4Runner Roadtrip – Republic of Georgia Part 2

The crossing from Armenia to Georgia was much less eventful than crossing the first time. Shani did have to cross on foot again and Armenia did make sure I hadn’t accumulated any traffic or parking fines but the entry into Georgia was about as simple as could be. Showed the agent my passport and car title, she quickly looked it up on the computer and simply said “Welcome back to Georgia”.

Our first destination was an apartment in Tbilisi. Our intention was to stay a week or more but that wasn’t really working out. And it was really hot! So, we spent a couple of days getting organized. I finally got a hair cut and we took off up the Georgian Military Highway to Stepantsminda/Kazbegi high up in the Caucasus mountains. (By the way, it was the most gentle hair cut of my life, surprising from a place called Mafia Barbershop.)

“The Georgian Military Highway was first carved out by traders and invaders alike in the 1st century BC. There have been many iterations over the years, but its function as a land bridge between Georgia and Russia, Europe and Asia, has remained the same for centuries.” – Wander Lush (an excellent blog all about travel in Georgia and beyond)

Sights along the Military Highway.

Also Wander Lush – “The driving style in Georgia could best be described as ‘fast and aggressive’. Overtaking on two-lane highways at high speed is common. Bad driving isn’t just limited to men, but there is definitely an element of machismo involved. Honestly, it’s one of the things I dislike most about Georgia.”

Trucks lined up as far as the eye can see waiting to cross the Russian border.

So you take this poorly maintained road, sometimes only one lane wide, pack it with big rig trucks on the way to and from Russia and add in a bunch of fast and aggressive drivers in right and left hand drive vehicles of questionable maintenance heading up and down twisting and curving mountain passes and there you have the Military Highway. And that’s in the Summer. This road leads to quite a few ski areas, I can only imagine…

If you ask me now, I will tell you the drive is totally worth it, but at the time I wasn’t so sure! The first bits aren’t so bad, but as you head further into the mountains it does get sketchy. Sometimes half of the road is missing. Sometimes there are a bunch of cows or horses on the road. And always, always there are aggressive drivers.

Arriving in Stepantsminda/Kazbegi we found the landscape to be absolutely breath taking! The mountains just jut up straight from the valley. It was striking and possibly our favorite place in Georgia. Originally we were going to stay about a week but we fell in love with the place and extended to two. We did a couple of great hikes and just enjoyed being in the incredible Caucasus mountains.

We ended up splitting our time between two different apartments and we highly recommend them both. We were sad we didn’t speak Georgian or Russian because they both were so hospitable and friendly and we would have loved to communicate better with them.

Muru was our new alarm system!

Georgia claims that they have been making wine for about 8000 years! With that in mind, we decided to head to one of the most acclaimed of the wine regions around the town of Telavi. Our trip down the Military Highway was a bit stressful to say the least. I got yelled at by a truck driver for not passing all of the trucks; I got yelled at by a mini-bus driver for passing all of the trucks and taking up the full oncoming lane forcing him to slow down and veer onto the barely there shoulder. (I wasn’t the only one, just the biggest and least able to sneak back in line with the trucks.)  

Once in Telavi we spent a few days wandering around town and taking in the sights. Our drive in and out went by a lot of wineries and there were even a few in town that offered tastings but we opted to just buy some local wines and do our own tasting.

Our next major destination was Mestia, also high in the mountains but it was a long drive from Telavi and so we planned a few stops along the way. 

Our first stop was the town of Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. We stayed with an absolutely lovely woman in Gori at the Hotel Continental. We were the first Americans she had ever had as guests! In Gori we had a bit of a debacle getting dinner the first night. The spots that looked Shani friendly just didn’t seem to exist and the Max fast food stall refused to sell us shawarma with the bread separate. It was unbelievable. The next night we had greater success at a place called Black Star where the owner hopes to open an authentic Georgian restaurant in New York one day.

The Stalin House Museum.

