Lahij Very cheap
Homestays cook: dolma, plov, the local cheese, and bread from the tandoor. There is one café on the street and it does kebabs. Bring anything else from Ismayilli.
Budget travel in Azerbaijan
What a visitor's money does in Azerbaijan: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Good value average across 5 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Azerbaijani Manat (AZN) · 1 EUR = 1.96 AZN · 1 USD = 1.7 AZN
Manat, pegged to the dollar at 1.7. Banks and the exchange booths in Baku change dollars, euros and roubles at a posted rate; outside the capital change before you go. Cards are taken everywhere in Baku and in the hotels and restaurants of the regions, less so at the bazaar.
ATMs
Avoid: the standalone machines in the old city, which charge and push conversion
Use: Kapital Bank, ABB, Pasha Bank
Bank machines mostly do not charge foreign cards; decline the conversion. Withdraw in the capital before the regions.
Getting around
A short ride in Baku: 4–8 manat across town — cheap
From the airport: From the airport to the centre 20–30 manat on the app, or the airport bus for 1.5
Far cheaper than the purple London-style cabs, which are metered and charge for it, and than the airport kerb.
City by city, cheapest first
Quba Very cheap
Apples, in the season, and everything made from them; the Quba baklava, which is its own kind; and the mountain villages’ lamb and cheese. The tea houses in the town, the homestays in Khinalug.
Sheki Good value
Piti — mutton and chickpeas cooked in a clay pot and eaten in two courses — is the town’s dish, and Sheki halva, layered pastry and nuts, is what everybody carries home. The bazaar tea houses, and the caravanserai courtyard at dusk.
Baku Good value
Plov in a dozen forms, dolma in vine leaves, dushbara (tiny dumplings in broth), qutab (thin stuffed flatbread) from a griddle, and tea from a pear-shaped glass with jam. The restaurants in the old city are dear; the ones a street behind Nizami are not. A dinner is 20 manat.
Gabala Mid-range
Resort restaurants at resort prices, and the roadside places doing sac (a meat-and-vegetable griddle) and kebabs for a third of it. The Gabaland park has fast food; the villages have tea houses and honey.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in Azerbaijan
BakuAzerbaijanA walled medieval city inside an oil-boom city on the Caspian: Flame Towers over a Zoroastrian tower, a boulevard along the sea, and mud volcanoes and fire temples an hour out
ShekiAzerbaijanA Silk Road town in the Caucasus foothills with a khan’s palace of stained glass and no nails, a caravanserai to sleep in, and a sweet the town is named for
GabalaAzerbaijanThe country’s mountain resort: a cable car up the Caucasus, ski runs in winter, a lake and waterfalls in summer, and the ruins of the ancient capital beside it
LahijAzerbaijanA coppersmiths’ village up a gorge, cobbled by hand a thousand years ago, with a sewer system older than most capitals and the hammers still going
QubaAzerbaijanApple orchards under the Caucasus, a Jewish town across the river that has been there for centuries, and Khinalug, a village at 2,300 m that speaks its own language