Azerbaijan 3 Day Itinerary
Skip the flat-rate taxi drivers waiting right outside arrivals at Heydar Aliyev International. They’ll quote you a price in euros that’s five to ten times the metered fare, and if you balk after getting in, some will hold your bags hostage until you pay. Open the Bolt app before you even clear customs, book a car in manat, and the entire airport-scam problem disappears. Three days is tight for Azerbaijan but doable if you front-load Baku and use day trips efficiently.
Day 1: Baku (Capital City)
Morning Land, book your Bolt into the city center (a metered ride runs somewhere around 20 to 30 manat depending on traffic and exact drop point), and check into a hotel near the Old City walls so you can walk everywhere for the next two days. For breakfast, skip khinkali, that’s a Georgian dumpling, not an Azerbaijani dish, and order tandir bread with local cheese and honey instead, which several cafes near the Maiden Tower do well in the morning before the tour groups arrive.
Afternoon Walk the Old City, Icherisheher, a genuinely 2,000-year-old walled quarter with the Maiden Tower and the Shirvanshahs’ Palace as the two anchor sights. Buy a combined ticket if the palace offers one; it usually covers both and saves a queue. The Carpet Museum, shaped like a rolled-up carpet from the outside, is worth 45 minutes even if you have zero interest in textiles, since the collection traces regional weaving patterns back centuries and the building itself photographs better than most of what’s inside it.
Evening Walk Baku Boulevard along the Caspian shoreline as the sun drops, then eat at Sehrli Tendir in the Old Town if you want honest, cheap, alcohol-free Azerbaijani cooking, or Art Club Restaurant nearby if you want a proper sit-down plov and their dushbara soup, widely considered the best version in the city. Either way, order plov, the saffron rice dish is the national centerpiece and every region does it slightly differently.
Day 2: Gobustan and the Mud Volcanoes
Morning Head out early to Gobustan National Park, about 40 minutes south of Baku. Entrance to the park itself is a few manat, cheap enough that it’s not worth pre-booking, but the petroglyphs, some over 20,000 years old and among the reasons the site holds UNESCO status, need a guide to actually explain what you’re looking at, since unmarked rock art means nothing without context. Lunch at one of the small local spots near the park entrance rather than driving back into Baku first.
Afternoon The mud volcanoes are a separate stop past the park, reachable by 4x4 only since the road turns to soft dirt track; most visitors pay a small transport fee to a local driver with a Soviet-era jeep rather than trying it in a rental car. The volcanoes themselves are low, cool, bubbling mounds rather than anything explosive, and it’s one of maybe a few hundred such sites worldwide, most of them here or in Azerbaijan’s offshore fields. Head back to Baku for a free evening, shopping or wandering the newer parts of the city along Nizami Street.
Day 3: Ateshgah and Yanar Dag
Morning Ateshgah, the Fire Temple, sits about 30 minutes outside Baku and was built by Hindu, Sikh and Zoroastrian traders who settled on a spot where natural gas vented straight out of the ground and burned continuously; the current structure dates to the 17th and 18th centuries and it’s a genuinely odd, quiet site once the tour buses clear out. From there, Yanar Dag, the Burning Mountain, is a hillside where gas has been igniting non-stop for decades; it’s less atmospheric than Ateshgah but takes ten minutes to see and sits close enough on the route that skipping it makes no sense.
Afternoon Back in Baku, use the remaining hours for a museum you skipped or the Taza Bazar for produce and spices if you like wandering markets more than gift shops. Save time for one more Bolt ride to the airport, budgeting extra given Baku’s unpredictable traffic near flight time.
Things to know
The currency is the Azerbaijani Manat (AZN), and while cards work in most city restaurants and hotels, carry cash for the mud volcano driver, small cafes, and Gobustan’s entrance fee. Azerbaijani is the official language, though Russian is widely understood in Baku and English gets you through most tourist-facing situations.
Tap water is not safe to drink in most of the country; stick to bottled water, which is cheap and sold everywhere.
Citizens of more than 90 countries can apply for an e-Visa online through the official government portal, evisa.gov.az, at a cost of around 20 to 26 US dollars depending on processing speed. Never use a third-party visa site that charges a markup, and never pay a “visa fixer” at the airport.
For getting around Baku itself, Bolt is the more reliable and transparent option compared to hailing a taxi off the street, and it sidesteps almost every overcharging scheme drivers run near tourist landmarks. The city’s compact enough that Old City, the boulevard, and Nizami Street are all walkable from most central hotels, so you’ll only need a car for the day trips.
Azerbaijan is safe by regional standards, but don’t photograph metro stations, government buildings, oil infrastructure, or anything near the borders; enforcement on this is real, not a formality, and tourists have been stopped over an innocent snapshot.