We made a short stop in Borjomi – a tranquil resort town in south-central Georgia. It lies on the eastern edge of the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, surrounded by thickly forested hills. The town is famous for its salty-sour mineral water, well known in former Soviet Union countries. The 19th-century Russian governor of Georgia, Count Vorontsov, developed Borjomi as a resort after his soldiers discovered a health-giving mineral spring here in 1810, and it became a particularly fashionable one when Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov (brother to Tsar Alexander II) built a palace at nearby Likani in the 1890s. Borjomi’s mineral water park, dating back to 1850, occupies a narrow wooded valley and includes the town’s original mineral water source, Ekaterina Spring. We took an old Soviet cable car (🎫 30 GEL/return) from 1956 up to a hilltop Ferris wheel and the pine woods of the Borjomi Plateau with spectacular views over the town.
Parking location – Borjomi: 41.842571N 43.384489E