I was venturing away from Tbilisi for a couple of days to Stepantsminda or Kazbegi, as it’s often known, in the Caucasus Mountains.
I noticed the travel agency I’d gone to Davit Gareja with were doing tours to Kazbegi the following day. I asked if they did transfers, they said they didn’t, but I could book on a tour and then just stay there. For £20 I’d have a comfortable transfer and there would be a couple of stops along the way and an included journey to the church on the top of the hill. It was a no brainer. A comfortable, new, clean Mercedes minivan instead of one of the grotty public minibuses? It was well worth paying £20 for. And it was one less public minibus I’d have to take.
I was up early to go to Kazbegi and because it’s a popular tour there were 3 minibuses. I was on the one with the English guide, with the Austrian lady again.
We stopped at the Ananuri Fortress first where there are 2 churches and a tower to climb. There are very few barriers up in these buildings in Georgia, basically if you can find a way to climb up a tower, you can climb it. So I climbed it. I did have to watch my step, there was nothing to stop you from climbing the tower, but also no proper steps up there either and once at the top there were huge holes in the floor and nothing to stop you falling through them. You just had to be careful.
After our stop at the fortress, we got back in the minibus to go over the mountain pass. There’s a ski resort at the top of the pass called Gudauri, built by the Austrians, so it looks quite smart. You have brilliant views of the mountains from there and it’s also the location of the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument, commonly known as the Peace Wall. This circular wall built in 1983 on the Georgian Military Highway overlooking the Devil’s Valley has been painted with brightly coloured murals representing scenes from Georgian history. It was worth the climb along the road to see it up close and there wasn’t too much treacherous clambering to do here either! All tour buses stop here, so there were several market stalls selling honey and hats, scarves and gloves.
Then it was on to Kazbegi. There were jeep transfers to the Holy Trinity Church at Gergeti which overlooks Mount Kazbegi, the third highest mountain in Georgia. We stopped off at a restaurant first to order lunch, but since I was staying in Kazbegi I wasn’t planning to eat in a restaurant chosen by the tour company. So I just waited for everyone else and we transferred to the jeeps.
The jeeps were, in fact, Mitsubishi minivans and they were all right hand drive. In Georgia, they got hold vehicles as cheaply as they could and didn’t pay extra to buy left hand drives, so I came across a few right hand drive vehicles while I was there. I was sitting in the back, but this Polish lass said she was scared sitting in the front, so I said I’d swap with her and sit in the front seat. Most drivers in Georgia are completely mad. The Austrian lady from the tour to Davit Gareja made me laugh when she mentioned her minibus ride the previous day. She said there wasn’t a middle lane, but the minibus driver had made a middle lane! Our driver was worse! You’re on these really bumpy stone roads, they’re not even gravel. I have driven on these types of roads before, but here you’ve got all the animals on the road and they really don’t look wide enough for vehicles to pass, they looked like single track roads. Not only was our driver passing other vehicles coming from the opposite direction, he was also overtaking them! I took a very sharp intake of breath on the return journey when I could see two vehicles coming in the opposite direction and our driver decided that was the right moment to overtake the minivan in front. The Polish lass would not have liked being in the front for that!
It was a long drive up there and 5km on an appalling road, with an equally appalling driver, seemed to take forever. Although I have to say that I wouldn’t have been so keen to hike up there, it was a very long way.
It was beautiful up there, a perfect view of Mount Kazbegi from the church, a great view of the Caucasus Mountains from the other side. Looking down from one side you could see the town of Stepantsminda below and the mountains beyond. On the other side I got a marvellous view of Mount Kazbegi on this clear, sunny day. I had a quick look inside the iconic 14th century Holy Trinity Church and then climbed onto the wall to get a photo of me with Mount Kazbegi behind me. It was very windy by the church whichever side of it you were. I was standing on a wall and suddenly this gust of wind came out of nowhere and almost knocked me off my feet. I was lucky not to fall off the wall. On the other side of the church I looked like I was about to get blown off the mountain down into the valley below the way the strong winds were blowing my clothes. After a good look round and photos we headed back to the minivan and our death wish driver for the return journey. I’m writing this, so I obviously survived the drive back…
I asked the guide what I should do if I was spending the day in Kazbegi tomorrow. He recommended a 10 hour return hike to the glacier. No thank you! I’ve seen plenty of glaciers in Canada, Alaska, New Zealand, Austria, etc. I felt there was no need to hike for 10 hours to see one in Georgia. Besides which, I’d seen the hiking trails in the Caucasus. 10 hours for Georgian people probably means 14 hours for me! So I asked at the guesthouse where I was staying and they said they did tours to a waterfall and a nearby valley where you could hike. So that was my plan for the next day.
My guesthouse in Kazbegi was okay. There was a balcony where I sat drinking semi-sweet Georgian red wine (which wasn’t bad) and looking at Mount Kazbegi, the third highest mountain in Georgia. There are worse views. No, it was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and the view of the mountain was amazing.
I was chatting to a German lad at breakfast before I went out the next day and I said I’d found it difficult getting around Georgia. He recommended hitchhiking! And he was being serious! I don’t hitchhike. I’m a woman travelling on my own and I don’t think it’s safe. I don’t pick up hitchhikers either. As a woman on my own I think I have to make my safety a priority.
