Azerbaijan Beyond the Capital: Baku, Gobustan and Ganja, 6 Nights

You are met at Heydar Aliyev International Airport and driven into Baku, about half an hour away depending on traffic. Many flights land late in the evening, so the first night is often just a matter of checking in and sleeping. If you arrive earlier, the seafront Boulevard, lit up after dark along the Caspian, is an easy first walk from most central hotels.

A guided day in the capital that begins inside the walls of Icherisheher, the UNESCO-listed Old City, passing caravanserais, the Maiden Tower and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs. Then comes Nizami Street, Baku’s main shopping promenade, and the flowing white curves of the Heydar Aliyev Centre, where entry is included if you want to look inside. The funicular up to Highland Park ends the day with a wide view over the bay.

The morning heads south-west, about 60 kilometres down the Caspian coast to Gobustan, where a museum introduces the thousands of rock carvings left on the hillside from the Stone Age onwards. A short ride by local 4x4 reaches the mud volcanoes nearby. After lunch you cross to the Absheron peninsula, north-east of the city, for the Ateshgah fire temple at Surakhani and Yanar Dag, a hillside where gas has burned for decades, best seen as the light fades.

After breakfast you are taken to the station for the train west across the country to Ganja, a journey of about four and a half to five hours through farmland and dry plains, with the Lesser Caucasus rising to the south. On arrival you visit the Imamzadeh on the edge of the city, a shrine complex whose blue-tiled dome gives it its local name, Göy Imam, before checking in.

Ganja is one of Azerbaijan’s oldest cities and the birthplace of Nizami Ganjavi, the twelfth-century poet whose verse is still read across the Persian-speaking world. A city tour takes in his mausoleum on the edge of town, the seventeenth-century Shah Abbas Mosque and the mausoleums and tree-lined streets of the old centre. The pace is slower than in Baku, and the evening is yours.

You return east to the capital, either by train or by road with a driver, which covers about 370 kilometres in five to six hours with a stop; which of the two is confirmed with your quote. The rest of the day is free. The Caspian seafront Boulevard, the Old City lanes at dusk or a long final dinner are all good ways to spend your last evening in Baku.

Check-out is at midday, and the transfer to the airport is timed to your flight; many flights to India leave late in the evening. Late check-out is not included, so if you face a long wait we can quote to keep your room. Until then the day is free for a last walk in the Old City or a coffee on the Boulevard.