New Year in Azerbaijan: the one fortnight that needs booking early

Azerbaijan is a genuinely good place to spend New Year, and it is the one fortnight of the winter that rewards planning ahead.

Baku carries the celebration and the northern mountains carry the snow, and most people who come at New Year end up doing both.

The rest of the season is the bargain: quiet streets, tables free the same evening, the lowest hotel rates of the year. New Year is the exception. The city fills, and everything that is easy in January becomes something you want already booked.

What the city is like in that fortnight

Busy in the good sense.

The seafront and the Old City carry the season well, restaurants are full and cheerful, and there is a real sense of a capital enjoying itself. Baku is a city that photographs beautifully in winter light, and the walled quarter in particular looks its best when it is cold and lit.

You will not be the only visitor, which is rather the point. The two weeks around New Year are when the city is at its most sociable.

The booking rule, in one line

Book early, or move your dates by two weeks.

Those are the two good options and they are both good. Booking early gets you the festive city at a fair rate. Shifting to early December or late January gets you the same streets and the same restaurants. For the least you will pay all year.

The option that does not work is deciding late and hoping. That fortnight is the one time the Baku market is genuinely tight.

Adding the mountains

Most people who come for New Year end up doing both, and the geography makes it easy.

The northern resorts run through the season, and Shahdag is 212 km from the city, which the resort publishes as roughly a three-and-a-quarter-hour drive on our route data. Guba sits on the same road at about 170 km, so it is a natural stop rather than a detour.

Five days is the comfortable shape: a few in the city, a few on the snow. Three works if you stay in Baku and treat the mountains as a separate trip another time.

What to have sorted before you land

Only two things really.

The car from the airport, because flights arrive full in that fortnight and a booked car is the difference between walking out and standing in a queue. And your hotel area, because it decides how much of the city you walk to rather than drive to.

Everything else in Baku can be arranged after you arrive, at New Year as at any other time of year.

What to pack

A proper coat, and shoes with grip.

Baku sits on the Caspian and the wind comes with the territory. It is not a reason to avoid the season, it is a reason to dress for it. Dressed properly, a winter day here is one of the better city walks anywhere, and the cold keeps the crowds off the Old City walls.

What we do

Airports, hotels, and the road north if you are adding the mountains.

Send your dates, the number of passengers and the address you are staying at. For New Year, send them sooner than you think you need to. That is the whole of our advice about that fortnight. It is the one part of a Baku trip that rewards being early.