Beyond Baku: Azerbaijan's Mountains and Villages
4 August 2026 · TravelJar
Baku is a genuinely good city, and a three-day trip that stays inside it is a perfectly reasonable holiday.
But Azerbaijan's north is where the landscape is, and it is closer than most itineraries assume.
The main mountain stops
Gabala sits in the Caucasus foothills with forests, lakes and a cable car, and works as a comfortable base for a couple of nights. Sheki is the more historically interesting — the Khan's Palace with its stained-glass shebeke windows is the country's finest building outside the capital.
Quba, further north, is the gateway to some of the highest villages, including Khinalug, which sits at serious altitude and feels genuinely remote.
- Gabala — forests, lakes, easy base
- Sheki — the Khan's Palace and old caravanserai
- Quba — highland villages, the most remote of the three
How much time it needs
Adding the mountains sensibly means three or four extra nights. Roads are decent but distances take longer than the map suggests, and doing Sheki as a day trip from Baku means spending most of it in a vehicle.
Winter changes access considerably in the higher areas, so check conditions if travelling in the colder months.