Your driver meets you at your hotel early in the morning. The route runs south along the Caspian coast for roughly 270 km, taking about four hours one way, and the change in landscape is gradual but complete — dry coastal steppe gives way to rice fields, tea plantations and finally the wooded ridges of the Talysh range. Comfort stops are made along the way whenever you like.

Astara is the southernmost district in the country, pressed between the mountains and the sea at the Iranian frontier. It is the wettest place in Azerbaijan, and that rainfall is what produces the forest: dense, humid and green even in midwinter. The town itself is a working border settlement rather than a resort, and the tour concentrates on the mountain valleys above it rather than the centre.

From the main road, the track climbs into the hills towards Sim. The final section is rough enough that an off-road vehicle is required — arranged locally and paid on site — and it carries you up through tea terraces, stream crossings and forest before the valley opens out. Sim Waterfall drops through a narrow gap in the rock into a shaded pool, with the forest closing in on both sides. You have free time here for photographs, a short walk along the water, and simply sitting in the quiet — this is not a crowded viewpoint. The flow is strongest in spring and after rain.

The village below the falls is small and traditional, built on the slope with tea gardens and orchards around it. Life here runs at a different speed to the capital, and a short walk through the lanes gives a sense of how the Talysh mountain communities live — houses with wide verandas, livestock on the road, tea served to anyone who stops.

Before heading back, there is time for an optional walk along the river or a break at one of the roadside spots where local families gather in summer. If you would like lunch, your driver can recommend somewhere nearby — the southern kitchen is known for lavangi, chicken or fish stuffed with walnut and sour plum paste and baked in the oven.

You set off back in the late afternoon and are dropped off directly at your hotel in Baku in the evening.