Davide Cassenti

Svaneti is probably the most famous region in Georgia: whenever you ask someone here what to visit, they will definetly include it in the list; they would also add that it is the most beautiful and dangerous place in the country. Knowing this, the wish to visit the region has always been high and finally we managed to do it. The trip, however, seemed hard since the beginning: getting a plane is terribly hard – or at least, so it seems by calling people – and going from Tbilisi would be too expensive and tiring by hiring a car. With a mess in our heads, and with a lot of people warning us about the danger on Svaneti mountains, we finally found out what the best solution was: just taking a normal Marshrutka to Zugdidi, spend a night there and take another Marshrutka to the Svaneti capital Mestia. No need to get a 350 € tour, no need to rent a car, no need of anything: simple public transport would have allowed us to go in this mysterious place.

So we are three, me, Mzia and Zhana, ready to go: the good thing is that there are relatives in Zugdidi, the capital of Samegrelo region and the town where the Marshrutka to Mestia goes from; the even more good thing is that, despite it was late night when we arrived there, a traditional georgian-gaumarjos table was ready to welcome us in the region I like to define the Sicily of Georgia; the bad thing is that, as would happen in Sicily, the food is much, very very much; the worst thing, anyway, is the climate in Zugdidi: hot, hot and more hot, with an humidity probably higher than 100%. My sleep was anyway quite good thanks to the fan that they kindly gave me – as the guest – to refresh a little bit the room. In the morning is time to take the Marshrutka, which should take just 3.5 hours to get to destination.

Along the road I got a bit disappointed: there’s an huge reservoir in Samegrelo, a sort of big lake surrounded by mountains, but after that the panorama is not as good as I expected. It is indeed wonderful, but after my visit to Shatili last year I cannot say that is the best I’ve seen so far. Perfectly on time, about 5 hours later we finally arrive at our destination: Mestia, the capital of Svaneti. It looks like the guesthouse we booked is not in the center, but in the end of Mestia – which sounds like the end of the World: when the Marshrutka stopped in the center we felt like we jumped back in time, 50 years ago without any De Lorean at 88 mph. It was simply awful: I really can’t find any other word to describe the town – or village.

After a 10 minutes stop in the desolated and dusty center, our Marshrutka finally reaches our destination: it sorted out that the end of Mestia was 500m far from the center and thanks God it looked much better and cleaner. Irma, our host, was a nice woman and the guesthouse, at that moment empty, was simply great. Big – even too much – all hand made in wood, it was just perfect for us: we had three meals a day and a huge room for just 25 lari each. With our belly full, we finally go to have a walk in the town: terrible, let me say again. The village with the traditional Svaneti towers is beautiful, can’t say no, but everything else is either under construction, dusty, with a lot of garbage and animals’ “censored„. We have even been in the middle of a sort of sand storm: never ever I would have imagined that in Svaneti, over the Caucasus where you expect fresh and clean air.

View of Mestia

Back home in the evening we got another nice dinner and we got ready for the second day: destination Ushguli, the highest inhabited village in Europe. At 8 in the morning the car – kindly called by Irma – is ready to go: the driver, a Svanetian man, is driving a famous Lada Niva, a car that would be able to go wherever in the planet – and even outside maybe. The 1.5 hours that the driver estimated became 2.5 – as usual here: the road is long and full of holes and inside the Niva is not that comfortable. We stopped few times along the road: first to visit what I would define puddlake, a lake that was more similar to a puddle; then we stopped to see the Tower of Love, a Svanetian tower that was built just on the border of the river because of some love story that ended badly. The panorama along the road was definetly better: totally different from the landscape you can see on the road to Shatili – which I still consider the best – you can see great mountains with lot of trees; far away, the mount Ushba with its particular double summit was looking was cleary visible.

The puddlake

The mount Ushba

Ushguli would make you forget about Mestia: the village is in an amazing area surrounded by the mountains and it is very beautiful. Here you can again see lot of towers, nicely integrated with the village; however, the place is full of tourists – well, not as much as Rome or New York, but still many of them are there – and you can even find a bar and a car washing: impressive.

Ushguli, the highest village in Europe

After the visit of the village and, of course, a huge lunch, our car is ready to go back; however, before going home, the driver suggests to go and visit the source of the river, which is an glacier 30 minutes far from our lovely Mestia. We agree, but as usual the time gets multiplicated by 3: along the road, a jeep is stopped avoiding us to pass, without any driver; we spent half an hour trying to find the owner and even an alternative road in the middle of the trees, when the owner finally appeared and went away: unfortunately we couldn’t see who they were, since we were in that alternative road at that moment, but finally we were able to continue to our destination. The car couldn’t reach the source: when it stopped, we had to pass a scary long bridge over the impetous river and then start walking along a path in the wood. We wondered why the driver didn’t alert us that, after the short drive we had to walk for an hour, up and down, to get there; the most terrible part was even that the last part was on the rocks, hard to walk on. At last, we arrived: the view was quite good, but nothing so special; after some time it was time to go back home before the darkness.

Scary bridge

The source of river Enguri

We planned to stay 4 days, but after we saw Mestia we decided that it was better to go back home one day earlier: taking our bags in the not quite but almost early morning, we headed to the center of Mestia – if we can define it so – waiting for a Marshrutka. Bad news: all of them already left and none will come later; the only way to go home is to find a car that would bring us to Zugdidi. Looking around and asking hundreds people, we finally saw some guys who needed someone to fill a minivan to go there: good, we thought, here we are. Once they asked us and we confirmed our destination, they tried to find the owner of the car, which apparently was sleeping and too lazy to wake up and get some money: mission failed. Thanks God, those guys found out that a Marshrutka was coming from Zugdidi in few minutes and would have taken us back. The Marshrutka driver on the way back was just awful: with a 6m large road, he liked to drive on the left side, just few cm far from the edge – hundreds meters high over the river. Also, he didn’t miss any hole in the 5 hours long road and he probably won a special prize for this.

Despite all, the trip was really nice: Svaneti is indeed a very beautiful place and it looks like Mestia is going to be repaired and turned into a fashion-touristic town. I usually dislike this, but in this case I think it will be a really good decision, considering its conditions right now. I just hope they will make a better system for allowing tourists going up and down: probably the funicolar I heard they are making from Zugdidi to Mestia would be scary, but definetly interesting to take.

Tags: georgia, svaneti, travel, trip