Day Trips from Azerbaijan

Half open-air museum, half sci-fi set: Gobustan's boulder field keeps 6,000 petroglyphs you can crouch beside, while twenty minutes away mud volcanoes belch cold grey sludge with the thud of wet drums. End at Yanar Dag, a hillside of natural gas burning non-stop since the 1950s, flavouring the dusk with sulfur.

Azerbaijan's highest village (2,350 m) perches above the cloud line, its stone houses stacked like staircases. The road from Quba coils through thyme-scented canyons. In Khinalug you'll hear wind rattling tin roofs and taste home-made qurut (dried yogurt balls) handed out by grandmothers in doorways.

Sheki's 18th-century khans' palace is a toy-box of coloured glass and frescoes, shoes-off entry only, while the neighbouring caravanserai now shelters silk-scarf sellers. Pedal 4 km to Kish's Albanian church, where the yard smells of apricot woodsmoke and the caretaker lifts the lid on 1,500-year-old floor graves.

Copper-smith village clings to a canyon wall: Lahij's cobbled main street rings with hammer blows, the air thick with vinegar from pickled garlic jars. Browse engraved plates, then drop to Ismayilli's vine-wrapped cafés for river trout grilled over hazel branches.

Once an ancient capital, now Azerbaijan's alpine playground: Gabala's pine ridges echo with rifle cracks from the shooting centre, while Nohur Lake reflects the Caucasus ridge. Hire a bike, then wolf down hot qutab stuffed with mountain greens at a lakeside hut.

Azerbaijan's first Islamic capital conceals a 10th-century mosque whose brickwork smells of damp earth after rain. Climb to Pirqulu, a Soviet astro-physical plateau turned star-gazing perch. At dusk you'll hear nightjars over pine-scented telescopes.

The world's only crude-oil baths: you float, almost weightless, in 38 °C naphthalene oil that smells like warm tar and leaves skin eerily smooth. Doctors hover, timing your nine-minute soak, followed by tea in amber glasses to wash away the petrol after-taste.