Filled with medieval towers, ancient churches, strange customs and its fair share of surprises, Svaneti is a land of adventure

Mestia | მესტია | Pop. 1,900

Mestia is the touristic HQ of Svaneti, Georgia’s mountain region. It’s unlikely you’ll get as far as this remote part of Georgia without holing up at least for a couple of nights here. It’s filled with hotels, guesthouses, bars and restaurants, and you’ll find all sorts of outdoorsy, adventure-type tourists here, probably about to embark on the famous four-day trek to Ushguli. During the winter, when the surrounding mountains are blanketed in show, the ski resorts do a roaring trade.

David, my guide, drove me to Mestia - but as I’ve written about before, if you’re planning to hire a car and drive this way, you need to prepare yourself for some dangerous roads. Marshrutkas run from Tbilisi, but that’s bound to be a rough journey. Alternately, you can fly from the capital: flights run from Tbilisi to the tiny Queen Tamar Airport, which is just a few miles outside of town.

Definitely pay a visit to the Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography (pictured below) if you have a spare half-day: it’s full of religious icons, medieval paintings and other fascinating Svanetian artefacts. The Hastvali Cable Car was closed, sadly, when I visited - but the views from the top are meant to be breathtaking. Not that you’re not met by breathtaking views everywhere you look. There’s no end of bars and hotels in Mestia - my favourite place to eat was the restaurant at Hotel Posta, where there is often live music in the evenings.

Like many Svaneti towns, Mestia is filled with ancient stone towers called koshkebi, but I’ll touch on them in more detail later in this post.

For all the hotels and ski stores, there’s a slightly lawless, Wild West-esque feeling in Mestia. The Svan people belong to the same ethnic group as the rest of the Georgian population, but centuries of isolation have given them a language, culture and identity of their own - as well as a checkered reputation. Fierce and self-sufficient, Svan people are known to settle their disputes with violent blood feuds, and are probably responsible for the instances of banditry that are still reported by unfortunate tourists (albeit far less in recent years). 

One night on Mestia’s high street, I saw two Svan boys, each about ten, racing their horses through the traffic, lashing them with sticks. (It seems that on Georgian roads you need a kind of do-or-die mentality, whatever your mode of transport.) On another evening, on my way back to my guesthouse, I walked past a group of local men gathered around two dogs they’d set on each other. 

But I was also treated very kindly by Svan people, like at Guesthouse Zoia, which is run by the lovely Zoia (pictured below) and her family. Each morning Zoia served me an enormous breakfast of bread, eggs, cheese, khachapuri, cauliflower fritters and carrot slaw.

It was at breakfast that I watched one of Zoia’s daughters filling dozens of glass jars with pickled vegetables. ‘Winter, winter!’ she explained. I visited Mestia at the end of summer, but in the coldest months, temperatures can drop as low as -10°C, and the snow is measurable in feet. Life is harsh and unforgiving in Svaneti.

Ushguli | უშგული | Pop. 230

East of Mestia is Ushguli, which, at 2,100 metres, has the title of Europe’s highest settlement. Strictly a chain of hamlets rather than an actual town, Ushguli marks the end point of a highly popular four-day hike from Mestia.

There are guesthouses to stop at each night, and while it’s a relatively easy hike, it doesn’t sound like one I’d attempt without a local guide, even in a group. This less due to wayfinding, and more due to having someone who knows how to ward off viciously territorial guard dogs (this Lonely Planet forum is littered with grim stories). There are those bandits to consider too. But someone I met later in Tbilisi did the hike, and she told me that the worst thing that happened was being delayed by a day due to snowfall. 

The drive from Mestia to Ushguli is on some of the roughest roads I’ve ever seen, but I was too distracted by the sweeping, sublimely beautiful scenery to care. Such is the scale of the Svanetian landscape, you can actually see the weather change in front of you: I watched grey clouds gather and broil among the far-off mountains in the distance. Tallest of all the peaks was Mount Shkara (5,193m), its jagged summits half-hidden by clouds.

‘This is Svaneti,’ said David, as he drove. ‘So beautiful.’ Although he lived in Tbilisi with his family, he told me that Mestia was his favourite place in Georgia. He appreciated getting away from the capital and being surrounded by the tranquility of nature.

