Georgia hiking and trekking tours

Yes. The Mestia to Ushguli trail is well trodden, there are guesthouses in the villages along it, and there is phone signal for most of the way. A guide earns their fee on the river crossing, in poor weather, and on the less walked routes beyond it.

Fit enough to walk for most of the day, several days in a row. The biggest climb on the classic four stages is about 909 metres, from Zhabeshi to Adishi, and the full Svaneti week adds a Guli Pass day with 1,602 metres of ascent. The first and last days of the Mestia to Ushguli trek are the easiest, and the two middle days carry the big climbs. Early on the day over the Chkhunderi Pass comes a ford of the Adishi river, and in season locals wait with horses to take walkers across. When you compare tours, ask for the daily distance, ascent and hours for each walking day, not only a grade.

The Mestia to Ushguli trek is the classic route through Upper Svaneti, in the Greater Caucasus in the north west, walked in 3 to 4 days with nights in village guesthouses, so no tent is needed. It ends in Ushguli, one of the highest continuously inhabited settlements in Europe at about 2,100 metres, whose tower village of Chazhashi has been protected as the Upper Svaneti World Heritage Site since 1996. When you compare tours, check whether they do the Mestia to Ushguli walk in full on foot or drive parts of it, and whether your bags are moved by car between guesthouses.

Kazbegi is about 3 to 3.5 hours by road from Tbilisi without stops. The town of Stepantsminda sits at 1,740 metres in the north east of the Greater Caucasus, and Gergeti Trinity Church stands above it at 2,170 metres under Mount Kazbek, about 430 metres higher.

June is green and brings rain, July and August have the best weather, mid September often still has good weather with fewer walkers, and by October the days are shorter and colder. Even in July and August, daily highs in Stepantsminda average about 20°C, so pack a warm layer.

Pack boots worn in before the trip, poles for the long descents, a rain shell, a warm layer, a headtorch, a water filter or tablets, a sun hat and sun cream, a blister kit and an offline map on your phone. Mestia is the last cash machine on the Mestia to Ushguli route, so carry lari for the guesthouses and the river crossing.