Walking in the Mountains, Without a Waymarked Trail

Walking is the part of this country that almost nothing is written about. The pages that exist, ours included, describe places you are driven to and shown. The mountains are also a thing you can simply go into on foot.

This page is about what that is actually like here, which is not what a European trail map would lead you to expect.

What kind of walking this is

Think of tracks between villages, lanes that climb out of a valley, and meadow ground above the last house. Some of it is old walking done for ordinary reasons, and some of it is a road that has run out.

It is beautiful and it is not organised. That combination is the whole character of walking here, and it is worth knowing before you arrive with a trail map in your head.

Signs are not the system

Do not plan a day around finding a waymark. Marking exists in places, it is patchy, and we would never build a route on the assumption that a painted arrow is still on the rock.

What replaces it is people. Somebody in the village knows where the track goes, and asking is normal rather than an imposition.

Most walks start where a road ends

Almost every walk here begins at the point a car cannot continue. That makes the drive and the walk one plan rather than two, especially if you want the good ground rather than the ground nearest the hotel.

If your walking day is out near Sheki, Ganja or Naftalan, we will drive you there on request. That is our own standing answer, and it means the car can drop you at one end of a day and be waiting at the other.

Somebody who knows the ground

A short walk around a village is a normal thing to do alone. Anything that leaves the valley is better with a local walker, because the weather, the water and the way back are all local knowledge.

Ask us and we will arrange that person. What we will not do is put a name on this page and let you assume they are free in your week.

Weather, and turning back early

Mountain weather changes faster than the view suggests, and the temperature at the top is not the temperature you left. Our packing page says the same thing about the difference between the city and the mountains.

Turn around earlier than feels necessary. Nothing up there is worth walking down in the dark for, and the light goes quickly behind a ridge.

Your phone is not a plan

Download the map before you leave the town, and treat the signal as absent once you are in a valley. Our page on getting connected is honest about where coverage is genuinely a question here.

Take a power bank. A day of maps and photographs empties a phone faster than anybody plans for.

Water, food and shops

Carry your own water and enough food for the day. Do not count on a village shop being open at the hour you walk past it. Do not count on there being one at all.

This is not a warning about hardship. It is one bag that removes the only genuinely annoying way a good day goes wrong.

Flocks and the dogs with them

If you meet sheep or cattle on the move, go around them wide and slowly. The dogs working with them are guarding livestock, and they are doing exactly what they were raised to do.

Do not approach a flock for a photograph. Distance solves this completely, and nothing else does.

Ground that is not open ground

Some land near a border is not walkable, and permission for it is not something a travel page should describe. We will not print those rules, because they belong to the state and not to us.

If a route you read about goes that way, ask us before you plan a day around it. We will find out what applies and tell you plainly, including when the answer is no.

What we will not print

You will not find a route here with a distance, a walking time or a difficulty grade. A time depends on the party, the season and the ground on that day, and a printed one gets somebody into trouble.

We would rather send you out with a person than with a number.

Seasons

Snow lingers on high ground long after the city has forgotten winter, and the low country is hot in high summer. The seasons page sets out the shape of the year properly.

For walking specifically, the answer is usually the shoulder months, and autumn most of all.

Afterwards

A walking day and a bath house in the evening is the best pairing this country offers. That is the order, and not the other way around.

Arranging it

Tell us where you want to walk, how far you actually want to go and how many days you have. We will handle the driving, the local walker and the sleeping, and say what we could not confirm.

We are not a mountain rescue service and we will not pretend to be one. What we can do is put you in the right valley with the right person and a car that knows when to come back.