He said you could end up in places where you had no other choice than to hitchhike. I said I just wouldn’t get myself into that situation where I was stranded and needed to hitchhike. He said you might be somewhere beautiful and waiting for the sunlight to be right for a photograph and then after that the last bus had gone and you’d be stranded. As far as I’m concerned, there is no photo in the world worth getting stranded for!
I just did the walk to the Gveleti Waterfall in the morning. The bloke who ran the guesthouse took me there in his 4×4 Lada van which was so old it had a choke! He pointed out the trail, which his son had told me was “normal” and then offered to come with me if I was unsure. I would have managed on my own, but I would have been pretty slow and it would have been a struggle. Normal? Not my idea of a normal trail. I had quite a lot of help over the steep parts with the bloke holding my hand and my arm to stop me falling. But it was a remote location, which I really liked, the waterfall was lovely and it was a gorgeous day.
On the way back, we stopped off on the road at a cross and up in the mountains was a church. I could just about see it up in the mountains in the distance, but didn’t manage to get a photo of it. I settled for a photo of the cross instead.
In the afternoon I went to the Juta Valley, which is very beautiful. It’s a very long and bumpy road to get there, but the Lada van seemed to be able to cope with the rough terrain. I got out of the car, was pointed in the right direction to get to the trail head and I set off on my hike.
You can see the Black Mountain and a glacier and the trail isn’t steep as it follows the valley. It was a lovely sunny day, I was enjoying my walk and thinking that spending a day in Kazbegi had been a good idea after all, because it is gorgeous. That was until it came to the stream crossings. Was there a bridge? Don’t be silly! Stepping stones in a helpful position? Of course not! I got some help across the first crossing, but slipped on the second one, which I am prone to do. I don’t mind getting wet socks much, in this weather they were going to dry out really quickly, but there were so many big rocks in the river, I bashed my right knee on one of them and my left shin on another. My shin, in particular was very painful and a right mess that night. Would it really be too much of an effort to secure a couple of planks of wood over the river? Horses go along that trail, so you wouldn’t even need people to carry the wood to the river, the horse could carry it.
However, since I could pretty well guarantee that was going to be my last ever hike in the Caucasus Mountains I decided to carry on for a while, but my turning back point would be when I came across another river crossing with no bridge. So I got as close to the Black Mountain as the trail took me and then it started to turn back. The owner’s son hadn’t made it clear whether this was a circular route, so I wasn’t sure, but then, there it was, another river crossing with no bridge. That was where I turned back. The only bridge on the river had been put there by the proprietors of a café. You had to cross the river to get to the café and they had obviously decided that without a bridge nobody would venture there. I didn’t even bother when they had provided a bridge, so I imagine their assumption that no bridge would equate to no customers was correct.
When I got back to the other river crossings, two really close together, I got some help to get across because there were loads of people there. I went in ankle deep with one foot and my sock got wet again, but I didn’t care about that. As long as I didn’t have a matching bashed shin on my right leg too. They really should put a bridge in. It’s a very popular trail and everyone was struggling to get across the river. And although the Caucasus Mountains are beautiful, they’re very similar to mountain regions in other parts of the world, so it isn’t like if you don’t come here you’ll never see scenery like it anywhere else.
The next day I left Kazbegi and it had an extremely unpromising start. The first minibus to Tbilisi out of Kazbegi goes at 7am, so I was up at 6am, the guesthouse owner transported me and my suitcase to the main road where the minibuses go from, we were there at 6.50am. The 7 o’clock minibus had been full and gone early! Seems everyone was desperate to get out of Kazbegi! The 8 o’clock one would leave early if it was full. Of course that didn’t happen. I was sitting in a freezing cold minibus for over an hour before it finally set off. At that moment in time I really hated Georgia! We’d only gone a couple of kilometres down the road and the minibus driver turned round. What the hell was he doing? He pulled into a petrol station, had a quick conversation with someone there and then took off again. He pulled over a couple of times to chat to someone in the road and also pulled over so a passenger could get a bottle of water out of her bag! I just despair. However, I did eventually get back to Tbilisi.
And I’d seen the Caucasus Mountains. You can’t go to Georgia and not visit the Caucasus Mountains or you would always wonder what they were like. Now I won’t have to wonder.
I travelled to Georgia during the first half of October 2016.
I travelled to Kazbegi on a day trip from Tbilisi with Holidays in Georgia travel agency located at 8 Kote Apkhazi Street, in Tbilisi city centre. This day trip stopped at Zhinvali Reservoir, Ananuri Fortress, the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument and included a tour up to the Gergeti Holy Trinity Church.
Stepantsminda is approximately a 3 hour drive from Tbilisi.
I stayed at Anano Guesthouse in the centre of Stepantsminda. The guesthouse offer transfers to the local attractions for a fixed price. I took transfers to the Juta Valley to hike to the Black Mountain and to Gveleti Waterfall.
I flew to Georgia on a Wizz Air flight to Kutaisi from Budapest, Hungary. This was a cheaper alternative to flying to the capital, Tbilisi.
I flew to Budapest from Manchester Airport with Jet2.
I also used Holidays in Georgia to go on a day trip to Davit Gareja from Tbilisi. Read about my experience.
Davit Gareja Cliff Monastery Complex
Read about my time in the city of Tbilisi.
The Hilltops of Tbilisi
Traditional Sulphur Bath Experience
If you ever are in Georgia – take care! Read about my encounter with the Georgian police when I was unlucky enough to be the victim of a pickpocket.
Reporting a Theft – A Cautionary Tale
