Off the Beaten Path in Georgia: 12 Places Tourists Miss

Places

12

Closest to Tbilisi

60 km

Park entry

0 to 20 GEL

Best months

May, Sep-Oct

Georgia covers 69,700 square kilometres, about the size of Ireland, and packs Black Sea coast, semi-desert, volcanic plateau and 5,000 m peaks into it. Most visitors see one thin line through the middle. The reasons are practical: outside that line the marshrutkas thin out, roads turn to gravel, English disappears and the accommodation is a family guesthouse or your own tent. If that sounds like the point rather than the problem, read on.

We have ordered the twelve roughly by how much they reward the effort, and each entry ends with the practical bit: how far, what it costs, whether you need a car. The planning section at the bottom has the summary table, the car-rental rules that matter here, and four itineraries that string several together.

Why go off the trail

Three honest reasons. First, the crowds: Kazbegi's Gergeti church and the Mestia towers now have queues, and none of the places below does. Second, price: the guesthouses in Dedoplistskaro or Abastumani cost a fraction of Mestia in August. Third, and the one that actually matters, these places are different from each other. Chiatura is a Soviet industrial town, Vashlovani looks like Utah, Javakheti looks like Mongolia, Machakhela looks like a rainforest. Ten days on the main circuit shows you one Georgia; ten days here shows you five.

The cost is planning. Most of what follows needs a car or a hired driver, some of it needs a 4x4, and two of the places are off-limits to rental cars altogether. We have flagged all of that as we go.

1. Chiatura and Katskhi Pillar

What it is: a manganese mining town in a gorge, threaded together by cable cars, and a 40 m limestone pillar ten minutes away with a monastery on top.

Manganese was found here in 1879 and by 1905 the Chiatura deposit was producing around 60 percent of the world's output. The town that grew up in the Qvirila gorge had a problem the Soviets solved in 1954 with an aerial ropeway, then kept solving until 17 lines strung miners between the valley floor and the cliff-top workings. That network, rusting cabins and all, is what made Chiatura famous with photographers. It was shut down for safety reasons and replaced in September 2021 by four French-built gondola lines, Sanatorium, Mukhadze, Lezhubani and Naguti, which run daily 08:00 to 22:00 for 50 tetri a ride (children under six free). One of the old lines, the Sashevardno cable car of 1966, was restored and reopened at the end of 2024; it runs 10:00 to 18:00 daily and is free. So you can still ride a Soviet cabin, just a safe one.

Katskhi Pillar is a few kilometres out of town on the Zestaponi road. The 40 m monolith carries a small church that excavations in 2006 dated to the 9th or 10th century, and its first documented ascent was in July 1944 by the mountaineer Alexander Japaridze and the writer Levan Gotua. In the 1990s a monk, Maxime Qavtaradze, revived the site and lived on the summit for around two decades, coming down by the iron ladder a couple of times a week. Since 2012 visitors have not been allowed up. The monastery complex at the base, with its newer church of Simeon Stylites, is open daily 09:00 to 20:00 and the view of the pillar from the path is the reason to come.

2. Shatili and Khevsureti

What it is: a fortress village of about sixty stone towers fused into one defensive wall above the Arghun gorge, in the highland province between Kazbegi and Tusheti. Our Shatili and Khevsureti guide has the full plan.

Khevsureti was home to the Khevsurs, highlanders whose customs, dress and folk religion set them apart from the rest of Georgia well into the 20th century. Most families were resettled to the lowlands in the early 1950s, and what they left is the most complete medieval fortress village in the country. Shatili's towers date from the 7th to the 18th century; the newest have gun slits. Twelve kilometres on, Mutso does the same on a cliff at 1,880 m, and the Anatori crypts between the two still hold the bones of a village that plague emptied in the 18th century.

Beyond Mutso the road ends and the trail over the Atsunta Pass to Omalo in Tusheti begins, a multi-day trek and one of the great walks of the Caucasus.

3. Vashlovani National Park

What it is: Georgia's semi-desert. Eroded clay badlands, dry riverbeds, mud volcanoes and, on a clear day, snow on the Greater Caucasus above it all.

Vashlovani sits in the far southeast against the Azerbaijan border, 35,200 hectares of clay canyons, pistachio scrub and floodplain forest on the Alazani that looks nothing like the rest of Georgia. It has been a state reserve since 1935 and was added to UNESCO's biosphere reserve network in 2022. There are no roads inside the park, only tracks; a 4x4 is not optional. The named stops are the Pantishara canyon, the Takhti-Tepa mud volcanoes, the Samukhi valley and Mijniskure on the Alazani, which is the border zone. The reward is silence and a landscape you will otherwise have to go to Central Asia for.

The bureaucracy is real but quick. Everything starts at the visitor centre in Dedoplistskaro (5 Baratashvili Street, daily 09:00 to 18:00), where you pay, register your passport and vehicle, and pick up a map. For Mijniskure, Takhti-Tepa and Kaklis Kure, the areas along the border, you also need a border-zone permit, which is free from the Border Police post in the same town and takes a few minutes with your passport.

