[ ITINERARY · THE DISPATCH ]

The 7-Day Georgian Military Highway Itinerary: Tbilisi to Kazbegi and the Caucasus

One ancient road runs from Tbilisi up into the High Caucasus to a clifftop church under a 5,000-metre peak. Here's a week-long drive up the Georgian Military Highway, with all the worthwhile stops in between.

If you’ve already done Tbilisi, the sulphur baths, the wine, the tangle of old-town balconies, the next move is north, straight up the Georgian Military Highway. It’s an old road, the historic route over the Caucasus toward Russia, and it climbs from the warm valley city into a world of glaciers, gorges, and a church on a hilltop so improbably perfect it looks staged. The payoff is Kazbegi, with the Gergeti Trinity Church standing alone beneath the 5,047-metre Mount Kazbek. A week gives you the drive, the village, and the valleys around it without a forced march.

You can do this with a rental car, a hired driver, or the cheap shared marshrutka minivans. I’d hire a driver for a couple of the days; the road has weather, switchbacks, and trucks, and you’ll want to watch the scenery, not the asphalt.

Assuming Tbilisi is a known quantity, use day one to reset: a long lunch of khinkali dumplings, a soak in the Abanotubani sulphur baths, and an early night. On day two, point north. The first real stop is Ananuri, a photogenic fortress-church complex on the turquoise Zhinvali Reservoir, about an hour and a half out. It’s the moment the trip stops being about a city.

Push on and up to Gudauri, Georgia’s main ski resort, which in summer is a quiet base of green ski runs and paragliding. Just past it, stop at the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument, a Soviet-era mosaic rotunda perched on a cliff edge with a view straight down a vast valley. It’s kitsch and stunning at once.

Drop into Stepantsminda (the town everyone calls Kazbegi) and base here for three nights. This is the heart of the trip.

Day three: the obligatory, deserved pilgrimage up to Gergeti Trinity Church. You can drive a rough 4x4 track or hike up in two-ish hours; do the hike if your lungs cooperate, because earning the view is half of it. The church sits alone on its green hill with Kazbek’s glacier behind it, and on a clear morning it’s one of the great sights of the region. Go early before the cloud and the day-trip vans roll in.

Day four: go deeper into the Truso Valley, a wide, almost empty glacial valley with mineral springs that stain the ground rust-orange, abandoned stone towers, and barely another soul. It’s a long but mostly flat walk or a 4x4 trip, and it’s the antidote to the busy church.

Day five: take it easy or push to the Dariali Gorge and the monastery near the Russian border, a dramatic narrow canyon where the river roars through. Spend the evening eating in Stepantsminda with the mountain glowing pink at sunset.

Start back south, but slowly. Break the return at Mtskheta, the ancient former capital and spiritual heart of Georgia, an easy detour just before Tbilisi. The Svetitskhoveli Cathedral and the hilltop Jvari Monastery above the river junction are UNESCO-listed and properly moving, the kind of places that have been sacred for over a millennium and a half.

Roll back into Tbilisi for your last night, supraflushed and a little awed, and toast the trip with a glass of qvevri wine. The Military Highway is short on a map and enormous in memory; a week is exactly enough to feel it.

Can you do Kazbegi as a day trip from Tbilisi? You can, and many do, but it’s a long there-and-back that gives you a rushed hour at the church and nothing else. A multi-day base lets you add the Truso Valley and Dariali Gorge, which are the parts day-trippers never see.

Do I need a 4x4 for the Georgian Military Highway? The highway itself is paved and fine for any car. You only need a 4x4 (or a hired one) for the rough tracks up to Gergeti church and into the Truso Valley, both of which can also be hiked.

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