Visit Azerbaijan.

I can’t think of many more unlikely Christmas travel destinations than Azerbaijan. However, sometimes the stars align and you know that a thing is simply meant to be.

In December 2024 Sladja and I were shaping up to leave Georgia, where we’d been based for most of the year. Before heading back to The UK, we decided to do a few weeks in Azerbaijan. After all, its capital city Baku is just a 1-hour flight from Tbilisi. A unique and straightforward opportunity to cross off a new country without a long and expensive flight.

Baku certainly is an intoxicating city. If one can deal with the suffocating traffic and overflowing buses and subway lines, there is much to discover and enjoy.

Greedily, we drank in as much as time would allow. The Old Inner City for example, with its 15th century UNESCO-stamped palace, is an unmissable historic delight.

Outside the capital we savoured some exceptional experiences. Collaborating with Bag Baku, one of Azerbaijan’s leading tour companies, we headed out to see the country’s stupendous mud volcanoes.

Moreover, we marvelled at a clutch of forty thousand-year-old petroglyphs in Gobustan National Park.

And how could we ever forget our cross-country trip to the remote village of Qriz? A truly magical place that feels like the end of the earth, we got to meet the locals and hike the eastern slopes of the Shahdagh mountains where a fairytale-like frozen waterfall awaited.

To find out more about our time in this fascinating country, why not visit Azerbaijan through my travel articles on:

Baku

Gobustan National Park

The village of Qriz & Gurgur Waterfall.

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