The valley is the Alazani and the Caucasus is Kazbek, and between the two there is a day on the road of about 280 km. Before that, Tbilisi on foot and the Kakheti day: Alaverdi cathedral, Nekresi on its hillside and the tasting in the Khareba tunnel, with a night in Telavi. After it, Ananuri and the climb to the Gergeti church, with a night in Gudauri at 2,200 metres, and the descent via Uplistsikhe, the Château Ateni winery, in the gorge where sparkling atenuri is made, and the Stalin museum in Gori to Kutaisi, 340 km.
The second day, from the airport, takes in Bagrati, Gelati and Prometheus Cave on the way to the capital; the seventh is the transfer back. Five hotels and not a single road repeated. Between November and April the Jvari pass can close and the order is adjusted at no cost.
Itinerary
Day 1 - Transfer from Kutaisi airport to Kutaisi
Total road of the day - 25KM 0 Hours and 30 Minutes Arrival. Someone from the team is waiting at the airport with a sign; the rest of the day is yours. Road 25KM 0 Hours and 30 MinutesDay 2 - Kutaisi - Bagrati - Gelati - Promete - Tbilisi
Total road of the day - 523KM 5 Hours and 0 Minutes First Bagrati Cathedral, then Gelati Academy, Prometheus Cave and Kutaisi market. 523 km, 5 hours; lunch on the way. Road 2KM 0 Hours and 9 MinutesBagrati 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
Day 3 - Tbilisi - Guided tour in Spanish
No driving Today it is Rustaveli Avenue, Metekhi Square, Narikala Fortress, Abanotubani and Anchiskhati; lunch on the way.Rustaveli Avenue
A kilometre and a half of plane trees between Freedom Square and Rustaveli Square. This is the street where Tbilisi shows off: the Parliament, the Moorish-looking Opera House of 1896, the Rustaveli Theatre, the Kashueti church, the National Museum and the grand hotels of the early 20th century. It is named after Shota Rustaveli, the 12th-century poet who wrote "The Knight in the Panther's Skin", the book every Georgian can quote.
It takes a good half hour on foot, or two metro stops if the heat is on. In front of the Parliament there is a plaque worth stopping for: on 9 April 1989 the Soviet army broke up a demonstration here and twenty-one people died, almost all of them women. That day still weighs on the politics of the country.
Metekhi Square
The king on horseback looking over the city from the cliff is Vakhtang Gorgasali, the founder of Tbilisi according to tradition; the statue dates from 1967. Next to him, the church of Metekhi, from the late 13th century, built by Demetre II on top of another from the 5th. The royal palace stood here for centuries, and in the 19th century and Soviet times the building was a prison: Gorky did time in it. Then it was a theatre, and in 1988 it became a church again.
We come here for the view, the best of the lower town: the sulphur baths right below, Narikala opposite and the river running between the two. It is a fifteen-minute stop that almost always runs longer because of the photos.
Narikala Fortress
We take the cable car that leaves from Rike Park and crosses the river in two minutes; it costs the same as a metro ticket and is paid with the same card. At the top is Narikala, or what is left of it: the Persians founded it in the 4th century, the Arabs enlarged it in the 8th and the Georgians in the 12th, and in 1827 an explosion of the gunpowder store took out a good part of the walls. The church of St Nicholas inside dates from 1997, on medieval foundations.
The reason to come up is not the stones but the view: the whole old town, the domes of the baths, the river and Metekhi opposite. Careful, the walls have no railings and the rock is polished by so many feet. From here we walk down through the Betlemi quarter to the baths, passing the Mother of Georgia on the way, the aluminium statue of 1958 that watches over the city with a cup in one hand and a sword in the other.
Abanotubani
Tbilisi means "warm place", and the warmth comes from here. Abanotubani is the sulphur bath district, on the right bank of the Mtkvari just below Narikala: brick domes at ground level with the baths underneath, and water that comes up on its own at 37 to 40 degrees and smells of eggs. Legend has it that King Vakhtang Gorgasali founded the city in the 5th century after seeing a wounded pheasant healed in these waters. Pushkin bathed here in 1829 and wrote that he had never seen anything like it.