Ushguli is quaint and ramshackle, a place where you’ll encounter herds of wandering cattle and farmers driving big, tank-like trucks from the days of Soviet occupation. For a bite to eat, I recommend Cafe Bar Enguri, where I was served a Svan dish called kubdari, a meat-filled bread not unlike a Cornish pasty.

Just outside of Ushguli is Lamaria Church, a tiny little stone building that dates back to the ninth century. The scent of incense pervades its gloomy, candlelit interior, where the faces of Jesus and the Madonna stare at you from behind glass frames. This is a sombre, moving place, even for an unbeliever like me.

READ NEXT: Batumi to Mestia: A Breathtaking Drive Into The Caucasus Mountains

The towers of Svaneti

What makes Svanetian towns like Mestia and Ushguli so distinct - and instantly recognisable in any photos - are the dozens of koshkebi you see everywhere. There are around 175 of these stone defensive towers across the region, and since very little of Svanetian history was ever written down, their origins are shrouded in mystery. They date back to anywhere between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, and offered refuge to local people against invaders, of which Georgia has suffered plenty throughout its history.

It occurred to me that most buildings this old - castles, churches, fortresses - are usually of great prestige. Chances are they belonged to someone rich or powerful. By contrast, there’s something deeply egalitarian about Svaneti’s stout, unassuming little towers, each one pretty much identical to the next. They stand anonymous and sentinel-like among the barns and farmhouses of Mestia.

In the UK, buildings as much as 1,100 years old would be in the care of the National Trust or English Heritage. Not so in Svaneti. Although they have protected Unesco World Heritage status, the towers remain in the custodianship of local communities. Some of them have half-collapsed and fallen into disrepair, but others, I’m told, are filled with priceless religious artefacts that are guarded jealously (although some families do open them up for tourists).

One evening in Mestia, David invited me to visit a tower in the care of one of his friends, a Svan guy. He let me climb the ladder to the first floor. ‘No higher though,’ he told me. 

There wasn’t much to see, but the musty smell sent a shiver through me. I felt like I was climbing up into history, into the days of swords and arrows and horses. I pictured generation after generation of Svan, seeing the invading hordes of Russians, Persians, Turks, or Mongols pour over the surrounding hills into the valley, packing up their belongings and heirlooms and retreating into the towers.

When I climbed back down to the base of the tower, things took a turn for the unexpected.

‘Matt!’ came David’s voice from behind a pinned-up groundsheet. ‘In here...’

I wriggled under the groundsheet, waded through several piles of hay, and found David, his friend and a couple of other guys. They were gathered around a seven-foot cannabis plant and a homemade bong.

On the drive from Batumi, David had tentatively asked if I fancied a smoke with him and his friends during our stay in Mestia. When I said yes, I assumed he’d meant a joint - but I didn’t feel like I could really say no now.  A minute later, I was wheezing and spluttering, my chest on fire.

‘This is Georgian marijuana,’ David said, stroking the leaves of the plant. ‘Good, yes?’

Cannabis was legalised in Georgia in 2018. My understanding is that while it’s still illegal to sell, you’re perfectly fine growing it and smoking it. This, I suspected, was another reason that David loved visiting Mestia so much: he got to get high with his mates.

After he took a hit and went outside for fresh air, his friends persuaded me to fire up the bong a second time. Then a third time. In retrospect, I think they were playing a game called Let’s See What Happens If We Get The Englishman As Stoned As Humanly Possible.

The night ended pretty quickly after that. When I stumbled outside, I stared up at the sky and saw it was filled with hundreds of stars. It should have been a beautiful sight, but I’ve never, ever seen stars look as terrifying as that before. I tried to breathe slowly and stay in the present. David even fetched water from a nearby stream for me to drink. But it was no good: my mind had climbed inside itself. I was fucked.

The plan had been to go for dinner; instead, David had to escort me back to my guesthouse where I spent the next few hours lying in bed, the covers pulled over my head, trying desperately to fall asleep but way too frightened by the sound of barking outside, which I became convinced was wolves. 

The next morning, I felt normal again. Things were slightly awkward when I met up with David, but we were both soon laughing about it. And in a place like Svaneti, if you live to tell the tale, it’s not worth worrying about too much. MB