Before our trip to Georgia, I have heard from different people and read in many articles, that the reason why to go there needs to be definitely mountains. And that most of the tourists go there to hike. I can agree only partly. For me, definitelly mountains are the reason why I will come back one day, but I guess that it is not the same for everyone. While travelling there, we met everytime so many (mostly Russian) tourists, who come to Georgia not hike, but just enjoy their culture of wine and food. And no wonder. Georgia is just a great destination for everyone. And they know it. That’s why Georgia is not anymore an abandonded place, where you will meet locals who have never seen any tourists in their life. On some place, you will actually feel like a walking money box. However, as always, it is just up to you, which destination in that country you choose. 

In this article, I will write about our experience of hiking in Georgia. We managed to visit two national parks and to spend in each of them 4 days. 

GETTING READY

Travelling to mountains in September is definitely worthy, however, you cannot forget to be ready for all kinds of conditions. We chose to take our small little tent because of 3 reasons: 

1. You are not dependent on guest houses ( And if you are not in totally wild mountains, there are usually places where to sleep without a tent, especially during the season – June to August )
2. You can sleep where and when you want ( In Georgia, there are no restrictions about camping )
3. It is romantic ( especially when your boyfriend has sleepingbag to 20°C, so you can hug the whole night to feel more warm)
4. You safe a loot of money ( eventhough the prices of accomodation in Georgia are for European people not high, in the mountains you pay usually about 20 – 30 € )

If you are in the Georgian mountains in September, I would highly recommend you to take good sleeping bag. The temperature in the night was sometimes around 3°C, which means, that the sleeping bag, that you are used to take to festivals in hot summer will not be enough warm. We didn’t really take any special things for camping, since we were without civilisation only 3 days, which is doable without hot tea or porridge in the morning. It might seem as something more than obvious, but we didn’t take any suncream for our first hike. We thought that after summer, our (brown and hot) bodies don’t need any suncream anymore, but the opposite was true. I got so burnt, as if I had never seen sun in my life before. Luckily in our camping there was some suncream left, so I just took it and we were very careful with that for the rest of our trip. Little bit time consuming in Georgia is travelling around. They do not really have connected small towns, so you will usually need to get to Tbilisi and from Tbilisi to the destination where you want to go next. In Tbilisi, taxi drivers will try to bomb you with their offers to take you everywhere you want. The price is from our experience usually 5x higher than if you choose to take marshurtka (minibus). Marhurtkas are really funny. Always when we rode in marshurtka, I felt like to be on some trip with friends. There was always some Georgian music playing veeery loudly. And the driver stopped sometimes for coffee or for toilet. Or just for cigarette if you ask him. What is marshurtka not good for, is sleeping. Don’t count with hours of sleeping in the bus after partying, when you are used to do that in your country. Marhurtka doesn’t let you sleep. Ok. Enogh of general information, let’s talk about hiking! 

KAZBEGI (Stepancminda and Juta)

Right after our visit to Tbilisi, we decided to move to Stepancminda, one of the places, where people go also for day-trips from Tbilisi, since there is very beautiful church on the hill which takes maximum 40 minutes to go up, do pictures for Instagram and go back to the hotel to Tbilisi. We took marhurtka from Tbilisi for 10 Lari (3 €). The ride took us around 3 hours ( with a stop for toilet, for which I asked the driver). When we arrived, we were again asked from Taxi drivers everywhere, if we want to take to the Gergeti church, to Juta, back to Tbilisi, basically everywhere. After first moments of confusion, we run away from he crowd and analysed the situation there. We realised, that getting back to Tbilisi will not be that easy. People were getting crazy to get to the marshurtka, which after 10 seconds was completely full. Luckily, on the way back, we managed to get taxi for 20 Lari (7€), which is the double price of marshurtka, but the driver did some stops, so we could see more things on the way back, than to just go directly to Tbilisi. Marshurtka (obviously) doesn’t stop on beautiful places for taking pictures. On the was back, we visited these two places:

 

 

