Svaneti Hiking Week

Your driver meets you in the morning at Kutaisi airport or your hotel and heads west to Zugdidi, then north into the Enguri gorge. Past the great concrete arch of the Enguri dam, the road follows the river into the mountains. The last two hours are a slow, scenic climb with waterfalls on the cliffs and the first Svan towers in the villages. You reach Mestia in the late afternoon. Stretch your legs on a walk through the old quarter, where the 12th-century defensive towers stand between the houses.

A 4x4 drives the rough track above Mestia to the large cross on the ridge, which saves most of the forest climb. From there you walk up open slopes to a plateau with a group of small glacial lakes at about 2,850 m. On a calm morning Ushba and the Tetnuldi ridge appear upside down in the water. Have lunch at the lakes, then walk all the way back down to Mestia on a path that zigzags through meadows and pine forest. The descent is long, so take poles.

Drive west to the Becho valley and Mazeri, a scatter of farms below Ushba's south face. Walk up the valley to the Shdugra waterfall, a long ribbon falling off the cliff, then on a steeper, rocky path to a viewpoint below the broken icefall of the Ushba glacier. The final part is a scramble over boulders, and your guide judges how far to go. Back in Mazeri the evening is quiet, with dinner in your guesthouse and the mountain lit pink above the trees if the sky is clear.

The hardest and most rewarding day of the week. Leave early and climb through forest and then steep meadows to the Guli Pass at nearly 2,950 m, where the whole Ushba massif fills the view to the north. The descent to Mestia passes high pastures and the upper Koruldi slopes before dropping back into the forest. Your bags go to Mestia by car. If you prefer a shorter day, drive back to Mestia instead and ride the chairlift to Hatsvali for a ridge walk towards Zuruldi with similar views and about half the effort.

After a slower start, drive a few minutes out of Mestia to the bridge over the Mestiachala and walk upstream through beech and birch woods. The path is broad and gently rising, with a short boulder section at the end below the tongue of the Chalaadi glacier. Be back in Mestia for lunch and a visit to the Svaneti Museum, which keeps icons and manuscripts once guarded in village churches. In the afternoon take the paved road to Ushguli, about two hours away, for two nights at the top of the Enguri valley.

Walk out of Ushguli up the wide valley of the young Enguri, with the 5,000 m wall of Shkhara ahead the whole time. The path is mostly level, crossing meadows and stony river flats, and climbs only near the end to the snout of the glacier, where the river pours out of an ice cave in some summers. Return the same way and finish the afternoon at Lamaria, the small church on the hill above Zhibiani, before a last dinner of kubdari and tashmijabi in the guesthouse.

The usual route back runs via Mestia and down the Enguri to Zugdidi and Kutaisi, a full day in the car with a lunch stop. In midsummer, when it is open, the shorter gravel road over the Zagaro Pass to Lentekhi and Tsageri is an alternative, rougher but very scenic. Either way you reach Kutaisi in the evening, and we can continue to Tbilisi or drop you at Kutaisi airport for a late flight.