Mestia
Mestia to Batumi – From Towers to the Sea
In the high thin air of Mestia, the morning began with the feeling that we were standing at the edge of something old and unspeakably resilient. The mountains here still carry an aura of fortification: they do not just exist, they defend. Lorena and I took the ski lift, an improbable machine of cables and steel grafted onto this medieval [...]
Ushguli to Mestia – Stones, Ice and Shadows in Svaneti
The morning began in the rarefied air of Ushguli, a village that pretends to be timeless and almost succeeds. Horses whinnied in the distance, their breath clouding in the cold like restless spirits. Lorena and I rose early, stepping into a silence broken only by the faint trickle of the Enguri River, still swollen from the night’s [...]
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 [...]
Tbilisi to Mestia – The Silkroad Express to Svaneti
The train left Tbilisi at 08:20 sharp, its whistle cutting through the already warming air. Georgian Railways, once a realm of Soviet rolling stock—those cavernous, rattling Russian carriages with bunks like iron coffins and curtains heavy with dust—has embraced a new era. The old night trains to Batumi, Yerevan, and even Zugdidi have [...]