Active Day Trips from Baku: How Hard Each One Is

Four of our tours ask something of you physically. The rest are drives with stops, and there is no shame in that — but if you came to Azerbaijan to do rather than to look, this is the short list, and it is short on purpose.

The four, by effort

None of the three needs prior experience. Only one of them needs you to be reasonably fit, and it is not the one with the engine.

An hour in the saddle, and two hours that are not

The riding is one hour of the three. The rest is the drive out of the city and the picnic afterwards, which is samovar tea rather than a sandwich handed over at the car. An instructor rides with the group the whole time, and the photographs and video are taken while you ride and included — you are not paying extra afterwards for the only pictures that exist of it.

An hour is the right length for someone who has not ridden. It is long enough to stop concentrating on the horse and start looking at the hills, and short enough that you can walk the next day.

Horse riding near Baku — ₼50, group tour, no experience.

The quad bike is sold by distance, not by day

This is the one people misread. It is not a day out: it is forty-five minutes to two hours depending on what you book, and the price is the highest per minute of anything we run. You get a briefing, a practice lap on flat ground, and then unpaved hill tracks with a lead rider in front and a stop at a viewpoint.

Book it as the thing you do before lunch, not as the day. Seven people is the maximum, which is smaller than most of our groups, and that is what keeps the pace of the ride to the slowest rider rather than the fastest.

Quad biking outside Baku — ₼100, up to seven, guided throughout.

Six hours on sand, and the only hard one

The Shahdili walk is the genuine one. Six hours out along the sand spit at the tip of the Absheron peninsula, most of it walking, with open coast on both sides, wintering birds and — not often, but it happens — a Caspian seal.

Sand is the part people underestimate. Six hours on a hard trail and six hours on sand are not the same six hours, and there is no shade to speak of and nowhere to stop for a coffee. Bring more water than you think and shoes you do not mind emptying.

It is also the only one of the three that can be booked privately rather than as a shared group, which matters if you want to set the pace yourself.

The Shahdili spit walk — ₼95, six hours, private option.

Two kilometres on foot, and part of them in the dark

The Sundu day is the mildest of the four and the only one you could do in trainers. The two kilometres arrive in two pieces: a hillside track down to the waterfall, and the Narimankend caves, which you go into rather than look at. Nobody is roped to anything and there is no drop to worry about, but the cave floor is uneven and wet in places, so both hands want to be free and a torch is not optional — the one on your phone is enough. If somebody in the party would rather skip the cave, the water is where they wait, and that is a perfectly normal way to spend the day.

What walks, but is not an active tour

Two of the day trips involve real walking without being sold as exercise. Gobustan has you on loose, uneven ground for an hour and a half — closed shoes, not sandals. Khinalig is twelve hours of which the walking is short, but the village sits above two thousand metres and the air is thinner than the photographs suggest.

If your question is how long rather than how hard, the half-day guide sorts the short tours by the clock instead.

What we do not run

No rafting, no paragliding, no climbing, and no ski tour. Shahdag is a ski resort from December to March and we will drive you there, but the transfer is the product — we do not put a guide on the mountain with you.

Saying that here is cheaper for both of us than saying it after you have booked.

If you only do one

Take the Shahdili walk if you are fit and want the day to have been a day. Take the horse ride if you want to have done something and still have the afternoon. Take the quad bike if what you actually want is an hour of noise and dust, which is a perfectly good thing to want and is priced accordingly.

Frequently asked questions

Which is the most demanding tour from Baku?

The Shahdili spit walk: six hours, most of it on sand, with no shade. Nothing else we run asks as much.

Do I need riding experience for the horse tour?

No. An instructor rides with the group throughout and the hour is planned for people who have not ridden before.

Do I need a licence for the quad bike?

You are briefed and given a practice lap before the ride starts, and a lead rider stays in front the whole way. Bring an ID and tell us at booking if anyone in the group is under age or has never driven anything.

What should I wear?

Closed shoes for all three. For the spit, shoes you can empty sand out of, a hat and more water than feels necessary. For riding and quad biking, long trousers.

Are any of them possible in winter?

All three run in winter and the spit is arguably better then — the wintering birds are the reason to go. The riding and the quad ride are colder than the Baku forecast suggests, because both are on open ground.

Can I do two of them in one day?

The horse ride and the quad ride, yes, in principle — both are short. The spit takes the whole day and does not combine with anything.

Before you book

Check what to take with you: the packing guide covers shoes, water and the layer the city forecast does not warn you about. If you are travelling alone, the solo guide covers which of these work as a single traveller.