From Kakheti to the Rioni

Itinerary

Day 1 - Tbilisi - Bodbe - Sighnaghi - Kvareli - Gremi - Telavi

Total road of the day - 211KM 3 Hours and 32 Minutes 211 km and 3 hours 32 minutes in the car in all. Today's stops: Bodbe Monastery, Sighnaghi, Khareba Winery and Gremi. Road 110KM 1 Hours and 48 Minutes

Bodbe Monastery

St Nino is buried here, the woman who converted Georgia to Christianity in the 4th century, and that is why Bodbe is the most visited place of pilgrimage in the country. It is a convent 2 km from Sighnaghi, among cypresses, with a small 9th-century church much rebuilt in the 17th, where the tomb is, and a huge new cathedral finished a few years ago that we like less. From the garden you see the whole Alazani valley. What sets Bodbe apart is St Nino's spring: a source 3 km downhill along a path, where pilgrims get into the icy water in a white shirt. It is 30 minutes down and 45 up, and there are minibuses for the way back. With a normal group we stay at the top; if someone wants to go down, we arrange it. Headscarf and covered shoulders. Road 2KM 0 Hours and 5 Minutes

Sighnaghi

Sighnaghi sits on top of a ridge at 790 metres, with the Alazani valley at its feet and the Caucasus range behind, and it is the best-kept town in Georgia: cobbled streets, carved wooden balconies, red roofs. Too well kept, some will say, because the 2007 restoration left it a little postcard-like. The wall was ordered by King Erekle II in 1762 to protect the townspeople from raids out of Dagestan: 4 km and 23 towers, and you can walk along one stretch. They call it "the city of love" for a prosaic reason: the registry office marries people at any hour, no appointment needed. Two hours cover the wall, the museum of Pirosmani, the naive painter born in a village next door, and a glass of wine on some terrace looking at the valley, which is what everyone comes for. Road 60KM 1 Hours and 0 Minutes

Khareba Winery, the wine tunnel

In 1962 the Soviets dug 7.7 km of tunnels into the Caucasus foothills near Kvareli to store wine at a constant temperature: 12 to 14 degrees all year round. Today they belong to the Khareba winery, which has filled them with bottles and qvevris, the buried clay vessels Georgia has made wine in for 8,000 years. You walk a lit stretch, the method is explained and you taste: usually a white from rkatsiteli, a red from saperavi and, for the brave, chacha, the grape-pomace spirit. It is a big and fairly touristy winery, we say it so you know; in return, the tunnel is cool in high summer and the explanation is clear. An hour. Outside there is a restaurant with a terrace if lunch falls in the area. Road 18KM 0 Hours and 17 Minutes

Gremi

For 150 years, from 1466 to 1616, Gremi was the capital of the kingdom of Kakheti, a Silk Road city with markets, baths and caravanserais. In 1616 Shah Abbas of Persia razed it and deported its people, and it never rose again; the capital moved to Telavi. What remains stands on top of a rock: the Church of the Archangels of 1565, with frescoes, and the royal tower residence, now a small museum with a good model of what the city looked like. Half an hour. You drive up to the top, and from the tower you see the Alazani valley and, in the distance, the wall of the Caucasus. Road 21KM 0 Hours and 22 Minutes

Day 2 - Telavi - Ananuri - Gergeti - Gudauri

Road 198KM 4 Hours and 35 Minutes About 280 km: from Telavi to the Military Highway via Tianeti, a stop at Ananuri and the climb to Gergeti. Lunch on the way.

Ananuri

The first serious stop on the Georgian Military Highway, 66 km from Tbilisi: a fortress with two churches inside, planted above the Zhinvali reservoir. The turquoise water in all the photos dates from 1986, when the dam flooded the valley; until then the castle watched over a crossroads. It was the seat of the Eristavis of Aragvi, the dukes of the area, from the 13th to the 18th century, and the story you will be told is that of 1739, when a rival lord took it and put the whole family to the sword. The best of Ananuri is the façade of the big church, the Assumption, from 1689: a huge cross carved with vines, lions and angels. You can climb the tower, up a narrow staircase. Half an hour, and at the exit there are stalls selling churchkhela, the strings of walnuts dipped in grape must, which are good here and not expensive. In autumn the reservoir drops and the postcard loses its colour.  

Gergeti Trinity Church

The photo of Georgia: a 14th-century church alone on a ridge at 2,170 metres, with Kazbek (5,047 m) behind it if the clouds allow. You get there from Stepantsminda, the village below, by a 6 km road that was paved only a few years ago; before that you needed a 4x4 or an hour and a half on foot, and in winter you still need the 4x4. For centuries the treasures of Mtskheta were hidden up here when invaders came, because of how remote it is. Two warnings. First: Kazbek is usually covered from midday on, so we go up as early as we can and, if it is hidden, we wait a while, because sometimes it clears. Second: it is cold and windy at the top all year; in the middle of August we have seen people in T-shirts shivering. Headscarf to go in and covered shoulders; there are wrap skirts to borrow at the door for anyone in shorts. An hour for the drive up, the church and the photos.  

