Hiking in Georgia (the country, not the State!) is one of the easiest things to do if you find yourself living in the country. So after living here for a month me and my girlfriend have done that many times. This time we decided to go alone together to beautiful Svaneti. It is possibly the most famous and touristic part for hiking in Georgia but that didn't stop us from enjoying it fully, here is our experience hiking in this area for 4 days.
Day 1 started with hitchhiking from Tbilisi to Mestia, now this distance is only about 350 km but still it will take you all day because of the single lane traffic most of the way and the mountain road especially taking quite a while. Hitchhiking in Georgia is a very common way to travel if you do not have the luxury of owning a car and you want to save some money on transport, it is very easy and you usually find yourself getting a ride within 5 minutes. We started by taking a bus (0,50 lari) to Tbilisi Mall and hitchhiking from there. As we expected it didn't take long for a car to stop. He took us to Kutaisi, about a third of the way already. He also picked up another guy who was Georgian, this was good as he could do some talking to the driver to entertain him as our Georgian is limited to hello and thank you.
After another ride from a friendly man from Turkey we got picked up by a minivan going straight to Mestia, quite lucky for us since we heard it would get hard to find a ride all the way to Mestia as it is a tourist destination in the mountains. After we arrived we thought Mestia looked quite nice and decided to eat some dinner there. After dinner we camped about 1 km outside of Mestia on the way to our next destination.
Day 2 was the first real day of hiking, our destination was Zhabeshi, a small town at the end of another valley near Mestia. the walk was abut 15km. A very nice walk with many wood paths and some nice views of the surrounding valleys, and bigger mountains still far away. Arriving in Zhabeshi it didn't really look like what we imagined, it was quite poor (even for Georgian standards) and we felt lucky to sleep in our tents and not a "guesthouse" in this village.
Day 3 was a shorter day, only 10 km, to a village called Adishi, this was a day with a couple of nice views but it was probably my least favourite day because it involved some road walking on a ski resort area, which my Pyrenean walks tought me to hate with a passion. Anyway, the upside was the village looked a lot nicer and we even stopped there to have a cold drink. After moving on a little bit we camped close to a stream where we were joined by some horses and piggies.
The next day we said goodbye to the pigs and kept walking, our next target was the town of Iprari. Before we could go there we were warned about a river crossing that would be too dangerous to do by foot. Rather then installing a simple bridge the locals choose a different approach, they had 2 guys with horses waiting and ready to charge you 10 Lari to cross a 5 meter stream. We decided we could do without the horses, hiked further up the stream and crossed were the water was more calm. Happy to save some money we said goodbye to the horseriders, who gave us the evil eye for not using their service, and kept going. This day was really nice with a full view of the awesome Adishi glacier. All day was filled with nice views, and this really motivated us. We arrived in Iprari early so we decided to keep going for a little bit, even thinking about walking to Ushguli all the way since it was just a simple road walk. Before we could finish the thought a car stopped and asked us if we are going to Ushguli, we said yes, and he said "hop in". They had just come from a funeral but that didn't stop the driver from driving fast and playing loud dance music.... oh Georgians.
That night we camped on some hill in Ushguli, the night brought a massive storm which nearly ripped our tent apart. But luckily it stopped and we where ok. The next morning we walked to the center of town to figure out a way to get back to Mestia. We didn't see any cars passing, so hitchhiking would take a long time probably. Also the parked minivans going to Mestia where quite limited, we saw only 1. Going closer we finally saw the driver....it was the same guy who picked us up for free yesterday. I guess he knows the tourists very well, because now he was charging 30 Lari to go back to Mestia, knowing we would be going back that way. We payed for the ride to Mestia thinking we had saved enough money by hitchhiking the rest. After some time we decided to hitchhike from Mestia to Batumi, a very modern city in the south and on the coast of the black sea, to relax for a day.
So that's it, our trip in beautiful Svaneti. The hiking route we choose is very easy and accessible should you want to do the same. This is a very easy route also, not having to worry about snow hiking or steep rock cliffs at all. overall we would recommend it, it is a very nice hike and you will meet many other hikers there.