Just a few kilometers from Gori is the cave town of Uplistsikhe, identified by archaeologists as one of the oldest urban settlements in Georgia. The earliest traces of human presence in Uplistsikhe date back to the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Its earliest remaining structures are from the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. The town was cut into a flat, straight, but slightly inclining mountain. Nearly straight western wall went down to the river. Outside protection of the town was also facilitated by two motes, northern and eastern, with wall built into them. The river itself closed access to the town from the south, but it was possible to get into the town through a 3 m tunnel that functioned as water supply. The tunnel was closed by metal gate in case of invasion. (Wikipedia)

After our visit to Uplistsikhe and buying some over priced honey from a local vender, we were on our way for a night in Kutasi to re-stock our supplies and then up to Mestia. We took a very scenic and somewhat out of the way route to Mestia that had us going through some very small villages and gave us a good look at rural Georgia.

Mestia, we both agreed was also very stunning but you need to get a bit out of the village to really see how awe inspiring the views are. Mestia and the region are known for the Svan towers, a typical fortified dwelling consisting of a tower, an adjacent house and some other household structures encircled by a defensive wall.

The Mestia region is also know for its mountaineering and hiking. To that end, we did several hikes that were notable for their extreme beauty! The first hike we did was to Chalaadi Glacier. Getting there was a pretty straightforward affair. Just a few miles out of town there is a spacious parking lot, a decrepit foot bridge over the river and then you are on the trail. After a bit of hiking you join up with the stream that is fed by the glacial run off and you mostly follow that up valley. We veered off a bit, misled by some cairns and ended up scrambling across a scree slope for a bit. In the end, we stopped just short of the actual glacier, opting instead to just enjoy the view while we ate lunch.

There is a mountaineering museum in Mestia dedicated to famous Georgian alpinist Mikheil Khergiani (1932-1969), the best climber in the U.S.S.R. at the time. It’s an interesting museum housed in a Svan tower and features a lot of climbing and mountaineering memorabilia from his era.

One of the other hikes we did in Mestia involved some pretty tricky 4X4 driving to the start of the hiking. It was more than we had bargained for! It was pretty tight if we needed to get past an oncoming vehicle (literally a few inches in some cases). The rough 4X4 drive aside, the hike to Koruldi Lakes did lead to some pretty spectacular views. On the hike we met a nice Georgian guy called Luka who had hitchhiked from Tbilisi for his holiday in the mountains. He was planning on camping but the water supply wasn’t working out for him (and he was out) and so we gave him a ride back into town.

Just like Kazbegi, we had only planned on staying one week in Mestia but that easily turned into two. Our last destination in the mountains was Ushguil. Ushguli is one of the highest continuously inhabited settlements in Europe. Compared to somewhat more developed towns like Mestia, Ushguli is not in an accessible location, which has preserved many of the villages’ medieval characteristics, including the unique defensive tower houses. Because of their preservation and traditional architecture, Ushguli, Mestia, and the surrounding area was recognized as the Upper Svaneti UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The area is snow-covered for 6 months of the year, and often the road to Mestia is impassable. (Wikipedia)

Most of the road to Ushguil is o.k., but the last 20km or so are pretty rough! Between the 4X4 road to the hiking and the road to Ushguil, the 4Runner was really put through her paces and of course passed with flying colors.  

With the mountains in the rearview mirror we were headed back to the Black Sea and the coast. It was a bit too long of a drive from Ushguil and so we had an overnight in Zugdidi on our way to Kobuleti, a sea side tourist town very popular with Armenians. We stayed at Gori hotel and the ladies running the place could not have been nicer!

Our clock was ticking though; we had doctors appointments set in Trabazon, Turkey and so we moved on to Kvariati. It’s another sea side town just a few kilometers from the Turkey border. Wishing we had more time, we only stayed there for two days and then it was back into Turkey.

Stay tuned as our bad luck (Shani lost her wedding ring in the Black Sea in Kobuleti) continues as we cross into Turkey, do actually get our medical checkups done and spend seven and a half hours at the border crossing from Turkey to Greece.