4. Machakhela National Park

What it is: a subtropical river valley 30 km from Batumi with old-growth forest, three medieval stone arch bridges and a gunsmithing tradition that supplied the Ottoman Empire.

The Machakhela river cuts south from the coast towards Turkey through boxwood and chestnut forest so wet and green that after a week in eastern Georgia it feels like another continent. The valley's villages made flintlock rifles by hand for centuries, and the Machakhela gun is still the local emblem; there is a monument to it on the road in. The history and ethnography museum in Zemo Chkhutuneti, in a former mosque about 14 km up the valley from the park office, holds more than 800 pieces including the rifles. The park itself has three marked walking routes, the longest the 8 km Archangel Mountain trail, and the three feudal-era arch bridges at Tskhemlara, Chomakhisuri and Chkheri, the first only 2 km from the visitor centre.

5. Abastumani

What it is: a faded spa resort at 1,340 m in the Meskheti range with hot springs, a 1930s astrophysical observatory that runs night tours, and one of the darkest skies in the country.

Abastumani became a resort in the 1890s when Grand Duke George Alexandrovich, brother of the last tsar, came here for his lungs; his palace went up in 1893 and he died in a road accident near the town in 1899. The springs, at 39 to 48.5 degrees, treated tuberculosis for a century and the sanatoria and wooden villas of that era are still standing, many of them empty. The census of 2014 counted 937 residents. What keeps the place alive is the Georgian National Astrophysical Observatory on the ridge above town, inaugurated in 1932 as the Soviet Union's first high-mountain observatory.

Tours run on demand with no booking and last 60 to 90 minutes; cloud cancels the telescope, so keep a second evening free if the sky matters to you. Base in Akhaltsikhe and come up for the evening, or sleep in one of the village guesthouses. Abastumani is 27 km west of Akhaltsikhe, 45 minutes by road, and a marshrutka from the Akhaltsikhe station costs 3.5 GEL. From Tbilisi it is 234 km; GoTrip drivers from 246 GEL per car. In a rental, approach from Akhaltsikhe: the road on to Sairme over the Zekari Pass is banned in Localrent's terms. Combine with Vardzia and Rabati.

6. Dashbashi Canyon

What it is: a canyon near Tsalka with a 240 m glass bridge across it, a bar in the middle of the bridge, and a waterfall trail below. Opened in 2022 and the one entry here that is actively chasing visitors.

Dashbashi is eight kilometres of gorge at 1,200 to 1,500 m where the Khrami river has cut through the volcanic plateau, and its cliffs leak water everywhere: the Crying Wall is a line of springs and cascades along the rock face, frozen into curtains in winter. The Diamond Bridge, a 240 m glass-floored span with a diamond-shaped bar hanging below its midpoint, put the place on the map when it opened in 2022. In summer the operator counts around 10,000 visitors a month, mostly Georgian, so this is off the foreign trail rather than empty: weekdays are quiet, weekends are not. A 1.8 km trail from the visitor centre drops to the waterfalls and takes about an hour; the sky bike and zipline are extras.

7. Dedoplistskaro and Eagle Gorge

What it is: the farm town that is the gateway to Vashlovani, with a limestone gorge full of vultures and a 5th-century cliff fortress a 15-minute drive to the north.

Dedoplistskaro itself is a grid of low houses on the Shiraki plain, 130 km and about two hours from Tbilisi by the park agency's reckoning. It has the Vashlovani visitor centre, the Border Police post, a couple of good guesthouses (Savanna Guest House in the centre, Teo's Cottages on the road out towards the gorge) and not much else, which is exactly why it is useful. Even without the 4x4 day in the park, Eagle Gorge (Artsivis Kheoba) is worth the drive. It is a natural monument 4 km north of town: sheer limestone walls, a bellflower found nowhere else, and griffon vultures with nine other raptor species overhead. The signed route is 7 to 8 km, part driven and part walked, with about a kilometre on foot in the gorge itself and a steep half-kilometre climb to Khornabuji, the 5th-century fortress grown into the cliff. The small 6th-century church of St Elias, rebuilt in 2008, sits on the rim with the view over the plain. A normal car reaches the gorge and the fortress car park; there is no fee.

8. Algeti National Park

What it is: a forested park 60 km south-west of Tbilisi with one marked long loop, a canyon of rock towers and almost no visitors.

Algeti is the easy one. It is about an hour from the city on the road to Manglisi, the visitor centre is at 4 Kurorti Street in Manglisi, and the forest is a mix of beech, oak and pine that turns properly orange in October. The park's sights sit between 548 and 1,448 m, low enough to walk in every month but midwinter. Of five routes only one is marked, the Samepo Kedi ridge loop of 16 km, a full day. The other reason to come is the Birtvisi canyon on the park's edge, a maze of limestone cones with a medieval fortress built into them, which we cover in our day hikes near Tbilisi. Park services are cheap: camping 10 GEL a person a day, cottages 30 GEL a person, a picnic pitch 20 GEL a day, and a rope park at the visitor centre at 15 to 20 GEL. No public transport reaches the trailheads, so drive, or take a taxi from Manglisi. Dashbashi Canyon is 42 km on, about 50 minutes, which makes a natural pair.