You can stroll and look, but what is worth it is going in: a private room with a hot-water pool and, if you like, a scrub with a coarse mitt that leaves you like new. Booking is needed in high season, and you bring swimwear and a towel or rent them. The blue-tiled façade belongs to the Orbeliani bath; the others are plainer outside.
Anchiskhati
It is the oldest church still standing in Tbilisi, and it does not look it: a small three-nave basilica of plain stone, tucked into a street of the old town. King Dachi, son of Vakhtang Gorgasali, built it around the year 530. The name comes from the Christ icon of Ancha, which arrived here in 1664 from an area that is now Turkey and is now kept in the Art Museum. The brick bell tower of 1675 is what you see from the street.
If it falls on a Sunday morning, we go in during the liturgy: the Anchiskhati choir sings Georgian polyphony the way it was sung centuries ago, and it is one of the things people remember most from the trip. On other days it is almost empty and takes ten minutes. There are headscarves at the door for women.
Day 4 - Tbilisi - Alaverdi - Nekresi - Kvareli - Telavi
Total road of the day - 191KM 3 Hours and 43 Minutes Alaverdi Monastery, Nekresi Monastery and Khareba Winery. It is 191 km; we leave early so as not to rush. Road 107KM 2 Hours and 12 MinutesAlaverdi Monastery
Alaverdi cathedral can be seen from far off across the Kakheti plain: 50 metres high, the second tallest church in Georgia and for almost a thousand years the tallest. Kvirike III built it in the early 11th century on the monastery founded in the 6th by Joseph of Alaverdi, one of the thirteen Assyrian fathers who brought monastic life to the country. Inside there are frescoes from the 11th to the 15th century, and photographing them is forbidden.
The monks have made wine in qvevri since 2006, reviving a tradition that goes back centuries here, and in September the Alaverdoba festival brings half the region together in the meadow outside. A 40-minute visit; headscarves for women and, if you are in shorts, there are skirts to borrow at the door.
Road 34KM 0 Hours and 36 Minutes
Nekresi Monastery
You leave the car at the bottom and go up in the monastery minibus, a kilometre and a half of slope through the forest, because Nekresi hangs on the hillside above the Alazani valley, near Kvareli. At the top there is a tiny 4th-century basilica, one of the oldest churches still standing in Georgia, and the complex founded in the 6th century by Abibos of Nekresi, another of the thirteen Assyrian fathers: church, tower, refectory and a marani, the cellar with buried wine jars. The views are among the best in Kakheti.
Forty-five minutes. The minibus goes up every few minutes; anyone who prefers to walk should allow half an hour of climb.
Road 12KM 0 Hours and 18 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 38KM 0 Hours and 37 Minutes
Day 5 - 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 6 - Gudauri - Uplistsikhe - Bodega - Gori - Kutaisi
Total road of the day - 340KM 5 Hours and 36 Minutes A day with 5 hours 36 minutes at the wheel, which is not nothing, and in return Uplistsikhe, Château Ateni winery and Stalin Museum. Road 167KM 2 Hours and 35 MinutesUplistsikhe
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.
Road 12KM 0 Hours and 21 Minutes
Château Ateni winery
The Ateni valley, ten minutes from Gori, is the home of atenuri, a natural sparkling wine made here long before anyone spoke of the ancestral method: chinuri grapes, a second fermentation in the bottle or in the qvevri, and a fine bubble. Château Ateni is a small family winery that has revived it and offers tastings on a terrace with the valley in front. An hour with the tasting; if there is time, 2 km away is the church of Ateni Sioni, from the 7th century with 11th-century frescoes, which is worth the detour.
Road 7KM 0 Hours and 15 Minutes
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.
Road 154KM 2 Hours and 25 Minutes
