The Dariali gorge: 13 km of rock wall between Kazbegi and the Russian border
Past Stepantsminda the valley closes. The Military Highway, which has been climbing from Tbilisi through meadows and passes, now runs down beside the Terek between two walls of grey granite rising on either side, in places more than a thousand metres, with the sky reduced to a strip. This is the Dariali gorge, 13 km to the border post with Russia, the only open crossing between the two countries and, for two thousand years, the only practicable road through the central Greater Caucasus: the Greeks called it the Caspian Gates and the Romans the Caucasian Gate, Strabo describes it, the Persians fortified it, and in the 19th century, when the Russians made it their road to the south, Pushkin, Lermontov and Dumas crossed it and wrote about it with the shiver it gives.
What you see
On entering, to the left on the rock, the ruins of the fortress everyone calls Tamar's, though it is much later than the queen: a medieval castle guarding the pass, reached by a short path. At the bottom, the Terek, grey and fast, with the Dariali hydroelectric plant of 2016 half buried in the wall. At 7 km, at Gveleti, the track to the waterfalls. And at the end, just before the customs post, the monastery of the Archangels, of pale stone and domes, which the Patriarchate began building in 2005 so that the first thing anyone entering from Russia sees is a Georgian church; it can be visited and the view from its terrace is the best in the gorge. In 2014 a landslide of ice and mud from the Devdoraki glacier, on the opposite wall, came down a side valley, killed several people and cut the road for weeks; the valley is still scarred and a path climbs towards the glacier, long and for experienced walkers.
How to see it
By car or taxi from Stepantsminda, with stops: it takes half an hour to drive to the border and another to come back, and what you gain by stopping at the fortress, at Gveleti and at the monastery is the scale, which is lost through the window. There are lorries, many, queuing for customs, and it is wise not to stop on the narrow stretches. The Kazbegi marshrutkas do not go in. It combines with the Gergeti Trinity on the same day, the gorge in the morning or afternoon depending on the weather.
Frequently asked questions
Can you walk through the gorge?
Along the road it is not pleasant, with the lorries; you walk the sides: the path to Tamar's fortress, the one to the Gveleti waterfalls, the one climbing towards the Devdoraki glacier and the track to the ruins of the Russian fort. For the gorge itself, a car with stops.
What other names does it have?
Caspian Gates and Caucasian Gate among the ancients, Dar-i-Alan in Persian, the gate of the Alans, which gives Dariali; and in medieval legend, the Gates of Alexander, the iron wall Alexander the Great supposedly built against the peoples of the north, which was never here.
Is it open all year?
The road, yes, except for closures from snow and avalanches in winter and spring, which can last days; the border too, with lorry queues that sometimes reach Stepantsminda. From May to October there are usually no problems.
