Baku week or village week: who is coming to Azerbaijan with you?

You already have the Baku ticket. Decide whether this is a walled old-city week plus one village taxi, or a slower week on the Ganja train. A Flame Tower selfie with whoever is making tea in the hostel is a nice photo. It is not the same as sharing the apartment that already quotes for two, or filling the marshrutka that waits for both seats.

Baku is wind and contrast. The medieval core still has gates and alleys. The waterfront and the new towers spend oil money in glass. People call it the City of Winds for a reason you will feel on the boulevard. Ganja (you will also see Ganca) is the second city: parks, a slower pace, and the poet Nizami's shadow. Mingəçevir sits on the Kura behind a huge dam, quiet and industrial. Xirdalan is a suburban, local night on the Absheron peninsula, not a tourist circuit. You will eat plov, dolma, qutab, shah plov if the table is celebrating, and saj ichi from a round griddle. Azerbaijani first. Russian helps. English is fine in central Baku and thinner once the minibus leaves the metro map.

If you are looking for travel companion dates that will actually sit that taxi, write Baku plus Sheki, or Baku plus Ganja. Azerbaijan as a mood is how you spend day four in another mall.

It is a walking city inside the walls and a windy city along the Caspian. Two of you can split an apartment that already prices as a room, then split the taxi when the boulevard gets old. One person in a walk-up dorm still pays the room and still walks home alone after a late tea.

The old city is small. You do not need company to find the gates. You need someone who already wants the village day and, if the passports allow it, the same Georgia-facing marshrutka. Currency is the manat. Keep the split on the apartment, the Ganja train, and the mountain taxi. Wind on the boulevard is not a personality test. It is a reason to share a second layer and a second set of hands for the bags when you change from metro to marshrutka.

April to June, then September to October. Those are the kinder months in the capital and the villages. Summer is hot on the Absheron peninsula. Winter is damp wind and a city-only week.

Which Azerbaijan bill hurts if you go alone?

• A Baku old-city or boulevard apartment that quotes for two
• High-speed train seats to Ganja bought for the same departure
• A shared taxi toward Sheki or the other Caucasus villages
• The first and last night in the capital, which you will pay as a room either way