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4 days in Azerbaijan

A four day, fly in trip built on the two facts older guides miss: the e-visa deadline and the closed land borders.

Last updated . Entry rules are the volatile part here: the e-visa terms and the land border status both change with the region's politics. Recheck the official e-visa portal and your government's travel advice before booking anything.

Azerbaijan is the odd one out of the Caucasus three, and the itinerary has to say so honestly. The land borders remain restricted, including the crossing from Georgia that every classic overland route used, so right now you fly in or you do not come. Once that is accepted, a compact and genuinely strange trip opens up: a UNESCO walled city inside an oil boom capital, hillsides that leak fire, and 40,000 year old rock carvings an hour down the coast.

How many days do you need in Azerbaijan?

4 days covers the core: 2 in Baku, 1 on the Absheron peninsula and 1 at Gobustan.

Sheki and the Caucasus foothills justify a 6 day version, at the cost of about 5 hours of road each way. Most travellers pair the 4 day core with Georgia, connected by a short flight while the land route is off.

Do you need a visa for Azerbaijan?

Almost certainly yes: the ASAN e-visa, applied for at least 3 days before travel, single entry, 30 days inside a 90 day validity.

An urgent 3 hour service exists for an extra fee. Apply on the official portal only; unofficial visa sites resell the same form with a markup.

Can you enter Azerbaijan overland from Georgia or Armenia?

Not at present. Entry without restriction is by air only: the Georgia land crossing is listed as temporarily closed, and the border with Armenia has been closed for over 30 years.

This has been the state of things for years, not a blip, and it is the single most repeated piece of stale advice in older Caucasus guides. Check current government travel advice before assuming anything has reopened.

The plan at a glance

Day
1
Where
Baku old city
What needs arranging
The e-visa, at least 3 days before flying
Day
2
Where
Modern Baku and the bay
What needs arranging
Nothing fixed
Day
3
Where
Absheron peninsula
What needs arranging
A driver or tour for the fire sites
Day
4
Where
Gobustan, then out
What needs arranging
The same, for the carvings and mud volcanoes
One paper deadline before the flight, then two day trips that both want wheels.

The route at a glance

10 mapped stops · 4 days

Live route map

OpenStreetMap tiles

Loading the OpenStreetMap map.

ROUTE OVERVIEW10 stops · 4 daysStop 1: Icherisheher old city1Stop 2: Maiden Tower2Stop 3: The Caspian boulevard3Stop 4: Heydar Aliyev Center4Stop 5: Nizami Street and the boom mansions5Stop 6: Carpet Museum6Stop 7: Ateshgah fire temple7Stop 8: Yanar Dag8Stop 9: Gobustan petroglyphs9Stop 10: The mud volcanoes10

Route stops

Follow the numbered order through each day.

Day 1: Icherisheher

  1. 1Icherisheher old city · about 3 hours
  2. 2Maiden Tower · about an hour
  3. 3The Caspian boulevard · about 90 minutes

Day 2: Oil boom Baku

  1. 4Heydar Aliyev Center · about 2.5 hours
  2. 5Nizami Street and the boom mansions · about 2 hours
  3. 6Carpet Museum · about an hour

Day 3: The peninsula of fire

  1. 7Ateshgah fire temple · about 90 minutes
  2. 8Yanar Dag · about an hour

Day 4: Gobustan, then the airport

  1. 9Gobustan petroglyphs · about 3 hours
  2. 10The mud volcanoes · about 90 minutes
Two days in the capital, then a day east onto the Absheron peninsula, then a day south down the coast to Gobustan.

Day 1: Icherisheher

The walled old city, small enough to learn in an afternoon and older than every skyline around it.

On foot
About 5 km on foot

Afternoon

  1. Icherisheher old cityabout 3 hours

    The UNESCO walled core: caravanserais, hammams and lanes that predate the oil booms. Enter by the double gates and get deliberately lost; it is a few hundred metres across.

  2. Maiden Towerabout an hour

    The 12th century tower nobody can fully explain, and the old city's best viewpoint from the top.

