Tour packages

The simplest filter is time. With one day, the Baku Explorer covers the capital properly and includes airport transfers, which makes it workable even on an arrival or departure day.

With two days you are choosing a theme. Fire & Rock Adventure adds Gobustan's prehistoric rock art and the Absheron fire sites. Mountain Escape goes north to Shahdag. Valley & Vineyard heads west through wine country to Gabala. Mountains, Fire & Silk Road attempts all of it — which is why we recommend it, and why it is the most demanding of the four.

With five days, the Grand Azerbaijan Tour is the only itinerary that reaches all three of the country's UNESCO World Heritage sites, because it is the only one with time for Sheki.

If you are travelling between December and March and want snow, the Winter Special is built around Shahdag's ski season.

Most operators price per person. We price per vehicle, which changes the arithmetic considerably for anyone not travelling alone.

A sedan on the Baku Explorer costs 190 AZN whether one person travels or four. Split across a family that is a fraction of the per-seat equivalent — and nobody shares the vehicle with strangers, waits at additional pickup points, or gets moved on from a site because a group schedule says so.

The honest limitation: if you are a solo traveller on a tight budget, a shared group tour will usually be cheaper than hiring a whole vehicle. We will tell you that if you ask.

Every package includes the vehicle, the driver, fuel for the stated route, and complimentary airport pickup and drop-off. Drivers speak English, Russian, Azerbaijani, Urdu.

Entry tickets, accommodation and meals are not included, and this is deliberate rather than a way of advertising a lower headline figure. Entry tickets are set by government authorities and venue operators and change without notice; hotels vary enormously in standard and price, and most travellers would rather choose their own than accept ours.

The result is that the price we quote is the price you pay us, with nothing added afterwards. We are happy to recommend accommodation along any route.

These seven are the routes we run most often, not the only routes we run. Every tour is private, so stops can be added, dropped or reordered, and we regularly build itineraries from scratch.

If you have specific interests — carpets, archaeology, wine, birding, photography, religious heritage — tell us and we will construct the days around them. If you would rather set the route yourself day by day, our car rental with a driver does exactly that.