Baku (Baki)
The Azeri capital is the Caucasus’ largest and most cosmopolitan city.
The Azeri capital is the Caucasus’ largest and most cosmopolitan city.
The spine of this truly charming region is the Balakən–Baku highway, a misnomer for what is mostly a quaint country lane traversing everything from desert to verdant forest.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an enigma wrapped up inside the Caucasus.
This cradle of Azeri culture and history is now a disconnected lozenge of Azerbaijan wedged uncomfortably between hostile Armenia and indifferent Iran.
Occupying a low plateau overlooking the Araz Su Reservoir, this pleasant provincial town offers wide, if distant, panoramas towards Iran and Mt Ararat from its soothingly shady parks.
Snoozing amid green pillows of beautifully forested mountains, Şəki (Sheki) is one of Azerbaijan’s loveliest towns.
Most of Azerbaijan’s scenic highlights lie in the spectacular, snow-capped Caucasus mountains or their luxuriantly forested foothills.
Southern Azerbaijan’s coastal strip is the lush breadbasket of the country, where tea plantations line the roadsides and trees are heavy with citrus fruit.
The biggest town in southern Azerbaijan, sleepy Lənkəran (Lenkoran) is famous for tea and abundant flowers.
Shushi (Şuşa) stands on a plateau 9km south from Stepanakert, with high walls and views over a wide swathe of central Karabakh.
Stepanakert, Karabakh’s capital, stands above the Karkar River, surrounded by a typical landscape of forest, pasture and fields backed by craggy mountains.
Famous for carpets and apple orchards, the low-key town of Quba sits on a cliff top overlooking the Qudiyalçay River.
The most popular day trip from Baku takes visitors to the mud volcanoes and petroglyphs around Qobustan, 60km south of the capital.
Behind depressing Qobustan town, barren rocky hill-crags rise from the semi-desert.
Azerbaijan’s hazelnut capital has a lovely location at the confluence of wide mountain rivers descending steeply from the high Caucasus mountains.
Despite a certain Soviet grandeur, the main touristic reason to come to Azerbaijan’s pleasant second city is as a staging post for Xanlar and Göy Göl.
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