Evening

  1. The Caspian boulevardabout 90 minutes

    The seafront promenade with the Flame Towers lighting up behind you. Baku's evening ritual.

Day 2: Oil boom Baku

The other Baku: Zaha Hadid's building, the first oil boom's mansions, and a museum shaped like a rolled carpet.

On foot
About 7 km on foot

Morning

  1. Heydar Aliyev Centerabout 2.5 hours

    Zaha Hadid's white wave, worth the taxi out for the building itself; the exhibitions inside are secondary.

Afternoon

  1. Nizami Street and the boom mansionsabout 2 hours

    The late 19th century oil money district, best read at first floor level where the stone carving lives.

  2. Carpet Museumabout an hour

    A national art form in a building shaped like its subject. An hour is enough and well spent.

Day 3: The peninsula of fire

Ateshgah and Yanar Dag, the two places that explain why this was the Land of Fire.

On foot
About 3 km on foot, plus a half day of driving
Book before you go
A driver or small tour; the sites are scattered and buses are slow

Morning

  1. Ateshgah fire templeabout 90 minutes

    The Zoroastrian and Hindu fire temple built over a natural gas vent, with pilgrim cells around the flame court. The vent is piped now; the history is not.

Afternoon

  1. Yanar Dagabout an hour

    A hillside that has burned continuously for decades from seeping gas. Ten metres of flame and the whole country's name in one view; go late afternoon so the fire reads against dimming light.

Day 4: Gobustan, then the airport

Forty thousand years of rock carvings and a field of cold mud volcanoes, an hour down the coast.

On foot
About 4 km on foot
Book before you go
The driver again; the mud volcanoes need a local 4x4 leg

Morning

  1. Gobustan petroglyphsabout 3 hours

    Thousands of carvings from the last ice age onward: boats, dancers, aurochs. The museum at the entrance is genuinely good and makes the stones legible.

Afternoon

  1. The mud volcanoesabout 90 minutes

    Cold grey cones gurgling methane mud on a moonscape ridge, reached by local 4x4 from the site road. Absurd and unmissable in the same breath.

The options below are separate choices rather than a package. Read how RoamWeek chooses and orders suggestions before using any of them.

Book the separate parts

Book the parts that need booking

The visa is filed on the government portal and nowhere else. What is worth arranging is the flight, a central room, and the two driving days.

You book each service directly with its supplier. These separate bookings do not form a RoamWeek package.

What is worth the time, and what is not

Worth your time

  • Filing the e-visa the day you book flights. It needs at least 3 working days, costs little effort, and forgetting it is the one mistake that cancels the whole trip.
  • The Gobustan museum before the stones. Half an hour of context turns weathered scratches into legible ice age scenes.
  • Yanar Dag at dusk rather than midday. The flames barely read against full daylight and own the hillside once the light drops.

Skip it

  • Planning an overland arrival from Georgia. The crossing is listed as temporarily closed and has been for years; every plan built on it dies at a border post.
  • Third party visa websites. They resell the official ASAN form with a markup and another party holding your passport data.
  • Squeezing Sheki into 4 days. It is about 5 hours of road each way; as a day trip it is ten hours of car for two on the ground.

Why this order

The old city comes first because it is the orientation device: everything else in Baku is positioned relative to those walls. The modern city follows once the old one has set the scale. The two driving days sit at the end in this order, Absheron then Gobustan, because Gobustan lies south towards nothing else, which makes it the natural final morning, and because a 4x4 mud volcano leg is a poor thing to schedule tightly before anything. The airport run from Gobustan is barely longer than from the centre, which is what lets day 4 hold real sightseeing.

Book the trip

Start with Azerbaijan, dates and travellers

Compare the travel services first, then use the itinerary below to plan each day.

You book each service directly with its supplier. These separate bookings do not form a RoamWeek package.

Read next

What we checked

Why this page exists. This is the only RoamWeek route that says plainly that Azerbaijan is currently entered by air only, the Georgia land crossing being listed as temporarily closed, so the classic Tbilisi to Baku overland leg cannot be planned.