Georgia & Azerbaijan

A driver meets you at Baku airport and drives you to your central hotel. Later, as evening falls, your guide takes you along Baku Boulevard, a seafront park that curves for kilometres around the bay of the Caspian Sea. Carry on to Fountain Square and the pedestrian streets near Nizami Street, where mansions from the first oil boom of the 19th century line the way. Dinner introduces Azerbaijani food: plov, kebabs and qutab, thin pancakes stuffed with herbs or meat.

Your morning is spent in Icherisheher, the walled Old City of Baku, which UNESCO lists together with the Maiden Tower, a stone tower of the 12th century whose original purpose is still argued over, and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, built in the 15th century, whose grounds hold a mosque, tombs and a bathhouse. Wander lanes lined with caravanserais, carpet shops and mosques. After lunch, see the Heydar Aliyev Center, the sweeping white building designed by Zaha Hadid. As the sun sets, take the funicular up to Highland Park to look out across the bay to the three Flame Towers glowing after dark.

About an hour's drive south of Baku is Gobustan, where UNESCO protects more than 6,000 Stone Age engravings of hunters, boats, dancers and animals; its museum shows how they were made. Close by, local drivers bump along dirt tracks to a patch of small mud volcanoes oozing cold grey mud. In the afternoon, out on the Absheron peninsula, visit Ateshgah, a fire temple where Hindu and Zoroastrian worshippers prayed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The day ends at Yanar Dag, a slope where escaping natural gas has kept burning for decades.

Leave Baku behind and head west toward the Greater Caucasus, climbing into its foothills. Shamakhi, once the capital of the Shirvan khans, has the Juma Mosque, first raised in the 8th century and repeatedly rebuilt following earthquakes, and the Yeddi Gumbaz, a cluster of domed tombs belonging to the khans. The road then winds on through green valleys and past hazelnut orchards to Sheki, a little town of red-tiled roofs on the hillside. You stay overnight in Sheki and eat piti for dinner, a stew of lamb and chickpeas baked in a clay pot.

Start at the Khan's Palace, an 18th-century residence of the rulers of Sheki. Its walls are painted with hunting scenes, and its windows are assembled from thousands of pieces of coloured glass held in place without glue or nails. Afterwards, look round the old caravanserai, then drive to the village of Kish for its Albanian church. Next comes the drive to the Balakan–Lagodekhi frontier, where your Georgian team is waiting on the far side, and you continue into Kakheti to Sighnaghi, a hilltop town inside 18th-century walls. A welcome dinner brings your first glass of Georgian wine.

Your day opens at Bodbe Monastery, which holds the tomb of St Nino, the woman credited with bringing Christianity to Georgia. A walk on part of Sighnaghi's walls follows, with the Alazani Valley and the Caucasus spread out ahead. For lunch you join a family of winemakers who make their wine in qvevri, clay jars sunk into the cellar floor, a method UNESCO has recognised; the glasses hold amber Rkatsiteli and red Saperavi. Later, at Tsinandali, you tour the estate where the poet Alexander Chavchavadze lived, before crossing the mountains to Tbilisi.

Explore Tbilisi on foot today. Metekhi Church, high on the riverbank, is the starting point; from there the cable car lifts you to Narikala Fortress and its view across the Old Town. On the way down you pass the Leghvtakhevi waterfall and the domed roofs of the Abanotubani sulphur baths, continuing to Sioni Cathedral and the Anchiskhati Basilica. In the afternoon you see the gold treasury of the Georgian National Museum, then stroll over the Bridge of Peace. Your evening could end with a long, hot soak in a private bathhouse room.

Start in Mtskheta, the ancient capital of Kartli, with Jvari Monastery and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. The Georgian Military Highway then carries you north, past Ananuri Fortress on the Zhinvali Reservoir, up beyond Gudauri to the Friendship Monument, then across the Jvari Pass (2,379 m). In Stepantsminda you board a 4x4 that climbs to Gergeti Trinity Church, standing at 2,170 m below Mount Kazbek, whose summit reaches 5,054 m. Keen walkers can skip the car and hike the old trail up from the village in roughly ninety minutes. You spend the night in Stepantsminda after dinner.

Your last morning takes you into the Dariali Gorge, where a path of roughly half an hour leads up to the Gveleti Waterfall, pouring through a narrow slot in the granite. Then turn south again over the Jvari Pass and stop in Pasanauri for a goodbye lunch of khinkali, the dish the village is best known for. You arrive in Tbilisi in the afternoon in time for your flight. If you would rather not rush, add one more night in Tbilisi and spend the evening at a wine bar or soaking in a private bath at Abanotubani.