Mountains and monasteries

Itinerary

Day 1 - Tbilisi - Djvari - Svetitskhoveli - Kazbegi - Gudauri

Total road of the day - 216KM 4 Hours and 29 Minutes In the morning, Jvari; in the afternoon, Svetitskhoveli, Ananuri and Gergeti Trinity Church. 216 km in all. Road 25KM 0 Hours and 36 Minutes

Jvari, the Monastery of the Cross

From the Tbilisi road you can see a small church on top of a bare hill above Mtskheta. It is Jvari, "the cross", and it is there because, according to tradition, in the 4th century St Nino planted a wooden cross on that spot when she converted Georgia. The present church was built between 586 and 605 and became the model for many others in the country: a cross plan with four apses and a dome in the middle, with hardly any decoration. It is a UNESCO site together with Mtskheta. What you remember is the view: below, the Aragvi and the Mtkvari meet, each a different colour, with Svetitskhoveli cathedral in between. Lermontov set his poem "Mtsyri" here. It is almost always windy, so a jacket is not a bad idea even in July. Twenty minutes, half an hour if the day is clear. Road 13KM 0 Hours and 18 Minutes

Svetitskhoveli

For a Georgian this is the cathedral, full stop. It stands in Mtskheta, the old capital, 20 km from Tbilisi, and the present building went up between 1010 and 1029 on the site of the 4th-century church of King Mirian, the one who converted the country to Christianity. Beneath it, according to tradition, lies the robe of Christ: a Jew from Mtskheta brought it from Jerusalem, his sister Sidonia died clutching it and they were buried together; a cedar grew from the spot, and from its trunk came the pillar that gives the church its name, "the life-giving pillar". Kings were crowned and buried here; the slabs of Vakhtang Gorgasali and Erekle II are in the floor. A UNESCO site since 1994, and at weekends the weddings follow one another, so sometimes you wait at the door. Headscarves for women and covered shoulders for everyone. Half an hour inside, another in the lanes around it, which live off tourism but keep the feel of a village. Road 45KM 0 Hours and 45 Minutes

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. Road 94KM 1 Hours and 50 Minutes

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. Road 39KM 1 Hours and 0 Minutes

Day 2 - Gudauri - Gori - Uplistsikhe - Akhaltsikhe

Total road of the day - 312KM 5 Hours and 20 Minutes First Stalin Museum, then Uplistsikhe. 312 km, 5 hours 20 minutes; lunch on the way. Road 153KM 2 Hours and 30 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.  

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.  

Day 3 - Akhaltsikhe - Vardzia - Khertvisi - Tbilisi

Total road of the day - 287KM 5 Hours and 30 Minutes We leave after breakfast. On the programme, Vardzia and Khertvisi Fortress; 287 km in short stretches. Road 60KM 1 Hours and 20 Minutes

Vardzia

A rock face 500 metres long riddled with 19 storeys of openings: that is Vardzia, the cave monastery Queen Tamar finished around 1185 in the Mtkvari valley, 60 km from Akhaltsikhe. It once had thousands of rooms; the earthquake of 1283 took the whole front off and exposed what you see today, some 600 rooms including cells, wine cellars, refectories, a pharmacy and irrigation channels cut into the stone. In the Church of the Dormition are the 12th-century frescoes, with one of the few portraits of Tamar made in her lifetime. It is still a monastery, with a few monks, so some areas are closed. The visit takes an hour and a half, almost all of it on stairs and through narrow tunnels: not for bad knees or claustrophobia, although there are routes that avoid the passages. In summer the sun hits the wall from mid-morning; we go as early as we can.

Khertvisi Fortress

Where the Paravani river meets the Mtkvari, on the way to Vardzia, a castle perches on a crag that has been there in one form or another since the 2nd century BC; legend says Alexander the Great destroyed it, though he never came this way. The walls and towers you see date from the 10th to the 14th century, with a church of 985 inside. Khertvisi watched the road between Georgia and the Ottoman Empire, and changed hands as often as the region did. A 20-minute stop, with a short, steep climb to the towers for anyone who wants the view of the valley. There is a secret tunnel that went down to the river, closed today.