganja and Goygol on a first trip

Ganja is the second city, with the mausoleum of the poet Nizami, and an hour beyond it is the lake at Goygol, formed by an earthquake in 1139. Both are real and both have their advocates.

They are also a long westward drive from anywhere else you are going, for a city that is pleasant rather than remarkable and a lake that the north does better. On a seven or eight-day trip this is two days spent to add one.

Instead: the same two days in Quba, Laza and Xinaliq. That is not a close call.

The Flame Towers as a destination

They are offices, apartments and a hotel, with a lighting display in the evening. The entire experience of them is looking at them from Highland Park with the bay behind, which takes ten minutes and is free.

Instead: the Heydar Aliyev Center, given a proper half day. Zaha Hadid’s building is the best modern architecture in the Caucasus and it rewards time inside rather than a photograph from outside. Baku in three days has the ordering.

Caviar as a souvenir

Baku’s association with Caspian caviar is largely historical. What is sold to visitors now is expensive, of uneven provenance, and comes with real legal complications when you try to carry it home across a border.

Instead: buy walnut jam, saffron, dried fruit or a small piece of Sheki halva. All of them travel, all of them cost a fraction, and the jam is genuinely one of the best things in the country.

The folklore dinner show

Several places in Baku pair a national menu with music and dancing for a coach audience. The food is average, the room is loud, and what is being performed is a version of the culture arranged for people who will not be there tomorrow.

Instead: dinner in the streets behind Fountain Square, and a chaykhana afterwards where the tea comes with jam and nobody is performing. If you want live music, our Baku partner knows the places where musicians play for the room. What to eat in Azerbaijan has the rest.

Xinaliq as a day trip from Baku

It is sold. It is roughly five hours of highway to Quba and back plus four hours of mountain road, which is not a day out, it is an endurance test that delivers twenty minutes in a village at the flattest hour of the light.

Instead: two nights in the north. Quba the first night, Xinaliq the second in a family house, and the morning above the village before any vehicle has come up the gorge. That single change is the biggest upgrade available on an Azerbaijan itinerary.

If your trip genuinely cannot afford two northern nights, it cannot afford Xinaliq, and the honest replacement is Qabala with the Tufandag ropeway.

Lahic in the middle of the day

Not the village. The timing.

Lahic between about eleven and three is a cobbled street with workshops on it and visitors in it. Lahic at six in the evening, when the day traffic has gone back down the gorge and the light comes along the street, is a village where men are still beating copper because that is their job rather than a demonstration.

Instead: sleep there. The guesthouses are simple, the dinner is home cooking and better than anything you will eat in a hotel, and it costs $30 to $50 for a room. Our food and culture route builds it that way.

Qabala as a cultural stop

Qabala is a modern resort town with a ropeway, a lake, comfortable hotels and a waterfall walk. It is genuinely good for families and for anyone who wants a soft day in the middle of a trip.

It is not an old town, it does not have much atmosphere, and it is sometimes sold as though it were the equal of Sheki. It is not.

Instead: if you want comfort and a pool, keep Qabala and enjoy it for what it is. If you want the town people talk about afterwards, that is Sheki, and it deserves two nights.

A fifth night in Baku

Three nights is right. Four works if you love cities. The fifth is almost always taken from Sheki or from the north, and it is also the most expensive night in the country, because Baku hotel rates are priced for a business and events market in a way that nothing else here is.

Instead: the fifth night in Sheki or Quba, at half the price and twice the interest.

Nakhchivan on a first trip

The Azerbaijani exclave is reached by air from Baku only, because the land route crosses closed frontiers. It has genuine sights, including the twelfth-century Momine Khatun mausoleum, and it needs two days plus two flights.

Instead: on a first visit, the same two days in the north. Nakhchivan is a second-trip destination and we build it happily for people who ask for it specifically.

Five one-night stops because the map is small

The most expensive mistake in Azerbaijani itinerary design, and the cost is not money. The country is about 33,400 square miles (86,600 km2) and every town looks an hour from the last, which tempts people into a night each in Shamakhi, Ismayilli, Qabala, Sheki and Quba. That is five packing mornings in a seven-day week.

Instead: three bases on a week, four on ten days. Drive out and come back. How many days you need in Azerbaijan sets out where each length gets you, and the best two-week route shows the shape we actually build.

Self-drive

The main highways are manageable. The mountain roads are not the place to learn local driving conventions, driving standards on the two-lane roads are assertive, livestock on the carriageway is normal outside the cities, and no rental agreement covers the track to Laza.

Instead: a car with a driver at $70 to $110 a day for the vehicle, which split between two people is less than most travellers spend on lunch and is the best value line in an Azerbaijani budget.

Any route that tries to cross into Armenia

Worth stating plainly because it still appears in itineraries drafted elsewhere. The land border between Azerbaijan and Armenia is closed. There is no overland crossing between the two countries, and no route we build will attempt one. This is a practical planning fact and not a matter we comment on.

Instead: Georgia is the connecting country in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan with Georgia over an open land border is an excellent fourteen days. A three-country trip runs Azerbaijan, then Georgia, then Armenia, never across the closed border between the first and the last, and it needs about twenty-one days.

What we would never skip

For balance, the things we put into almost every Azerbaijan trip and would fight to keep:

• Sheki, two nights. The Palace of the Shaki Khans with its shebeke windows, the caravanserai, the church at Kish, and piti for lunch.
• A night in Lahic, for the evening rather than the workshops.
• Gobustan and the mud volcanoes, half a day, guided.
• The Heydar Aliyev Center, half a day, unhurried.
• The Absheron peninsula, for the fire temple and the burning hillside, which explain the whole country.
• Two northern nights if the season allows, for Xinaliq and Laza.
• One wine estate near Ismayilli or Shamakhi, on the road you were driving anyway.
• A chaykhana afternoon with tea, jam and no plan.

How we run Azerbaijan

GO EAST staffs its own offices in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. Azerbaijan is not one of them, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. We run it through a Baku partner we have used for years, whose drivers, guides and mountain 4×4 teams meet you on the ground, briefed by us, with your consultant on the same WhatsApp thread from take-off to landing. Our founder Doron Reichman has led trips in the Caucasus himself, which is where several of the judgements above come from.

Plan this trip

Tell us the Azerbaijan route you have in your head and we will tell you honestly which parts of it we would change, and why, before you have spent anything. Free first outline, no obligation.

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Keep reading

• Azerbaijan: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Azerbaijan and Georgia
• Baku in three days
• How many days do you need in Azerbaijan?
• Classic Azerbaijan in 7 days
• All our Azerbaijan trips

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