Svaneti Trek: Mestia to Ushguli

Kutaisi airport is served by direct flights from many European cities, and your hotel in the centre is a 30-minute transfer away. If you land early, there is time to visit the cathedral of Bagrati, built in 1003 on its hill over the Rioni River, and to stock up at the Green Bazaar on dried fruit, nuts and churchkhela as trail snacks. Over dinner your mountain guide gives you a briefing, looks over your gear and explains the route stage by stage. Pack light for the walking days: your main bag travels ahead of you each morning.

The road leads west to Zugdidi and then north into the Enguri gorge, where you stop at the Enguri Dam, whose concrete arch stands about 270 m high. For around three hours you climb through forests of chestnut and beech into Upper Svaneti, catching sight of glaciers as Mestia comes closer. The town sits at about 1,500 m. After you check in, spend an hour in the Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography, whose medieval icons, manuscripts and church crosses were guarded for centuries in Svan villages, then walk among the stone towers that families raised for protection between the 9th and 13th centuries.

From Mestia a steep path climbs through forest and pasture to a big cross on a viewpoint above town, and then on to the Koruldi Lakes at roughly 2,740 m, about 1,300 m higher than where you started. In clear weather Mount Ushba (4,710 m) raises its twin peaks behind the lakes, and the main Caucasus ridge runs away to east and west. The full walk there and back takes seven to eight hours; to make it shorter, a 4x4 can take you as far as the cross. By the end of the day your guide knows how the group is moving before the trek proper begins.

You set off on foot from Mestia, cross the Mestiachala River, then take farm tracks past the village of Lakhiri until the trail rises onto a wooded ridge. From the crest, Tetnuldi and Ushba stand across the Mulakhi valley, and a gentle descent through meadows brings you to the villages of the Mulakhi community. Tonight's guesthouse is in Zhabeshi, where hay is still cut by hand and cows live on the ground floor of the houses. Stage: around 14 km and five to six hours, including one long, steady climb up to the ridge.

A steady climb through fields and woodland takes you onto the flanks of Tetnuldi, where ski lifts sit unused in summer, and on up to a ridge of about 2,700 m, where the main chain of the Caucasus lines up along the skyline. From there the path drops steeply through forest to Adishi, at around 2,000 m, a village of only a few families that snow cuts off for much of the winter. For hundreds of years the village church kept the Adishi Gospels, copied by hand in 897. Stage: roughly 11 km in five to six hours; expect to climb around 900 m and lose about 700 m.

Walk up the Adishischala valley, with the icefall of the Adishi Glacier straight ahead. At the glacial river local horsemen are waiting to carry you across, because the water runs fast and icy. Then a steep trail winds up through rhododendron bushes to the Chkhunderi Pass, about 2,700 m and the trek's high point, where the whole glacier and the summits above it come into view. Descend through meadows to Khalde, a village partly in ruins, and continue to Iprari. Stage: roughly 16 km in six to seven hours, climbing around 800 m and dropping about 950 m.

The final stage follows the Enguri upstream past the villages of the Kala community, rising and falling along the hillside, while ahead of you the snowy wall of Shkhara (5,193 m), the highest summit in Georgia, grows larger with every hour. By mid-afternoon you walk into Ushguli, a group of four hamlets some 2,100 m above sea level within the Upper Svaneti World Heritage site. Climb to Lamaria Church above Zhibiani and wander between the towers of Chazhashi. Stage: around 13 km and four to five hours. You celebrate at the guesthouse with a dinner seasoned with Svan salt, the local blend of salt, herbs and spices.

Leaving Ushguli by 4x4, you take the summer-only road south across the Zagaro Pass, at about 2,600 m, and drop into Lower Svaneti, a quiet, forested valley dotted with old villages that few travellers ever see. You follow the Tskhenistskali River down through Lentekhi to Tsageri in Lechkhumi, then carry on to Kutaisi, reaching it in the late afternoon. If weather or roadworks close the pass, the alternative via Mestia and Zugdidi takes around seven hours. The tour finishes at your Kutaisi hotel or the airport.