Azerbaijan, Georgia & Armenia

After meeting you at Baku airport, your driver takes you to a city-centre hotel. Once evening comes, your guide walks you along Baku Boulevard, a park running for kilometres beside the Caspian, then into Fountain Square and streets of grand 19th-century buildings paid for by the first oil boom, when Baku supplied about half the world's oil. Dinner is your first taste of Azerbaijani cooking: plov with saffron, kebabs, qutab pancakes and strong black tea with jam.

Spend the morning in Icherisheher, the UNESCO-listed walled city, home to the 12th-century Maiden Tower and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, a 15th-century royal complex with its own mosque, tombs and bathhouse. Wander narrow streets past caravanserais and carpet workshops. Later, visit Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center, its white curves now an emblem of the new Baku, and the Carpet Museum, whose building is shaped like a rolled-up carpet. At dusk, ride the funicular to Highland Park and watch the Flame Towers light up across the city.

Head south to Gobustan, a UNESCO site where over 6,000 Stone Age carvings of hunters, reed boats and animals are etched into boulders above the Caspian shore; a well-designed museum explains them. Local drivers then run you out to the mud volcanoes nearby, little cones that gurgle and spit cold grey mud. After lunch, cross to the Absheron peninsula for Ateshgah, a temple of fire once used by Zoroastrian and Hindu devotees during the 17th and 18th centuries. Then comes Yanar Dag, a hillside of natural gas flames that never go out.

The road west climbs into the Caucasus foothills and reaches Shamakhi, the former capital of Shirvan, where the Juma Mosque, whose foundation goes back to the 8th century, has been rebuilt again and again after earthquakes. Stop at the Yeddi Gumbaz, where the Shirvan khans lie under domed tombs, then travel on through wooded valleys and hazelnut groves to Sheki. Once you have checked in, wander the old quarter at dusk among red-tiled roofs and the workshops where Sheki halva and silk scarves are made. Dinner is piti, lamb stew cooked slowly in a clay pot.

Begin at the 18th-century Khan's Palace, whose walls are painted with scenes of hunting and battle and whose windows hold coloured glass slotted into wooden lattices with no glue or nails. Then visit Sheki's old caravanserai and, a short drive away, the Albanian church at Kish. Next, drive to the Balakan–Lagodekhi crossing, where your Georgian guide and driver take over, and carry on into Kakheti. You reach Sighnaghi, a hilltop town girdled by walls from the 18th century, high over the Alazani Valley, in time to raise your first glass of Georgian wine at a welcome dinner.

Begin with Bodbe Monastery, where St Nino lies buried, and a walk along a stretch of Sighnaghi's walls. In a nearby village, a winemaking family invites you to lunch and leads you down to the clay qvevri buried in their cellar, then fills your glass with Rkatsiteli, Kisi and Saperavi to go with home cooking. In the afternoon, visit Tsinandali, the estate of Alexander Chavchavadze, a poet of the 19th century, and then Telavi, where King Erekle II once held court at Batonis Tsikhe. The day ends with the drive to Tbilisi.

Your city day starts at Metekhi Church on its cliff, from where a cable car carries you up to Narikala Fortress and a panorama of the Old Town. Make your way down beside the Leghvtakhevi waterfall, past the brick domes of the Abanotubani baths, and thread through the lanes to Sioni Cathedral, then to Anchiskhati, a basilica built in the 6th century. Once you have had lunch, the treasury of ancient gold at the Georgian National Museum awaits, and you can walk the full length of Rustaveli Avenue. Evenings in Tbilisi are good for a hot sulphur soak, or for tasting at one of its many natural wine bars.

The morning begins at Mtskheta's two great churches, Jvari Monastery and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. Then the Georgian Military Highway leads north, skirting the Zhinvali Reservoir and passing Ananuri Fortress. Above Gudauri, pause at the Friendship Monument before crossing the 2,379 m Jvari Pass into the Tergi valley. In Stepantsminda, at about 1,750 m, a 4x4 drives you up to Gergeti Trinity Church at an altitude of 2,170 m, backed by the 5,054 m bulk of Mount Kazbek. Walkers can instead take the old trail, about ninety minutes uphill from the village. You eat and sleep that night back down in Stepantsminda.

Leaving the mountains in the morning, you drive south past Mtskheta and then west to Uplistsikhe. This town was cut from a sandstone ridge high above the Mtkvari River and lived in from the 1st millennium BC to the 13th century; walk among its halls and wine presses up to the brick basilica at the top. In Gori nearby, the Stalin Museum shelters the house where Stalin was born beneath a marble pavilion. Back in Tbilisi by late afternoon, you have a farewell dinner to mark your last night in Georgia.

Drive about an hour south of Tbilisi to the Sadakhlo–Bagratashen crossing, where your Armenian guide and driver are waiting. The Debed canyon leads you to Haghpat Monastery, a UNESCO-listed 10th-century foundation; its churches, library and khachkars, the carved cross-stones of Armenia, crowd a plateau high over the gorge. Then continue through Vanadzor to the forested resort town of Dilijan and walk along its restored old street lined with craft workshops. With time to spare, you can visit Haghartsin Monastery in the woods above town.

Over the pass lies Lake Sevan, about 1,900 m above sea level. Climb the stairs to Sevanavank, a monastery of the 9th century standing on a peninsula that looks across the water. Then make for Garni, where a Greco-Roman temple of the 1st century overlooks a gorge whose cliffs are lined with basalt columns. Geghard Monastery comes next: its 13th-century chapels are carved out of the mountain's solid rock, and the site is listed by UNESCO. By late afternoon you are in Yerevan, with time left for a walk to Republic Square.

Drive south over the Ararat plain to Khor Virap, built on the site of the deep pit that held St Gregory the Illuminator, with Mount Ararat towering beyond the Turkish border. In Areni, where a cave revealed a winery 6,100 years old, you taste Areni Noir. Noravank comes next: a 13th-century monastery deep in a red rock canyon, known above all for the carved front of its two-storey church. Late in the day you cross the Vorotan Pass to Goris, where stone houses fill the valley and old cave dwellings honeycomb the cliffs around town.

A few minutes' drive brings you to Halidzor, where the Wings of Tatev cable car sets off on its roughly 5.7 km crossing of the Vorotan gorge to Tatev Monastery. Founded in the 9th century on the lip of a cliff, the monastery once housed a renowned medieval university; explore the courtyard, the churches and the fortified walls. Glide back across the gorge and head north to Yerevan, arriving in late afternoon. Climb the Cascade, a vast stairway of fountains and contemporary sculpture, to watch the sunset over the city with Ararat on the horizon.

Your final morning starts at the Matenadaran, Yerevan's great repository of ancient manuscripts. Next, a 20 km drive west takes you to Etchmiadzin Cathedral, founded in the early 4th century as the mother church of Armenia's Apostolic faith and now a UNESCO World Heritage site. On the way to Zvartnots airport, named after the same site, stop at the ruins of Zvartnots Cathedral, a round 7th-century church with carved capitals. From there it is a short transfer to the terminal for your flight home.