Baku to Tbilisi

For six years there was no train between the two largest cities of the South Caucasus. The overnight service from Baku to Tbilisi went in March 2020, when Azerbaijan closed its land borders, and it stayed gone long after the reason for closing them had faded. It came back on 26 May 2026, under an agreement between the two governments, and it came back as a different train: seven Swiss-built sleeping cars, 146 berths, a dining car for twenty-eight, and a shower in every carriage. It leaves Baku at 23:10, crosses the border in the dark and is in Tbilisi at 08:41 — 560 kilometres of the railway that was laid to carry Baku's oil to the Black Sea, covered while you are asleep on it.

One thing has to be said before any of the rest, because it decides whether this journey is available at all. Azerbaijan's land borders remain shut under a special quarantine regime first imposed in 2020 and extended, most recently, to 1 October 2026 — and Azerbaijan Railways states on its own booking system that citizens of countries without a visa-free travel regime with Azerbaijan are not permitted to travel to Georgia by rail. An Azerbaijani e-visa, which is what British, Irish, EU, American and Australian passport holders normally use, is not a visa-free regime. For most readers of this page the train is therefore something to watch rather than something to book, and the thing worth watching is the quarantine regime's next expiry date.

Baku station stands where the railway ended in 1883, a few streets back from the Caspian. The building the trains leave from now is the sixteen-storey block of 1976, reopened after reconstruction in February 2017; the one worth looking at is next to it, a battlemented pile of 1884 that opened as the Tbilisi Station and was designed by Chrisanf Vasilyev, the architect of the railway itself. The name was not sentimental. Tbilisi was the point of the line, and the point of Tbilisi was the Black Sea beyond it.

The 23:10 is away past Bilajari, the junction where the Absheron lines diverge, inside twenty minutes, and then the peninsula's refineries give out and there is nothing to see for hours. The railway runs west along the Kur–Araz lowland, the broad plain that carries the Kura down to the Caspian, through Kurdamir and Ujar. Yevlakh comes at the point where the line meets the river; the train calls, and beyond it the country begins to rise towards the Lesser Caucasus.

Ganja, and then the border

Ganja is the second city of Azerbaijan and the only stop of any size before the frontier. The train is there in the small hours, long enough for a few passengers, then runs on through Dallar, Tovuz and Aghstafa into Ceyrançöl — an eroded steppe of clay ridges and gullies that in daylight looks like nowhere else on the route, and which the sleeper crosses twice without anyone seeing it.

Boyuk Kasik is the last station in Azerbaijan and where the night stops being restful. Passports and customs are worked here, with migration staff on the platform, and then again on the Georgian side at Gardabani, the first stop across the line. Between the two the train sits still for a while. It is the standard arrangement on this frontier and it is done in the carriages rather than in a hall.

Down the Kura into Tbilisi

From Gardabani the last forty minutes follow the Kura upstream into Georgia's capital, and by then it is light. Tbilisi Central is a concrete slab of the Soviet 1970s with the tracks running below it; the metro is inside the same building, and Rustaveli and the Old Town are a few stops down the line. The Kura here is the same river the train has been following since Yevlakh, six hundred kilometres and one border earlier.

The traction changes at the frontier — Azerbaijani AZ4A and AZ8A electrics, both Alstom-built, work the eastern end under 3 kV DC, and Georgian Railway takes the train on from there. Both networks are 1,520 mm Russian broad gauge, so nothing has to be lifted or regauged, which is precisely what makes the newer Baku–Tbilisi–Kars line to the west of here so awkward: it meets standard gauge at Akhalkalaki, and it has never carried a passenger.

One train runs each way, every night, and it has done since the service resumed on 26 May 2026. Azerbaijan Railways numbers it 38 westbound and 37 eastbound.

Nine hours thirty-one minutes westbound, nine hours thirty-two eastbound, for about 560 kilometres. The operator publishes no intermediate times for this train — the stop list above is its own, from the routes page, but only the departure and arrival appear in the booking system, so the calls at Bilajari, Yevlakh, Ganja, Aghstafa, Boyuk Kasik and Gardabani are shown here without clock times rather than with invented ones.

The booking system offers a fare for every date checked between 2 September and 28 October 2026, which is what confirms the train runs daily rather than on set days of the week. Selling closes twenty minutes before departure. Alongside train 38 the same search returns a second number, 46, at exactly the same times, offering Standard+ four-berth accommodation at a lower fare; the operator's description of the service covers only 38/37.

As of September 2026. Times and dates are checked at ticket.ady.az (opens in a new tab), which is where the train is sold.

Tickets come from Azerbaijan Railways, online or at a station, and a valid international passport is required to buy one and to be carried on the train. Fares move with demand: the same Comfort berth that costs 87.75 manats on a quiet midweek night in September is dearer on a Friday, and the system's own date grid ran between about 72 and 235 manats over the two months checked. Booking closes twenty minutes before departure.

Two things are checked besides the ticket. Georgia has required health and accident insurance of everyone entering the country since 1 January 2026, in English or Georgian, printed or on a phone. And the rail crossing itself is open only to citizens of countries that hold a visa-free regime with Azerbaijan, which is the restriction described in the introduction.

Neither end of this journey is in the pass area. Azerbaijan is not among the 33 countries the Interrail Global Pass covers, and neither is Georgia; nor does either appear among the thirty-one One Country Passes on sale — checked against interrail.com in September 2026.

It costs nothing to lose. The fare is low by European standards and a pass would buy no reduction on an international sleeper in any case: a berth in Comfort starts at 87.75 manats for the whole 560 kilometres, which is roughly what a couple of hours on a fast train costs elsewhere. Tickets are bought straight from Azerbaijan Railways, and because there is one train a night the date is the thing worth planning, not the class.

The sleeper is a night train, so the places worth the detour are at its two ends and in the one city it serves in between. Baku's old town is close enough to the station to fill an afternoon before the 23:10; Ganja is a stop rather than a visit, unless the journey is broken there on a separate ticket; and Tbilisi is delivered at breakfast time with the whole day ahead of it.

Azerbaijan's better-known sights in Baku are the modern ones — the Flame Towers, the Heydar Aliyev Center — and they are worth seeing. What follows is the older city, which is what the railway arrived at in 1883 and what still stands closest to the station.

The train is the bed for the night in the middle, which leaves one night at each end. Baku station sits about two kilometres from İçərişəhər, and the walled city is where most visitors want to be: small hotels inside the fortress walls, and the Maiden Tower a couple of minutes away. In Tbilisi the station is north of the centre, with the metro in the building, and the Old Town under Narikala is three stops down the line.