Georgia runs on marshrutkas — dented minibuses that leave when full, cost pennies per kilometer, and are driven by men who consider the center line a suggestion. Learn to love them and the whole country opens up: a capital built for wandering, an easy high-Caucasus taste at Kazbegi, and then Svaneti, where medieval defensive towers stand in villages under 5,000-meter walls and one of Europe's great treks connects them on foot.
Tbilisi: give it three days
Tbilisi's old town is all leaning balconies, sulfur-bath domes, and courtyards you're allowed to wander into. Do the Abanotubani baths properly — a private room at Chreli-Abano runs 100–200 GEL split between friends, and the optional kisa scrub removes skin you didn't know you had. Ride the cable car (2.5 GEL, needs a metro card) to the Narikala fortress at sunset, then eat: khinkali dumplings cost about 1.5 GEL each and eight is dinner; add a khachapuri and you won't need breakfast. Hostels run $10–15, and the natural wine bars around Fabrika will teach you that Georgia has been making qvevri wine for 8,000 years and will not let you forget it. Say yes if anyone invites you to a supra. Cancel your next morning if they do.
Kazbegi: the Caucasus in a day trip's clothing
Marshrutkas from Didube station run the Georgian Military Highway to Stepantsminda (three hours, 15–20 GEL), over the 2,379m Jvari Pass and past the Soviet-mosaic viewpoint at Gudauri. The town sits under Mount Kazbek, a 5,047m glaciated cone that appears and disappears in cloud like a magic trick. The essential walk is up to Gergeti Trinity Church — 14th century, silhouetted on its ridge at 2,170m — about 90 minutes up through birch woods, or a shared 4WD (25 GEL) if you're saving your knees. Stay the night; the day-trippers drain away at 5pm and the guesthouses ($20–25 half board) feed you like family, because you briefly are. With a spare day, continue up toward the Gergeti glacier viewpoint at ~3,000m for a real taste of altitude.
The long way west to Svaneti
Getting to Svaneti is a commitment: back to Tbilisi, then either the night train to Zugdidi ($10, oddly charming) plus a morning marshrutka up the gorge, or a direct Tbilisi–Mestia marshrutka. Either way you'll spend most of a day watching the road climb into increasingly serious mountains. There are also small planes from Natakhtari to Mestia ($30ish) that sell out weeks ahead and cancel with the weather — book if you can, plan as if you can't.
Mestia and the trek to Ushguli
Mestia is Upper Svaneti's hub: stone towers built between the 9th and 13th centuries rise from the middle of town, and the ethnographic museum's treasury of icons is worth an hour before you walk. The Mestia–Ushguli trek is the headline: four days, roughly 58km, village to village with a guesthouse bed and two enormous meals every night ($25–35 per day), so you carry only a daypack. The stages — Mestia to Zhabeshi, over the Bakhmaro ridge to Adishi, then the day everyone remembers: crossing the Adishi river below the Adishi glacier (hire a horseman for 20–30 GEL to ferry you across in the morning when the water's low), up to the Chkhutnieri pass with the entire Bezengi wall of the Caucasus in front of you, and finally into Ushguli, a UNESCO-listed cluster of towers at 2,100m that claims to be Europe's highest permanently inhabited village. Shepherd dogs will escort you at a professional distance the whole way.
From Ushguli, shared jeeps run back to Mestia (30–40 GEL), or the newly improved road continues toward Lentekhi if you're feeling completist.
When and how much
June to September for the trek; the passes hold snow into early June, and October gilds everything. Georgia is one of the world's great value destinations: $35–45 a day covers all of this, wine included. Visa-free for a year for most nationalities, which is exactly as dangerous as it sounds.
