Becho and the Dolra valley: Svaneti without tourists at the foot of Ushba, with the waterfall, the glacier and the Guli pass to Mestia

On the way to Mestia from Zugdidi, 17 km before arriving, a left turn climbs the valley of the Dolra river to a cluster of hamlets with towers called Becho, with Mazeri as the main village, which almost everyone heading for Svaneti drives straight past. Above, closing the valley, stand the twin summits of Ushba, the most feared mountain in the Caucasus, and from the last meadow the trails set off to its glacier and the Shdugra waterfall and over the Guli pass to Mestia. It is the Svaneti of twenty years ago, with guesthouses and no queue. This guide tells what there is, what to walk, how to get there and when.

Svaneti and the towers

Becho is one of the historic communities of Upper Svaneti, the region of the Svans, who speak their own unwritten Kartvelian language, sing in three voices and lived for centuries without a lord, each family with its tower. The towers, from the 9th to the 13th centuries, four or five storeys high, served as refuge in the blood feuds between clans and as barns the rest of the year; Mazeri and the surrounding hamlets keep several, fewer than Mestia and Ushguli, whose hamlet of Chazhashi is the one on the World Heritage list. What Becho has that Mestia does not is that nobody has built a hotel in front.

What to walk

The Shdugra waterfall and the Ushba glacier, one day

From Mazeri, the trail follows the Dolra up through forest to a border-guard post, where you show your passport because Russia lies behind the mountain, and continues to the Shdugra waterfall, which drops in several leaps down the Ushba wall and is among the highest in Georgia, and to the snout of the glacier, with the two summits above. Three or four hours up, as many down, nothing technical, June to October.

The Guli pass to Mestia, two days

The classic traverse: from Mazeri you climb to the Guli pass, at 2,950 m, with Ushba to one side as it is seen from nowhere else, sleep in a tent by Guli lake or drop in one go to Mestia down the Mestiachala valley, twelve hours in all for the strong. It is the natural link to the Mestia to Ushguli route, which starts in Mestia and heads east: Becho and the Guli pass first, four days from Mestia to Ushguli after, and the whole of Svaneti on foot in a week.

Ushba, for mountaineers

The two summits, the north at 4,690 m and the south at 4,710, are among the most serious climbs in the Caucasus, on rock and ice, and Becho is the historic base camp on the Georgian side; attempted only with a mountain guide and experience, July to September.

How to get there and where to sleep

From Mestia, 17 km on the paved Zugdidi road and 5 km of track up the valley, half an hour by taxi or ordinary car in summer; the Zugdidi to Mestia marshrutka drops you at the junction and from there you walk up or ride in the guesthouse car, if you give notice. You reach Mestia from Tbilisi on the small plane from Natakhtari, one hour, or by marshrutka in eight or nine hours, and from Zugdidi, by night train from Tbilisi, in three. In Mazeri and the hamlets there are half a dozen family guesthouses with dinner and breakfast, and a small mountain hotel; in July and August book, the rest of the summer, no need. From November to May snow closes the trails and sometimes the track.

Frequently asked questions