Azerbaijan tours: Baku, Sheki and the Caspian

Read this part before you plan anything. Azerbaijan's land borders have been closed to foreign arrivals since 2020, and the closure has been extended repeatedly — most recently past mid-2026. Foreign visitors can only enter by air, through Baku, Ganja or Nakhchivan. You *can* leave overland into Georgia, and that direction is open and routine. Plenty of operators still advertise "Tbilisi to Baku by road"; as of 4 September 2026 that trip cannot legally be run, and we will not sell you one. What we run instead is better anyway: a one-hour flight from Tbilisi into Baku, the country properly, and — if you want it — the drive back out through Sheki to Georgia, which is the prettiest road in the country and perfectly legal in that direction.

Baku. Give it two days minimum. Icherisheher, the walled old city, holds the Maiden Tower and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and takes a slow morning. The Heydar Aliyev Center is worth the trip on its own if buildings interest you at all. Out of town, Gobustan has petroglyphs carved between 5,000 and 20,000 years ago and a field of mud volcanoes — Azerbaijan has more of them than anywhere on earth — and Ateshgah, the fire temple, and Yanar Dag, a hillside that has been burning continuously for centuries, both make sense of what "land of fire" actually means.

The road west. Sheki is the reason to leave the capital: the Khan's Palace, the caravanserai you can sleep in, halva made in front of you, and a silk workshop that still works. Lahij, up a switchback gorge, is a copper-working village where the main street is the workshop. Gabala adds forest and a cable car. This is also the road to the Georgian border at Balakan–Lagodekhi, which is why a Baku-in, Georgia-out itinerary works so neatly.

Food. Azerbaijani cooking is the Persian end of the Caucasus: saffron and pomegranate, plov built in layers, kebabs cooked over vine wood, tea poured from a samovar into pear-shaped glasses with jam served alongside rather than in it. It is not spicy and it is not Georgian; it is its own thing, and Sheki's piti — mutton and chickpeas baked in a clay pot — is worth arranging a lunch around.

Practicalities, verified on 4 September 2026. Most nationalities need a visa, and for most of them the ASAN e-visa is a three-working-day online application; a handful of countries are visa-free. Entry must be by air. The currency is the manat (AZN), pegged to the dollar and stable; cards work widely in Baku, less so in villages. Russian and English are both usable in the capital. And if you exit overland into Georgia, remember that since 1 January 2026 Georgia requires health and accident insurance of at least 30,000 GEL from every foreign visitor, checked at the land border.

When to come. April to June and September to early November are the good months. Baku in July and August is hot and humid, though the Caspian breeze and the mountains around Sheki and Gabala take the edge off. Winter in Baku is mild, grey and windy — fine for museums and food, less so for the coast.