After arrival, we did small hike to the Gergeti church. There are two ways how to get there. One, where are usually big groups of Russian tourists going and the second one, which is in wonderful valley, where you can hear only river and enjoy the hike without any stairs (which they are now building there, to make the place even more accesible for everyone – good idea, but not good to hike there, if you want to have feeling of the nature and not see cars everywhere driving around you (since very closed to that path is a road aswell). It was one of my first visits in Georgia. I found very funny those clothes that they gave us. We looked like this: 

 

Right after we came out of the church, it started to be really foggy and cold. We decided to go down, in case that it would rain. We didn’t manage to get back to the camping, since it started raining and hailing so much! I started to run and knocked on the first house door that I saw. Some nice lady opened us and offered us to sit in her living room. Five minutes after us, another couple (English guy and Czech girl) knocked on the same house, so we ended alltogether in the same living room. 😀 It was funny, because had met this couple before, when they told us, that they are ready for that rain, with their raincoats. And 5 minutes after, we were all desperately sitting there and talking and drinking some herbal tea. The lady was fantastic. She baked for us bread and offered us also cheese that she was doing.

Juta 

Because of the rain of the previous day, we decided to hike in Juta. Juta is a small village about 40 minutes from Stepancminda. You  can get there only with taxi. They usually offer price of 80 Lari (for there and return). Luckily, we met on our way to the camping some guy, who was really nice with us and offered us to take us there ony for 50 Lari. He couldn’t really speak English, but despite that, we understood each other pretty well. 

The hike in Juta was really great. The landscape was beautiful, we were looking all the time at the mountain. We were supposed to arrive to some lakes, ut finally we didn’t find them, because it started to rain and it was getting late. It rained pretty lot and I realised, that my jacket is definitelly as waterproof as I thought. It was raining about 1 hour and after that, it started to be sunny again. Crazy weather. In the evening, we went to some Georgian restaurant and we had (as always) cucumber&tomato salad and chicken. Javi ate typical Georgian “beans in a pot”.

Mt. KAZBEG (not to the top!)

The weather forecast was again wrong. Now in a good way. It was supposed to rain the whole following day, but surprisingly, the sky was completely blue when we woke up on Sunday. So we set us off on another hike. It was pretty exhausting, all the time going up and up. On the last stop, we met Alexej, Russian guy who grew up in Spain. As he realised, that Xavi is Spanish, he didn’t stop to speak.He was travelling already for months and it seemed, that he didn’t have so much chance to speak Spanish during that time. I was happy to hear Spanish and tried to catch some words. And it went surprisingly well. ( Hm, not always, actually. Later, I asked them to speak English to not be too bored. :D) I think, that evening rainfalls are kind of a part of Georgian culture. It rained again on our way back. At that time, I had some cotton  trousers, so they absorbed all water from the rain. Not really the best piece of cloth for rainy day. 

Me, Xavi and Alexej went to some (weird) fancy restaurant in Stepancminda. The weird thing there was, that they didn’t serve wine per glass, but only per bottle. Another weird thing was, that they didn’t offer beer ( to make things clear – I don’t drink beer). I ordered omellete, tomato soup and salad. Was delicious (expensive, but at least good ). 

Alexej travelled all months in his car. Great place to sleep, but not to have shower. We offered him to ask for a shower in our camping. The guy, who was working in the camping (and looked completely stoned all the time) let him to take a shower for free. While having shower, we met some German guys who were on their road trip (apparently some competition) to Tajikistan. They were cool. Especially the night was cool. Well, we just got drunk, which is fun, when you are in Caucasus. I was dancing with some grandpas, drinking Saperavi (this wine will stay always in my heart), drinking home-made wine and just having fun. That night was great. 

 

On Monday, it was raining (again) in the morning. We somehow packed our tent and went with the taxi (for 20Lari ) back to Tbilisi. From Tbilisi, we went directly to Telavi (which was the starting point for getting to Tusheti NAtional park). But before next (and much more cool) hike, we stayed there at Tengo’s hostel (AJIME Hostel) as Couchsurfers and enjoyed the mood of the city and their great wine. But about that, you can read in the other article. Now back to the hikes. 

