Baku & Gabala, 5 Nights

Met at the airport and driven along the Caspian into the city; hotels usually hand over rooms from mid-afternoon. If the flight lands early enough, the Old City is ten minutes away and is best seen slowly on foot: the Maiden Tower at its seaward edge, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs higher up the slope, and the lanes of carpet shops and teahouses between them. Otherwise leave it for the evening, when the walls are floodlit and the lanes are cooler.

The Absheron peninsula east of Baku is the reason Azerbaijan calls itself the land of fire. Ateshgah at Surakhani is a pentagonal fire temple used by Hindu and Zoroastrian worshippers, with Indian-script inscriptions over its cells; Yanardag, north of the city, is a bank of sandstone along which natural gas has burned for decades. Back in town, the Heydar Aliyev Center is Zaha Hadid's white, wave-shaped cultural centre, worth seeing for the building alone. The evening is free for the boulevard.

About 225 km north-west, through semi-desert that turns to vineyards and then forest. The natural break is Shamakhi, capital of the old Shirvan state, whose Juma Mosque was first built in the eighth century and is counted among the oldest in the Caucasus; the hilltop Diri Baba mausoleum at Maraza, built into the rock in 1402, is passed on the way. Gabala sits at the foot of the Greater Caucasus. The late afternoon goes to Nohur Lake, a quiet reservoir with walking paths and the mountains behind.

Tufandag is the mountain resort just above the town, and its cable cars run most of the year: in winter for skiers, in summer for walkers and anyone who wants the view over the forest to the plain. Wrap up even in July, because the top station is much colder than the valley. The afternoon goes to Yeddi Gozel, the Seven Beauties, a waterfall that drops in stages down a wooded gorge; the path is steep and stepped in places, and in heavy rain or ice it may be closed.

An early start back towards Baku, then south along the coast to Gobustan, where the boulders on the escarpment are covered with engravings of hunters, boats and animals, some of them many thousands of years old. The museum at the foot of the site is a good introduction. The mud volcanoes nearby are reached in a local off-road car. The last stop, on the coast road back into the city, is the Bibi-Heybat mosque, rebuilt in the 1990s after its thirteenth-century predecessor was demolished in 1936.

Breakfast and a last walk along the boulevard if the flight allows. Pakhlava from one of the old bakeries travels well, and so does black Lankaran tea. Checkout is generally at noon, and the airport is about half an hour away outside the evening rush. Allow extra time for security if you are carrying a carpet, which needs its export certificate from the seller.