Day 3 - Gudauri - Uplistsikhe - Gori - Kutaisi

Total road of the day - 335KM 5 Hours and 20 Minutes First Uplistsikhe, then Stalin Museum. 335 km, 5 hours 20 minutes; lunch on the way. Road 167KM 2 Hours and 35 Minutes

Uplistsikhe

A whole town cut into the rock, 10 km from Gori above the Mtkvari river. People lived at Uplistsikhe from the first millennium BC until the Middle Ages: first a pagan centre, then a Christian one, and always a stop for the caravans. What remains are carved streets, a hall with a ceiling imitating wooden beams (they call it "Queen Tamar's hall"), wine presses, a tunnel down to the river and a 10th-century brick church planted on top of it all. The Mongols emptied it in the 13th century and it never recovered. One piece of advice: in summer there is no shade and the rock burns, so go early or late in the day, and wear shoes with grip, because the polished stone is slippery. An hour is enough to climb up to the church and look down at the river.  

Stalin Museum

Gori is the town where Iosif Dzhugashvili was born in 1878, and the museum dedicated to him in 1957 is still open much as it was then. It is three things: the little wooden house where he was born, protected under a pavilion of columns; the main building, a Soviet-style palace with his personal belongings, photographs, gifts from heads of state and one of the bronze copies of his death mask; and the armoured railway carriage in which he travelled to Yalta and Potsdam, because he did not like flying. Let us be plain: the museum tells the kind version. There is a small room on the repression, added late, and little else. We tell the rest on the road, and the one-hour visit usually ends in a long conversation in the car.  

Day 4 - Kutaisi - Bagrati - Gelati - Promete - Tbilisi

Total road of the day - 523KM 5 Hours and 0 Minutes We leave after breakfast. On the programme, Bagrati Cathedral, Gelati Academy, Prometheus Cave and Kutaisi market; 523 km in short stretches. Road 2KM 0 Hours and 9 Minutes

Bagrati Cathedral

You can see it from half of Kutaisi, so you arrive already knowing what it is. What you cannot see from below is the controversy: Bagrat III consecrated it in 1003, the Ottomans blew it up in 1692 and it stood in ruins for three centuries until, in 2012, it was rebuilt in full, with concrete and a glass lift stuck to one side. UNESCO took it off the list in 2017 for that. Some people see it as a botch job. We still like it, mostly for the site: the terrace has the best view of the city and the Rioni valley. Ten minutes uphill from the centre and a full circuit of the building to find the original carvings left on the walls. Road 10KM 0 Hours and 20 Minutes

Gelati Academy

David the Builder asked to be buried in the floor of the south gate, so that everyone who came in would step on his grave. He has been there since 1125, and the monastery of Gelati, which he founded in 1106, was for centuries the great school of the kingdom: in its academy Greek philosophy was translated and copied at a time when Georgia looked to Byzantium. A UNESCO site since 1994 and, unlike Bagrati, still on the list. As soon as you enter the main church, the 12th-century mosaic of the Virgin in the apse; then frescoes on every wall, from different centuries. We give it almost an hour between the church, the tomb, the academy (a long hall with stone benches) and the church of St George. The domes were under repair for years because of leaks [VERIFICAR: estado de la restauración del tejado en 2026]. Road 29KM 0 Hours and 41 Minutes

Prometheus Cave

Inside it is 14 degrees all year round, which is welcome in summer and in winter too: bring a jacket. Prometheus Cave is at Kumistavi, 20 km from Kutaisi, next to the spa town of Tskaltubo. It was discovered in 1984 and opened to the public in 2011 with a route of just over a kilometre through six of its 22 halls, on concrete walkways with coloured lights that some people like and others do not. The name is for the titan who, according to the Greeks, ended up chained in these mountains; Georgians call him Amirani. The visit takes a good hour. At the end, if the underground river has enough water, you can leave by boat along a stretch of about 300 metres, paid separately; when the level drops, you walk out. The floor is damp and slippery, so closed shoes are better. Road 252KM 3 Hours and 50 Minutes

Kutaisi market

The central market of Kutaisi, two steps from the White Bridge, is the best lesson in Georgian cooking you can get in 45 minutes. What to try: sulguni and fresh Imeretian cheese, the one that goes inside khachapuri; ajika, the local chilli paste; khmeli-suneli, the spice mix that goes into half the country's recipes; tklapi, sheets of dried fruit that look like leather; churchkhela hanging everywhere and, in autumn, persimmons and pomegranates by the heap. The women on the stalls give you things to taste and do not mind if you do not buy. Prices are real ones, not tourist ones, so if you want to take spices or honey home, this is the place. Outside, on the square, the Colchis fountain, with gilded copies of the 3,000-year-old gold pieces found around here. Road 230KM 3 Hours and 26 Minutes