Every Day Trip from Baku, and What Each One Costs You

Every destination outside Baku is a road journey, and the distances decide everything. Here is the whole list, ordered by how much of your day each one takes.

Distances below come from our own transfer data rather than from a map estimate.

Half a day

Absheron, the peninsula the city sits on. Fire sites, old villages, stone towers and beaches. No long drive, and the evening version at Yanar Dag is better than the daytime one.

Gobustan, south of the city. Rock art inscribed by UNESCO in 2007, plus a mud volcano field nearby. A morning covers both.

These two are the only genuine half days. They are also, for a first trip, the two most people are glad they made.

A full day, comfortably

Shamakhi, about 123 km west. The shortest of the western drives and an easy full day.

Khizi and the striped Candy Cane hills, on the northern road. Worth attaching to something else rather than doing alone.

Guba, about 170 km north. Orchard country, a river town, and the settlement across the water at Krasnaya Sloboda.

Gusar, about 185 km north. Further and quieter, and the natural stop if you are heading to Shahdag anyway.

A long day, or better as an overnight

Lahij, about 180 km. A mountain village known for copperwork, on a road that is slower than the distance suggests.

Gabala, about 225 km west. Resort country, cable cars and lakes. Doable in a day and much better with a night.

Khinalug, about 230 km north, high in the mountains beyond Guba. The road is the experience and it deserves proper time.

Shahdag, about 212 km north. A mountain resort rather than a viewpoint, so a day trip wastes what it offers.

Needs at least one night

Sheki, about 330 km west. A serious destination with a palace, a caravanserai and a distinct food culture.

Naftalan, about 340 km west. A spa town built around a course of treatments rather than an afternoon.

Ganja, about 360 km west. The second city, and the base for Goygol.

Tbilisi, about 578 km. Another country, and a different trip entirely.

How to choose

If you have one free day, take Gobustan or Absheron. If you have two, take one of each.

If you have three days outside Baku, go north and stay a night. If you have four or more, go west and make a loop of Ganja, Goygol and Naftalan.

Do not try to pair two long drives in one day. It is the most common planning mistake here and it converts a holiday into a car journey.

What a day trip actually involves

A car with a driver for the day is the standard arrangement. The cost is per vehicle, so a group of four pays a quarter each.

Public transport exists but does not work on a visitor’s schedule. Hire cars make sense only if several days of your trip are outside the capital.

What each trip is best for

Rock art and geology: Gobustan. Fire, villages and the coast: Absheron. Orchards and a working town: Guba.

Mountains and altitude: Shahdag or Khinalug. Craft and a slow village: Lahij. Palace architecture and food: Sheki.

Matching the trip to what you actually like is worth more than picking the one that appears most often in photographs.

Timing your departure

Leave early. Almost every complaint about a day trip here starts with a late start.

An hour earlier out of Baku buys cooler light, thinner traffic and a place that is not yet full. It also gives the return journey room to go wrong without touching your evening.

Arranging it

Tell us which of these interests you and how many days you have. We will tell you which combination fits, with the drive times attached before you decide.