Azerbaijan Off The Beaten Path

Nabran

by Megaforce

The area north of Baku along the Caspian coast near Dagestan is known as Nabran, it's where much of the tourist development has been targeted as the government has given local entrepreneurs a tax break for building resorts up there. The result is a whole range of places that you can rent for $25 US or less a day. They're all near the beach, and many have pools next to them, one known as the Atlant, was a load of waterslides. I saw one place with a Viking theme, another - my favourite - had wood cabins in a wooded area. I was just passing through but I'd have gladly stayed there. And there's neat towns nearby as well, one of them had these tiled sidewalks and a pretty neat museum which had the ancient jug I picture here. The area up there offers a nice mix of tradition and modern amenities on the cheap. Seems very nice.

Don't miss the bubbling mud volcanoes

by Minashka

Azerbaijan is considered to have the biggest number of mud volcanoes! They are everywhere so if you ask a cab driver to take you to see a mud volcano, you can end up anywhere around Baku. But the ones you wanna see are the active mud volcanoes. They're near Gobustan and you'll have to specify it to the driver in advance. These are really fun, bubbly volcanoes and it's unlike anything you've ever seen before :-)

Small villages

by maykal

The whole of Azerbaijan could be described as 'off the beaten path', however, some places are much remoter than others. A shame I didn't have more time to explore the mountain villages....next time! I did make it to the small village of Kish, an easy day hike from Sheki. Apparently there are the remains of an Albanian church there, but I never found it. Zaqatala, touted as 'rivalling Sheki as a weekend getaway', was disappointing on all fronts...vile hotel, even worse bus station, general unhelpfulness of bus station ticket staff, and no fantastic mountain views. The town had no real attractions, so I headed up the road into the mountains towards Daghestan, to the village of Car ( pronounced 'Jar'), where there were supposedly some interesting Svaneti-like tower houses (Svaneti is a region of Georgia, famed for its tower houses), but again I didn't find any, and the locals stares were a...

Ancient graveyard outside Baku

by HYWL