We parked in the center of the touristic hub of the Upper Svaneti, Mestia. We used it as a base for exploration of the oldest of the hamlets dotted with picturesque Svan towers. Most towers are above the river on the northern side of town: Lekhtagi in the northwest and Lanchvali and...
The whole day we drove through breathtakingly wild and mysterious Svaneti, an ancient land locked in the Caucasus, so remote that any ruler never tamed it. We were passing uniquely picturesque villages and snow-covered, 4000m-plus peaks rising above flower-strewn alpine meadows (in the...
In Georgia’s second city (the capital of Adjara), we parked next to the promenade strolling along Batumis bulvari. With a backdrop of mist-wrapped hills and soaring snow-capped peaks, Batumi is a charismatic place with a charming Old Town fronted by the calm waters of the Black Sea...
We made a short stop at Gonio’s fortress (🎫 5 GEL), an impressive piece of Roman-Byzantine military architecture covering 47,000 sq meters within a rectangle of high stone walls with 18 towers. Built by the Romans in the 1st century AD, it was occupied by the Byzantines in the 6th...
We drove through Adjara, an autonomous republic in Georgia, in the southwestern corner of that country, adjacent to the Black Sea and the Turkish frontier. Adjara was under Turkish rule from the 17th century until 1878 when it was annexed by Russia and attached to Georgia. From 1922 to...
We entered Georgia through Bavra / Ninotsminda border crossing. There was nobody on Friday afternoon, so we crossed the border fast, with easy procedures on both sides. We bought the compulsory insurance in a booth in front of Ninotsminda town. The next day we decided to continue to...
A dirty, bumpy road brought us deep into a river valley to Marmashen Monastery. It is quite an unusual location for the monastery because medieval monasteries in Armenia were almost always constructed in elevated locations. Three churches hewn from lovely orange-colored tuff clustered...
We did our last shopping in Armenia in Gyumri. On our way from the city, we stopped below the “Black Fortress.” Russians completed the stronghold to defend the land from the Turks in 1834 to protect the city of Alexandropol, now called Gyumri. Hans Karl von Diebitsch...
Our last stop today was a quite depressive half-abandoned village of Harich. There is located still-functioning Harichavank Monastery. It has a chapel built in the 7th or 8th century. Later it was dramatically expanded with a gavit (antechamber) and domes in the 13th century. There is...
Our truck parked next to thirty-nine giant Armenian letters haphazardly clustered alongside the highway, 15km from Ashtarak. The letters were erected in 2005 to honor the 1600th anniversary of Mesrop Mashtots inventing the Armenian alphabet. Mashtots, who is also memorialized with a...