TUSHETI NATIONAL PARK  

There are not many ways how to get to the Tusheti National Park. There is no public transport and the travel from Telavi takes around 6 hours. And 5 of those hours, you will spend on the most crazy road that I have ever seen. You will need 5 hours to make 75 km. Not bad, right? With taxi, it costs 50 Lari. However, the adventurous me told me, that we should definitelly try to hitchhike. So we did. And it was great! We needed about 5 cars to get to Omalo, the most touristic place in th Tusheti park. On our way, we also got some wine and were offered more times to smoke bong. It seems that smoking weed in bongs is something very common in Tusheti, since our drivers stopped multiple times just to have some weed for better mood. 🙂

When arriving to Omalo, we realised, that we will need to hike for more days if we want to really experience Tusheti.  There were many options how and where to go. For us were 3 days hiking with our backpacs and tent enough time, so we decided to do circle (around 60 km) through few beautiful villages (Dartlo, Parsma, Verkhovani) and back to Omalo. This hike was amazing. First day, right after we left Omalo, we met some German girl (Sandra), with who we were walking around 3 hours. It was great to have someone with us (not that with Xavi I would be bored, but you know.. to have someone else in the group is always good :D). Getting closer to Dartlo, we were crossing by stone altars (which had always white stone on the top). What we assumed (and later also researched), they were there to protect everyone, who was crossing there. Communities in Tusheti are still pagans. So that is the reason, why women cannot go to some hills, because those hills are considered as sacred. From Dartlo (first village after Omalo), we went the hill up to some completely abandoned village. There were only ruins of houses, some tower and surprisingly guesthouse! 😀 But these two villages were last, which had kind of “touristic” mood. Later, people an villages looked pretty different and way more abandoned. That day, we slept in Chesho. Our plan was to arrive to a village called Parsma (which was only 1 hour from Chesho), but I just run out of my energy. We found there some guesthouse, where was a German couple (one thing that you need to know about Georgia – you will meet German tourists everywhere. Probably because of this movie. Which is highly recommended to watch!) and two Russians, who were there with horses. Such a beautiful kind of tourism! Riding horses! 

The second day, we went over some mountain to Verkhovani. And the hike was really hard! 😀 I didn’t expect that. The superrelevation was 1 500 m up and than back down. I was so exhausted, that before coming down, I just needed to have 30 min nap to somehow manage that. In Verkhovani, there was noone. Ghost city. And also huge and cold river which we needed to cross somehow. So we did and camped somewhere next to it. We did fire, ate rests of our food (and were hoping that the next day, we will meet some house, where we can eat) and went to sleep. Around 8:30 p.m. In the morning, it was super crazy storm there. So we were just waiting.. and waiting.. I was really afraid, that we will just stay there, in the middle of nowhere and freeze for more days without food (haha, these horror scenarios, that you have in your head, when something unexpected is happening. :D)

Third day of our hike happened few things:

1. We built a bridge. Kind of. Small one from stones but it counts. It took us around 40 minutes and would be actually much more effective, when we just took off our shoes and crossed the river like that. However, we were cold and apparently very excited about building a small bridge. So why not. 
2. We hitchhiked. After few hours of walking, we hit on a road. Kind of road. And we saw there a car and I just automatically ( surviving reflex or something) stopped that. And it was really great decision. The car took us for 7 kilometers to the next village (which is the highest village in Europe!).
3. We were invited (actually we invited ourselfs) for great dinner from some local lady! and I asked to some people there, if they can give us something to eat. And they said yes. And not only something. Such a revel! And vegetarian + gluten free ( How to make Lenkita and Xavi happy? Give them something what is both vegetarian and gluten free). The lady prepared for us vegetables, salad, potatoes, lentils and fried khinkali with cottage cheese and potatoes (yes, it’s not gluten free, but for Xavi it is perfect <3)
4. I dealed great price for private taxi. To get back to Telavi. We wanted to get ASAP back to Telavi, in order to not spend the whole next day with only travelling. 

Hiking in Georgia is great. And can be the only reason, why to visit that country.