Dedoplistskaro and Khornabuji Fortress

Dedoplistskaro is the last sizeable town before the dry south-east corner of Kakheti, where vineyards give way to the open wheat fields of the Shiraki plain and, further south, the semi-desert of Vashlovani. It is a quiet, spread-out place of low houses and broad streets, and most travellers pass through on the way to the national park, whose visitor centre is here. The name translates as 'the queen's spring', and local tradition links it to Queen Tamar. In Soviet times the town was called Tsiteli Tskaro, 'red spring', and it took back its old name after independence.

Above the town runs a long limestone ridge carrying the broken walls of Khornabuji, a fortress that once watched over this eastern frontier. The path up is short but steep, and from the top you see the Shiraki plain stretching away and, on clear days, the line of the Caucasus to the north. Eagle Gorge opens just below the ridge. With an early start you can do both in a morning, then drive on into Vashlovani or back towards Sighnaghi, roughly an hour away.

Khornabuji counts among the old strongholds of Kambechovani, the historic district around present-day Dedoplistskaro, and Georgian tradition places its origins in the early centuries of the kingdom. In the Middle Ages it lay in the eastern province of Hereti and later passed to the Kingdom of Kakheti, guarding the approaches from the Iori and Alazani lowlands. The town at its foot grew much later as a farming centre for the Shiraki plain, whose wheat fields and winter pastures have fed eastern Georgia for centuries.