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Region · Mtskheta-Mtianeti

One road north.

It starts where two rivers meet under the seat of the Georgian church, and it ends three hours later under a five-thousand-metre volcano. In between: a fortress on a reservoir, the country’s biggest ski resort, and two side valleys that feel like different centuries.

Start driving
Gergeti Trinity Church lit on its ridge at dusk beneath the clouded bulk of Mount Kazbek

km 137 · the end of the road

The whole region, by height

Mtskheta460 m
Pasanauri1,050 m
Stepantsminda1,740 m
Jvari Pass2,379 m
Chaukhi Pass3,338 m
Kazbek5,054 m

The Georgian Military Highway

137 kilometres, and nearly two thousand metres up.

One road runs the length of the region, and every place on this page hangs off it. Scroll to drive it.

  1. km 0▲ 460 m

    The old capital

    Mtskheta

    Where the Aragvi runs into the Mtkvari. Capital of the kingdom of Kartli for some eight centuries, and still the seat of the Georgian church: Svetitskhoveli in the town, Jvari on the hill across the water. Both have been on the UNESCO list since 1994.

  2. Turn right at Zhinvali · km 40KhevsuretiUp the Pshavi Aragvi, over the Datvisjvari pass, down to Shatili.
  3. km 46▲ 810 m

    A fortress on the water

    Ananuri

    Ananuri fortress - its churches, watchtower and crenellated wall above the turquoise Zhinvali reservoir, wooded hills behind

    The 17th-century stronghold of the Dukes of Aragvi: two churches and a watchtower inside one curtain wall. The Zhinvali reservoir filled in the 1980s and brought the waterline right up to its gate.

  4. km 68▲ 1,050 m

    Two Aragvis, one lunch

    Pasanauri

    The White and the Black Aragvi meet here, and you can see the seam where they do. The village is the mountain end of the khinkali argument - broth-filled, pinched at the top, eaten with your hands.

  5. km 100▲ 2,196 m

    Lifts to 3,307 m

    Gudauri

    Georgia's biggest ski resort, spread across the open bowls below the pass. Paragliders launch off the same slopes all summer.

    Gudauri in winter
  6. km 108▲ 2,379 m

    The top of the road

    Jvari Pass

    The highest point of the Military Highway. Just before it, the 1983 Friendship Monument hangs a curved mosaic balcony over the Devil's Valley - the best view you will get without walking.

  7. Turn right at Sno · km 128JutaA dirt road up the Sno valley to the last village under the Chaukhi spires.
  8. km 137▲ 1,740 m

    Kazbegi

    Stepantsminda

    The end of the Georgian road, fifteen kilometres short of the Russian border. Gergeti Trinity Church stands on the ridge above town, and Kazbek stands above that.

Gergeti Trinity Church on its green hilltop in daylight, in front of a snow-streaked Caucasus ridge with mist rising from the valley

Stepantsminda · Kazbegi

The road runs out. The mountain doesn’t.

Gergeti Trinity2,170 m
A 14th-century church alone on the ridge above Stepantsminda. An hour and a half up on foot through the woods, or twenty minutes by road.
Dariali GorgeBorder, 15 km
North of town the valley closes into a granite slot, the gate the Military Highway was built to pass through. The Gveleti waterfall is a short walk off the road.
Kazbek5,054 m
A dormant volcano and a serious glacier climb. The season is July and August, with a night at the old weather station hut at 3,650 m on the way.

Side road · Sno to Juta

The Georgian Dolomites.

Turn off the highway at Sno and follow the valley until the road gives up. Juta is a handful of houses at 2,200 metres, and above it the Chaukhi massif stands up out of the meadow in grey limestone teeth - the nearest thing the Caucasus has to the Alps’ most photographed range.

Juta to Roshka, over the Chaukhi Pass

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  1. 1 · 2,200 m

    Juta

    Last village

  2. 2 · 2,300 m

    Fifth Season

    Hut and tents

  3. 3 · 2,800 m

    Chaukhi Lakes

    Under the spires

  4. 4 · 3,338 m

    Chaukhi Pass

    Khevi / Khevsureti

  5. 5 · 2,800 m

    Abudelauri Lakes

    Blue, green, white

  6. 6 · 2,000 m

    Roshka

    Khevsureti

Yellow wildflowers in a green meadow below the snow-streaked Chaukhi spires under a stormy sky
Juta, the last village
2,200 m
Chaukhi's highest spire
3,842 m
When the pass is clear
Jul - Sep
Over the top to Roshka
2 days

The hut at Fifth Season is a day trip on its own. Keep going over the pass and down past the Abudelauri lakes, and the trail ends in Roshka - which is Khevsureti, the other branch of the road. The two forks meet on foot.

Where the trail comes down

Side road · Zhinvali to Shatili

Beyond the Bear’s Cross.

Khevsureti sits on the far side of the main Caucasus ridge, on rivers that flow north. For most of the year the snow on the pass makes it an island, and it has kept a way of building, dressing and worshipping that the rest of Georgia left behind.

SHATILIMUTSO
Shatili's flat-roofed stone towers packed together on a steep green mountainside
The way inDatvisjvari, 2,676 m
The Bear's Cross pass is the only road over the main ridge into Khevsureti. Snow shuts it for most of the year - reckon on June to October, a 4x4, and a slow half-day from Zhinvali.
ShatiliA village that is one building
Flat-roofed stone towers packed shoulder to shoulder on a rise above the Argun, near the Chechen border, joined by passages and roofs into a single fortress. People lived in it into the twentieth century.
MutsoTowers on a crag
A few kilometres upriver, a cluster of medieval towers with stepped slate roofs clings to a rock spur above the Andaki gorge. Abandoned for decades, now slowly being put back together.
The KhevsursCrosses sewn into everything
Khevsur clothing is dense with stitched crosses and bands like the one framing this section. Chain mail and swords were part of a man's dress here long after the rest of Europe had put them in museums, and the village shrines still set the rules.
A chairlift rising over the open, snow-covered slopes above Gudauri

km 100 · December to April

In January, the same road ends in a lift queue.

Gudauri’s bowls run from about 2,200 up to 3,307 metres, wide open above the treeline. Off the groomed runs it is some of the most accessible freeride in the Caucasus - and when the Jvari Pass shuts, the Kobi gondola carries on over the ridge without it.

Winter in Georgia

Nakhvamdis

Turn around at Stepantsminda. The rest of Georgia is back down the same road.

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