Borjomi: Georgia's town of sparkling water, the park of the springs and the hot pools, the Romanov palace and the trails of the national park

Any Georgian, at any table, sooner or later orders a green bottle of Borjomi, the sparkling water that tastes of salt and iron and cures, according to everyone, hangovers, stomachs and sadness; and the town it comes from is a spa in a forested gorge in the south of the country, 160 km from Tbilisi, with wooden houses from the tsars' day, a park where the water comes hot out of a tap and is drunk for free, an imperial palace behind a fence and, above it, one of the big national parks of the Caucasus. It is a two-night place, for drinking, walking and getting into the hot pools in the forest. This guide tells where the water comes from, what is in the park, what can be seen and what cannot, the mountain trails, the train to Bakuriani and how to get there.

The water

Borjomi water comes out at 38 or 40 degrees from a volcanic fault 1,500 metres beneath the valley, sodium bicarbonate, naturally sparkling, with a salty metallic taste that is strange at first and missed after three days. The villages of the area had always used it, but the modern story begins in 1829, when Russian soldiers quartered here found it and the regimental doctor tried it on the sick; in the 1840s the viceroy Vorontsov made it fashionable among the Tbilisi aristocracy, the spa and the park were built, and in 1890 bottling began, which in Soviet times reached the whole Union and today sells in some forty countries. In the central park, the one entered over the bridge, an iron pavilion houses the spring from which it flows hot and free, and people fill bottles; it takes effort to drink it warm, but it is the real thing.

The park and the hot pools

The mineral water park follows the Borjomula river up the gorge for three kilometres, with the spring pavilion, the 1850s walks with their kiosks, an old funfair, a cable car that climbs to the plateau where there is a Ferris wheel and a view of the valley, and, at the end of the paved path through the forest, three open-air pools of hot sulphur water, around 30 degrees, with simple changing rooms and a small fee, where Georgians and travellers get in at any season, snow included; it is the best hour of Borjomi, sunset in the pools with the forest around. It takes forty minutes on foot from the spring, and you need a swimsuit and towel.

The Romanov palace and the churches

At Likani, 3 km from the centre, Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, the tsar's cousin, had a summer palace built between 1892 and 1895 to a design by Leonty Benois, in a style between Moorish and Russian, in a park beside the river; in Soviet times it was Stalin's dacha, and today it is an official residence of the Georgian state and cannot be visited, but you see the façade and the park from the fence and the bridge, and the walk is worth it. Along the valley remain the church of Timotesubani, of the 11th to 13th centuries, with frescoes from Tamar's time, 20 km away, and the Green Monastery of Chitakhevi, of the 9th century, in the forest, 12 km away, where the river stones have red veins that legend attributes to the blood of the monks killed by Shah Tahmasp.

The trails of the national park

Borjomi-Kharagauli national park, created in 1995 and opened in 2001 with German support, has 85,000 hectares of beech, fir and pine forest, high meadows at 2,000 metres and summits of 2,600, with bears, wolves, lynx and deer that are almost never seen, and a network of marked trails of one to four days with wooden shelters and camping areas where you sleep with a permit; entry and permits are obtained at the visitor centre in Borjomi, on the Likani road, where they give maps and advice. The one-day trails leave from Likani or Atskuri; the three- or four-day ones, like the St Andrew or Nikoloz Romanov trails, cross the park from side to side and are among the best treks in Georgia outside the Greater Caucasus, from June to October. There are guides and horses at the visitor centre.

The train to Bakuriani and how to get there

From Borjomi runs the Kukushka, the narrow-gauge train of 1902 that climbs the 37 km to Bakuriani, the ski resort, in two and a half hours over an iron bridge designed by Eiffel's workshop and through forests; it is slow, uncomfortable and one of the best train rides in the country, in winter with snow and in summer with the windows open. Borjomi is reached from Tbilisi by marshrutka from Didube station, two and a half hours on the Gori road, or on the slow train, about four hours with views of the gorge; by car it is 160 km. From here you carry on to Akhaltsikhe and its Rabati fortress, 50 km away, and to Vardzia, the city carved into the rock, 100 km away, which are the other day of southern Georgia.

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