Azerbaijan

Baku sits on a peninsula in the Caspian, and three layers of the city are visible at once: the walled old town, the oil-boom mansions built around it at the turn of the last century, and the glass towers added since. The Caspian itself is a sea with no outlet, which is why the shoreline behaves as it does.

Inland the country climbs quickly. Within a few hours of Baku the Greater Caucasus foothills begin, with villages such as Lahij and Quba, and Sheki further west with its eighteenth-century khan's palace.