Off the Beaten Track in Georgia

To the Edge of Georgia: A Journey from Tbilisi to Ushguli

There’s a point in every trip where things stop feeling like travel and start feeling like adventure. For me, that point came somewhere in western Georgia, in the back of a battered marshrutka speeding through switchbacks with one hand on the horn and the other on fate.

I had started that morning in Tbilisi, Georgia’s bustling, beautifully chaotic capital—a place where modern glass bridges sit beside thousand-year-old churches and everyone drinks wine like it's water. The plan, as much as there was one, was to make my way northwest, deep into the Caucasus Mountains, to one of the most remote and storied corners of the country: Ushguli, in the Svaneti region.

The Long Ride West

First, a train from Tbilisi to Zugdidi. It was slow, winding, and quiet—the kind of journey where time softens. Outside the window, the city gave way to rolling hills, green farmland, and the occasional crumbling Soviet monument standing alone in a field. At every station, vendors walked up and down the cars selling fresh bread, sunflower seeds, and homemade churchkhela—strings of walnuts dipped in grape syrup and hung like garlands.

From Zugdidi, I found a marshrutka—a shared minibus that’s equal parts transit and survival exercise—bound for Mestia, the heart of Upper Svaneti. Our driver chain-smoked and barely lifted his foot from the gas pedal, careening around hairpin turns at speeds that defied reason. At one point, we stopped at a roadside market to grab snacks: cucumbers, bread, salty cheese, and tarragon soda in glass bottles. Everyone laughed like they’d done this a hundred times. I clutched the seat in front of me and looked out the window at the increasingly steep cliffs below.

Inside the marshrutka from Zugdid to Mestia.

As we climbed, the landscape shifted. Flatlands became foothills, then deep gorges and jagged ridgelines. Villages clung to the slopes like moss. Somewhere along the way, we entered the Svaneti region, and everything felt different—wilder, older, more carved from stone than built on earth.

Mestia: Gateway to the High Caucasus

Mestia sits at just under 5,000 feet, surrounded by peaks that feel impossibly close. I stayed in a family-run guesthouse that looked out onto the mountains, where the air was crisp and pine-scented and every window framed a postcard. The town is dotted with ancient stone towers—Svan towers—that have stood for centuries, built as both homes and fortresses. Some date back to the 9th century. Families would retreat into them during clan conflicts or invasions, living for weeks inside their narrow, vertical walls.

The Svan people themselves are as resilient as the towers they built. Indigenous to the region, they speak a distinct Svan language, preserve their own customs, and live in one of the most isolated and untouched mountain areas in Europe. The isolation preserved their culture, but also made life here incredibly hard—winters are brutal, roads are often impassable, and self-reliance is more than a philosophy.

During my time in Mestia, I did some hiking in the surrounding hills, where trails crisscross through alpine meadows, past old chapels, waterfalls, and ridges overlooking glacier-fed valleys. The views were spectacular, but it was just the beginning.

Into the Wild: The Road to Ushguli

To get to Ushguli, I had to hire a driver. The road is infamous—narrow, mostly unpaved, and often washed out by rivers or mudslides. “No problem,” my driver said, “We go slow.” We did not go slow.

The bus I took from Mestia to Ushguli.

We crossed bridges that looked more like ideas than structures, drove through rivers where the road had disappeared entirely, and climbed higher into the mountains until the trees thinned and snow-capped peaks loomed overhead. The views were jaw-dropping. So was the terrain.

After hours of white-knuckled driving, we arrived: Ushguli. Really, it’s a collection of four villages tucked into a narrow valley at nearly 7,000 feet. It's often cited as the highest continuously inhabited settlement in Europe. Dozens of stone Svan towers rise like ancient watchmen from the mist, surrounded by grazing horses, plumes of smoke from woodstoves, and the occasional wandering pig.

There’s a sacred stillness to Ushguli—part desolation, part myth. It feels like a place out of time. The people here live quietly, tending to livestock, baking bread, and preparing for the long winters that cut them off from the rest of the world.

The ancient svan towers in Ushguli.

The Final Stretch: Beyond the Last Village

But I wasn’t done yet. The next morning, under a cobalt sky, we set off on foot. Past the last house, past the last barking dog, deeper into the valley where only footpaths remain. We hiked for hours, following the river up toward the glaciers, through fields of wildflowers and over rocky passes. There were no signs, no maps—just instinct, sky, and stone.

Eventually, the trail faded, and we found ourselves standing alone in a vast, untouched basin beneath Shkhara, Georgia’s highest peak. Silence like I’d never heard before. Nothing manmade. Just the cold breath of the glacier and the creak of melting snow in the sun.

The view off of a glacial ice bridge, looking back down toward Ushguli villages.

In that moment, I understood something about Svaneti—not just its beauty, but its defiance. It’s not a place you pass through. It’s a place that shapes you, holds onto you, and dares you to remember it.

Svaneti isn’t the easiest place to reach. That’s what makes it worth it. It reminds you that the most memorable places often require effort to find.