Destination Guide
A Caspian country where an oil-boom capital sits within a few hours of quiet foothill villages, and the contrast is the point.
Baku's Old City, Icherisheher, is walled and largely medieval, and it sits a short walk from a skyline of glass towers built on oil-boom money — the contrast is immediate and not subtle, and it is worth seeing both without ranking one above the other. Gobustan, an hour south, has petroglyphs and mud volcanoes that predate the city by thousands of years.
Sheki, in the foothills toward the Greater Caucasus, is a different country's worth of quiet — a caravanserai town with a slower pace and a cooler climate than the capital, reached by a drive of several hours through countryside that shifts from steppe to forested hills along the way.
Visa requirements have changed more than once in recent years; check current entry rules directly with an official source before finalizing a trip, rather than relying on an older summary.
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