9. Nikortsminda Cathedral

What it is: an 11th-century cathedral in Racha with the finest exterior stone carving in Georgia, on a road most people drive past.

Georgia has hundreds of medieval churches and after a week they blur. Nikortsminda does not. It was built in 1010 to 1014 under Bagrat III, the king who first united Georgia, and its outside walls are cut with narrative reliefs, the Transfiguration, the Last Judgment, St George and St Theodore on horseback, and a menagerie of mythical animals, at a depth and quality no other Georgian church matches. Inside, the frescoes are 17th century; the bell tower is 19th; the whole thing was repaired in 1534, damaged in the 1991 Racha earthquake and restored again. It is on Georgia's UNESCO tentative list. The cathedral stands 12 km south of Ambrolauri on the Nakerala Pass road from Kutaisi, so it is the first stop on any Racha trip. Thirty minutes is enough; you will not forget it.

10. Javakheti Plateau

What it is: a volcanic plateau above 2,000 m in the far south, treeless grassland with crater lakes, a chain of extinct volcanoes and a landscape closer to Mongolia than to anything else in Georgia.

Javakheti is the roof of southern Georgia: an alpine steppe between the Javakheti range on the west and the Abuli-Samsari chain of volcanic cones through the middle, dotted with six big lakes. Paravani, at 2,073 m and 37.5 square kilometres, is the largest lake in the country; Kartsakhi on the Turkish border is second. The lakes and their wetlands are protected under the Ramsar convention for their birdlife, and in spring and autumn the migrations are the reason birders come. Remote sensing has mapped more than 168 settlements and fortifications up here from prehistory to the Middle Ages, so the hilltop ruins you pass are older than they look. The population of Ninotsminda municipality, the plateau's eastern half, was 95 percent Armenian at the 2014 census, and the churches, food and language shift accordingly. Ninotsminda town, at 1,940 m, is the base, functional rather than pretty.

11. Kinchkha waterfall

What it is: a three-step cascade with a 70 m main drop in the gorge above Okatse Canyon, an hour from Kutaisi, with a short trail and far fewer people than the canyon walkway.

Kinchkha sits at about 840 m near the village of the same name, 5 km from Okatse and 15 km from Martvili, which makes it the third stop of the standard canyon day rather than a trip in itself. The water drops in three steps, 25, 30 and 70 m, into a pool of the kind of colour that looks retouched, and the marked trail from the gate is only 480 m. It is open 10:00 to 18:00 for 20 GEL, and since 2026 it is included in the combination tickets sold with the two canyons. Our Martvili and Okatse guide has the tickets, the order to do them in and how to manage all three without a tour.

12. Chiatura's industrial past

What it is: the second layer of Chiatura, for people interested in Soviet industrial history: the old ropeway stations, the mine entrances in the cliffs and a town that grew straight out of the rock.

Chiatura was the only Bolshevik stronghold in a mostly Menshevik Georgia in 1905, and Stalin came here himself to organise the miners. What that history built is still visible: apartment blocks on ledges, concrete cable car stations perched on the canyon lip, walkways slung between neighbourhoods, and processing plants from an industry that has shrunk but never stopped (about 239 million tonnes of workable ore are still estimated to be in the ground). The old stations are the draw. Even the closed ones are period pieces, with their machinery rusting in place, and the restored Sashevardno line lets you ride a 1966 cabin between them.

Planning the trip

Four rules for the roads here

• Rent the right car and read the terms. A normal car reaches Chiatura, Dashbashi, Algeti, Machakhela, Abastumani, Nikortsminda, Kinchkha and Eagle Gorge. Vashlovani and Shatili need a 4x4 and are banned in Localrent's Georgia terms (read 15 September 2026), which also exclude Tusheti, Truso, Juta, the Sairme to Abastumani road and any border crossing. For those two, hire a driver.
• Carry cash. Park fees, village guesthouses and the Vashlovani visitor centre take cash. The last reliable ATMs are in the regional towns: Dedoplistskaro, Akhaltsikhe, Chiatura, Ambrolauri, Ninotsminda.
• Download the maps. Signal drops in every one of the gorges above. Save the region in Google Maps or Organic Maps before leaving Tbilisi, and note that the Roshka and Vashlovani tracks are not where the map thinks they are.
• Register where it is required. Vashlovani needs the visitor centre stop and, for the border strip, the free Border Police permit; Khevsureti is a border zone where patrols check passports. Neither is a permit in the visa sense, just paperwork done in town before you set off.

In Dedoplistskaro, Chkhutuneti or Shatili the person you deal with is a grandmother, not a receptionist, and Russian is the second language, not English. Twenty words of Georgian change every one of those conversations; the traveller's phrase list on EasyGeorgianis the short version, with audio, and takes an evening.

Four itineraries

Keep planning

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