This ten-day trip started in Kutaisi, climbed into the mountains of Svaneti, crossed the Caucasus, and after a walk along the quiet shores of Tsalka Lake, ended in Tbilisi — before looping back to Kutaisi for the flight home.
Kutaisi: The Gateway to Georgia
Kutaisi, one of Georgia's oldest cities, was our first stop. Even on your first walk through its narrow streets, you felt a different kind of culture everywhere — this is not a city built for tourists. It has no grand landmarks, but it has something more important: its authenticity. The city spreads across the Rioni Valley, between lush green hills and ancient monasteries.
At Gelati Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the frescoes inside the cathedral — faded but intensely alive — seemed to describe an era when this place was a major center of learning and power.
Inside the city, a peculiar mix of old and new dominated everything. Imposing Soviet buildings stood next to busy cafés, where locals drank coffee and talked politics for hours, with elections just days away. There was an unmistakably unhurried rhythm to daily life — street markets full of produce, children running through small courtyards, and elderly men playing chess in the squares.
Mestia: Where the Mountains Begin
From Kutaisi, the road to Mestia was endless, full of curves, and absolutely unforgettable. In Svaneti, mountains dictate the pace of life — the drive took us through deep valleys and alongside rivers rushing down from the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus.
Behind every bend came a new scene — stone villages on steep hillsides, cows and all manner of animals on the road, and low clouds draping the snowy Caucasus peaks.
Mestia and the famous Svan towers — medieval stone structures that once served as defensive outposts for family clans — stood tall against the Caucasus backdrop. The locals, tough and somewhat reserved at first, still keep their own language alive: a dialect entirely different from official Georgian.
Ushguli: The Last Village Before the Sky
The journey from Mestia to Ushguli was rough, but the landscape more than made up for it. At over 2,200 meters, Ushguli is one of the highest inhabited villages in all of Europe.
Here, the silence was sometimes almost otherworldly — no vehicles, no noise, just the sound of wind coming down through the valleys. Being there for the first time felt genuinely like stepping back in time. The houses were plain, built entirely of stone, with roofs made of narrow wooden shingles. People moved slowly, tending to their animals, living by the same rhythms their ancestors had followed for centuries.
At the foot of Shkhara, Georgia's highest peak, the enormous glacier stands in silence.
Tsalka Lake: A Hidden Corner of Georgia
Leaving the mountains behind, I took the road south toward Tsalka Lake. After days among the wild mountain landscapes of the Caucasus, the calm waters and green rolling hills around it felt like an entirely different world.
The lake spread out vast, like a giant mirror. The wider Tsalka area is home to a remarkable mix of peoples and cultures — Georgians, Armenians, and Pontic Greeks, all living traces of the region's layered past. We spent the evening talking with a local group, eating at Pontia (a restaurant run by a Greek woman on the lakeshore), and listening to stories about the hard winters and their quiet daily routine.
Tbilisi: A City of Contrasts
The last stop was Tbilisi. And honestly, it was a completely different condition from everything we had lived through in the days before. The capital was intensely alive — labyrinthine alleyways disappearing into the old town, ornate wooden balconies hanging above hidden courtyards, and dozens of glowing signs pulling your eye toward local wine bars and modern cafés.
Walking later along the banks of the Mtkvari River, my mind kept going back to Ushguli and Tsalka — to how vast the contrast was between this metropolis and those old stone houses at 2,200 meters, or the hard life in the alpine meadows, and how abruptly and dramatically the landscape can shift in this country.
