Coming Back to Azerbaijan: What to Do Differently

A first trip to Azerbaijan writes itself: Baku, Gobustan or Absheron, and one road north or west. It is a good week and almost everyone does a version of it.

A second trip has to be built differently, because what is left is further away and slower to reach.

Go south

The single strongest recommendation. Lankaran and the subtropical coast, then up into the Talysh mountains around Lerik.

It is humid, forested and green in a way the rest of the country is not, and almost no first-time visitor goes there. Three days minimum, and it is the trip most likely to surprise you.

Go properly west

Ganja, about 360 kilometres from Baku, with Goygol and Naftalan attached. A first trip cannot fit this. A second one can build a loop out of it.

Four days makes it comfortable. It gives your trip a second base rather than a series of days out from the capital.

Stay in a village

The change that matters most is not a place, it is a decision. Stay in a village guest house rather than a town hotel.

Khinalug in the north, the villages around Lerik in the south, or one of the smaller places on the western route. Meals are shared, the day starts when it starts, and you meet people rather than staff.

This is the difference between visiting a country and spending time in one.

Go back to one place properly

Sheki deserves three days and almost nobody gives it more than one night. The same is true of Lahij.

If a place stayed with you from the first trip, returning to it slowly is a better second trip than adding two more names to the list.

Karabakh

Access is controlled and the situation changes. This is a subject to ask about rather than to plan around, and we will tell you what is currently possible rather than what was possible last year.

The season inverts

A first trip is usually spring or autumn, which suits Baku. A second trip is often better in summer.

The regions a second trip visits, the mountains, the forests, the south, are cooler than the capital and at their best in July and August. The heat that makes Baku hard is the reason those places are worth the drive.

What not to do

Do not build a second trip around Baku. A night at each end for flights is right; a base is not.

Do not try to add three new regions in a week. The driving distances make that a car holiday, and the point of a second trip is depth rather than coverage.

A week that works

Two nights in the south around Lankaran, two up at Lerik, then back through Baku for a night and out west for the rest.

Or, simpler and better: one region, one week, and time to stop when something is interesting.

Things a second trip can finally afford

A day with no plan in it. On a first trip that feels wasteful; on a second it is often the day people remember.

A long lunch somewhere with no other reason to stop. A market morning. An afternoon in a tea house watching a town do nothing in particular.

None of that fits a first week, and all of it is why people come back.

What changes practically

You will already have a transport card, a sense of the prices and some idea of how the roads feel. That knowledge is worth about a day of a first trip.

Use it to go further rather than to do more. The gain from a second visit is in distance and depth, not in the number of stops.

Arranging it

Tell us where you went the first time. That is the most useful thing you can give us, because everything worth suggesting depends on it.