The Road North — Out of the City and Into Ancient Azerbaijan

Day 3 | April 27, 2026 | Baku → Shamakhi → Şəki 🇦🇿

We left Baku in the morning and didn't look back.

Well — we looked back once. Because the traffic getting out of the city took about an hour and a half to cover twelve miles. Twelve miles. Baku's roads are modern and wide and absolutely, completely overwhelmed by the number of cars on them. We sat. We inched. We watched the city slowly release us.

And then — suddenly — it let go. The highway opened up. The apartment blocks thinned out. The land flattened and then started to roll, and the Caucasus Mountains appeared on the horizon like something from a painting. From that point on, Day 3 was one of the best drives of the whole trip.

DIRI BABA MAUSOLEUM — THE TOMB IN THE CLIFF

The first stop stopped us cold.

Diri Baba Mausoleum sits about two hours north of Baku, in a small town called Maraza. And it doesn't sit on a hill or beside a road. It's carved directly into the face of a cliff. A two-storey stone structure built in 1402, embedded into the rock like it grew there. The cliff face rises behind it, above it, around it. The building and the mountain are one thing.

Diri Baba means Living Grandfather in Azerbaijani — a reference to a holy man said to be buried inside who, according to legend, never truly died. People still come here to pray. There were flowers at the entrance when we arrived. Candles. The quiet of a place that is still in use, still alive, still meaning something to people after six centuries.

You climb up through the structure to reach the upper levels. It's tight and steep and the rock is cold under your hands. From the top you can see the valley below and the road you came in on. Nathalie said it felt like the cliff had just swallowed the building whole. That's exactly what it feels like.

JUMA MOSQUE, SHAMAKHI — THE OLDEST IN THE CAUCASUS

Back on the road. Up into the hills toward Shamakhi.

Shamakhi was once one of the most important cities in the region — a trading hub on the Silk Road, capital of a powerful khanate, a place that maps used to mark in large letters. Earthquakes and invasions reduced it. But the Juma Mosque is still standing.

It was built in 743 AD. That date is worth sitting with for a moment. 743 AD. It is the oldest mosque in the entire Caucasus region. It has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times over the centuries — by earthquakes, by wars, by the sheer weight of time. What stands now is a restoration, but the ground it stands on, the history soaked into that site, is completely real.

We walked around it slowly. There were locals praying inside. The courtyard was calm. It's not a museum — it's a functioning mosque that happens to be 1,300 years old, and that combination of the ancient and the everyday is something you feel more than you can explain.

TWO CHURCHES NOBODY TOLD US ABOUT

This is the thing about Azerbaijan that surprises people.

It is a Muslim-majority country. But it has Christian churches — old ones, important ones — sitting quietly in the landscape alongside the mosques, and nobody makes a big deal of it. That coexistence is real and it's been there for centuries.

We stopped at the Church of St. Elisha — an Albanian Christian church, part of the ancient Caucasian Albanian church tradition that predates both the modern nations and the current religious landscape of the region. Quiet. Stone. Largely unvisited that day.

Then further along, the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the village of Bulun. Another ancient stone building. Another piece of history standing in a field with no fanfare, no ticket booth, no crowd. Just the church and the hills and the sound of wind.

These stops weren't on the original itinerary. We found them on the road. That's the thing about driving through this part of Azerbaijan — history keeps appearing, uninvited and unhurried, around every corner.

ARRIVING IN ŞƏKI

We pulled into Şəki as the light was going gold.

Şəki sits in a valley in the foothills of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, surrounded by forests and terraced hillsides. It was a major Silk Road town. Merchants from Persia, Russia, Europe, and Central Asia passed through here for centuries. The old architecture — the carved wooden balconies, the narrow streets, the caravanserais built to house travelling traders — is still standing.

We checked into the Macara Sheki City Hotel and went for a walk before dinner. The old town in the evening is something. Quiet but not empty. The kind of quiet that comes from a place that has been lived in for a very long time and knows how to settle into itself at the end of a day.

We'd covered a lot of ground. Ancient tombs, ancient mosques, ancient churches, mountain roads. And tomorrow, we weren't going anywhere. Şəki deserved a full day.

Quick Facts — The Road North, Day 3

Diri Baba Mausoleum: Maraza village, ~2hrs north of Baku. Free entry. Short but steep climb inside. Go early — it gets busy with local visitors on weekends.
Juma Mosque, Shamakhi: Active mosque — dress respectfully. Women will need a headscarf. No entry fee. The surrounding old town is worth a short walk.
Baku traffic: Budget extra time leaving the city. Mornings are brutal. There's no shortcut.
Driving the route: Baku to Şəki is roughly 4.5–5 hours without stops — allow a full day with everything on this route. Hire a driver or rent a car. Roads are generally good once you're out of Baku.
Where we stayed in Şəki: Macara Sheki City Hotel. Comfortable, well located for the old town. Good base for Day 4.
General tip: The stops between Baku and Şəki are not heavily touristed. Some have no signage in English. A local driver who knows the route makes a significant difference.

📍 JustoHops Recommends: Don't rush this drive. The stops between Baku and Şəki — Diri Baba especially — are some of the most quietly extraordinary things we saw in Azerbaijan. If you're doing this route, leave early and build in time to be surprised. The road has things it wants to show you.

Next up: Day 4 — a rainy day in Şəki. A palace built without a single nail. A Silk Road caravanserai. And the guesthouse that stole the whole trip.

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