Baku, Gabala & Tbilisi, 8 Nights

The airport transfer follows the Caspian shore into the city. Check-in is usually from mid-afternoon, and after a rest the drive up to Highland Park shows the whole bay, with the Alley of Martyrs along the terrace and the Milli Majlis, the parliament building, below. At dusk the Flame Towers behind you light up with their moving display of flames. It is a gentle first evening after the flight, with dinner in the city afterwards.

The morning is on foot inside the walls of Icheri Sheher, whose Palace of the Shirvanshahs and Maiden Tower were inscribed by UNESCO in 2000; the lanes between them are full of carpet dealers and small museums. After lunch the city changes century: Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center, a white building of continuous curves, then the boulevard along the bay, the Carpet Museum built to look like a rolled carpet, and Nizami Street and Fountains Square as the lights come on.

South first, to Gobustan's escarpment of engraved boulders, where hunters, reed boats and animals were cut into the rock over thousands of years; the museum at the foot explains them well. The mud volcanoes nearby are reached by local car. In the afternoon the road swings round Baku to the Absheron peninsula: Ateshgah at Surakhani, a fire temple with inscriptions in Indian scripts left by merchants, and Yanardag, the hillside where natural gas burns without a break, best seen as the light fades.

Around 225 km north-west into the foothills, stopping at Shamakhi for its Juma Mosque, founded in the eighth century and among the oldest in the Caucasus. Gabala lies in forest at the foot of the Greater Caucasus. The afternoon takes the Tufandag cable car up the slope above the town for the view over the woods to the plain, then Nohur Lake, a calm reservoir ringed by walking paths. The next morning the route turns back towards Baku for the flight into Georgia.

Crossing from Azerbaijan into Georgia is governed by the border rules in force when you travel, and Azerbaijan's land borders are currently closed to passenger traffic. The day is therefore planned by air: after breakfast, the drive back through the foothills to Baku's airport and a flight of about an hour to Tbilisi, where a driver meets you. Should the land crossing reopen to visitors before your trip, we will only offer a road route once it is confirmed. The evening is for a short walk in the Old Town.

A full day in the capital. Abanotubani is the quarter of brick-domed sulphur baths, fed by the hot springs that gave the city its name. Above it, the cable car from Rike Park climbs to Narikala, the fourth-century fortress on the ridge, with the Mother of Georgia statue further along. Walk back down through the carved-balcony streets of the Old Town and across the glass Bridge of Peace. Later, the Chronicles of Georgia, Zurab Tsereteli's huge carved pillars on a hill above the Tbilisi Sea.

East over the Gombori range into Kakheti, the country's main wine region. Sighnaghi is a small hill town inside eighteenth-century walls, looking across the Alazani valley to the Caucasus. Nearby is the Bodbe monastery, where St Nino, who brought Christianity to Georgia, is buried. Georgian wine is still fermented in qvevri, clay jars buried in the ground, a method UNESCO lists as intangible heritage, and a family winery is the place to see it. Tastings are optional, and grape juice and churchkhela are there for non-drinkers.

North on the Georgian Military Highway. Jvari monastery above Mtskheta looks down on the meeting of two rivers, and Ananuri's fortress church stands over the turquoise Zhinvali reservoir. Past the ski resort of Gudauri the road crosses the Jvari pass, about 2,400 m, to Stepantsminda. Gergeti Trinity Church stands on a ridge above it under Mount Kazbek, reached by local 4x4 or a steep walk. After heavy snow the pass can close, and then the day stops at Gudauri.

Breakfast, and if the flight allows, a last hour in the Old Town close to the hotel: the Dry Bridge flea market for Soviet curios and old enamel, or a bakery for khachapuri to eat on the way. The transfer is timed to your ticket, and the airport is about half an hour from the centre, a little more at the evening rush.