Mestia to Lakhiri – Into the High Caucasus

The morning in Mestia felt less like a beginning than a summons. The mountains loomed above the town in jagged silence, their peaks catching the first light like the edges of unsheathed swords. Beyond the valley, beyond the stone towers that have guarded Svaneti for centuries, the trail beckoned with the kind of inevitability that explorers describe as both invitation and command.

This is the opening leg of a four-day, 50 km hike—perhaps Georgia’s most famous—carrying walkers from Mestia to Ushguli. Each night is spent in village guesthouses, rustic but welcoming, and while accommodation is usually available as you go, booking ahead is wise: the trail has grown into a pilgrimage of sorts for travellers from all corners of the world.

The day’s walk takes around five hours, leaving Mestia—the only real town in Svaneti and the last chance to stock up on supplies—before ascending steadily to a ridge. From there the path drops into the Mulkhura valley, a corridor of green where streams murmur over stones and meadows open like pages in a medieval manuscript. The landscape is solling hills, alpine meadows, small rivers, and towers. Scenic trails through forests and meadows,

We set out beneath skies of cobalt blue, the kind of sky that promises both glory and punishment. The path wound through meadows still heavy with dew, each blade of grass glittering as if the earth itself were armoured. Behind us, Mestia receded into a cluster of towers and roofs, a medieval relic pressed stubbornly into the modern world. Ahead, the high Caucasus rose, implacable, glaciers shimmering in the far distance like frozen banners.

The trail is not merely walked, it is entered—like a passageway into another realm. Villages appeared along the route, half-asleep, their houses clinging to slopes, their wooden balconies weathered by centuries of wind. Children waved from doorways; cows blocked the path with a kind of indifferent authority. Life here seemed untouched by the noise of cities, as if time itself had agreed to pause for Svaneti.

The air grew thinner with every step, and silence became the dominant sound. Only the crunch of boots on soil, the murmur of water spilling down from unseen glaciers, the occasional echo of a raven overhead. It is a silence not of absence but of magnitude—the silence of landscapes so immense they absorb human presence like a drop into the sea.

By late afternoon, we reached Lakhiri. Accommodation: Guest House Gvidani. We have a decadent dinner and breakfast, and a room without windows with dark brown wallpaper. Lakhiri is a scatter of houses, towers leaning at improbable angles, stone walls blackened by weather and history. The village felt like the end of something and the beginning of something else. Here the towers rose again, mute witnesses of feuds and storms, their silhouettes etched against the evening sky.

As the sun sank behind the mountains, the valley turned gold, then violet, then black. The stars came alive with startling speed, filling the sky as if someone had overturned a basket of diamonds. In that darkness, the sense of isolation was profound—both terrifying and exhilarating. The first day on the trail had carried us into a landscape not merely beautiful but elemental, a reminder that beyond the cities and trains and negotiations for hotel rooms, there are still places where the world is vast and unconquered.

The journey to Ushguli had begun.

Trail stats (Day 1 – Mestia to Lakhiri)

• Distance: 12 km
• Elevation gain: 605 m
• Elevation loss: 281 m
• Max elevation: 1,893 m
• Min elevation: 1,396 m
• Technical difficulty: Easy