Guba & Khinalig Tour from Baku – Mountains, Canyon & the Highest Village

An hour out of Baku, Five Finger Mountain — Beshbarmag — appears on the right of the highway: a limestone ridge ending in five stone points, and a place of pilgrimage for people from across the country. On this route we view it from the road and stop for photographs rather than climbing, because the mountain day ahead needs the time.

Further north the hills of the Khizi region are banded in red, white and ochre, tilted at an angle so the stripes run diagonally across whole slopes. They are among the most photographed landscapes in Azerbaijan and a complete contrast to the forested mountains you reach an hour later.

Past Guba the road enters Gachrash, a belt of pine forest on the lower slopes where people from the city come to escape the summer heat. The temperature drops as you climb through it, and the landscape changes from dry hills to dense green woodland — the first real sign that you are entering the mountains.

Eagle Height is the viewpoint where the scale of the range becomes obvious. The road emerges from the trees onto an open shoulder with valleys falling away on either side and ridge after ridge stacked into the distance. Most groups stay longer here than planned.

The village is the destination and the reason for the whole day. Khinalig — also written Khinalug or Xınalıq — sits on an exposed ridge with the mountains on every side, its flat-roofed stone houses built in terraces up the slope. Walking the narrow lanes you see wool drying on walls, sheep coming through the streets, and a way of life shaped by altitude and isolation. The people here speak their own language, distinct from Azerbaijani and from every neighbouring tongue, and their seasonal migration route with the flocks is part of what earned the area its UNESCO listing.

The village mosque is one of the oldest buildings in Khinalig, and the small local museum next to it holds household objects, tools, carpets and photographs collected from village families. Between them they explain how a settlement this remote sustained itself through centuries of winters.

On the way back down we stop above the Qudyalchay Canyon, where the river has cut a wide gorge through the rock below the village. The scale of it is best appreciated from the rim, with the road you have just driven visible as a thread along the opposite wall.