The Caucasus & the Bosphorus
Georgia
Eight thousand years of winemaking, its own alphabet, and mountains higher than the Alps.
- Capital
- City
- Destination
- Georgia
Georgia has been making wine in buried clay qvevri for eight millennia — the oldest evidence anywhere — and has an alphabet used by no other language. It sits on the southern side of the Greater Caucasus, with 5,000-metre peaks, and its supra feasting tradition, presided over by a tamada, is a formal institution rather than a party. A Council of Europe member, and European by most political definitions.
Getting around
Marshrutka minibuses reach everywhere, leaving when full. The Tbilisi–Batumi train is comfortable. Mountain roads need a 4x4 and a driver who knows them; the Tusheti road is genuinely dangerous.
When to come
Late spring and early autumn are best; the harvest (rtveli) in September and October is the country at its most characteristic. High mountain roads to Tusheti and Ushguli open roughly June to October and close hard.
Worth knowing
- A supra has rules: the tamada leads, toasts are made in sequence, and you do not toast out of turn.
- Abkhazia and South Ossetia are outside government control and should not be entered from Russia.
- Sulphur baths in Tbilisi are a genuine local habit, not a tourist product.
At the table
- Khachapuri, cheese bread, in regional forms — the Adjarian one has an egg on top
- Khinkali, soup dumplings held by the twisted top, which is left uneaten
- Amber wine: white grapes fermented on skins in buried qvevri
Travel regions
2 editorial regions, each opening onto its cities.
Popular destinations
The destinations we have written most about, which is not the same as the ones most people go to — and is the only ranking we can honestly compute.
Tbilisi
Wooden balconies, a fortress above, sulphur baths below, and Persian, Russian and Soviet layers in the same street.
Sighnaghi & Kakheti
A walled hill town over the Alazani valley, with the Caucasus on the horizon and vineyards to the foot of them.
Mestia, Svaneti
A mountain region of defensive stone towers built by families against each other, under 5,000-metre peaks.
Stepantsminda (Kazbegi)
A village under a 5,047-metre volcano, with a 14th-century church on a spur above it.
Experiences here
A sample of what is listed across Georgia.
A private room at the sulphur baths
Hot spring water at 40°C, a hard scrub if you want one, and an hour that costs less than a meal.
A qvevri cellar and a supra
Wine fermented in clay buried to the neck, then a table that goes on for hours with a tamada running it.
Mestia to Ushguli on foot
Four days between villages with guesthouses each night, no need to carry a tent, and glaciers in view most of the way.
The Journey Planner holds all 4 of these destinations and the real distances between them. It opens on 6 days, which is the shortest stay this atlas records for each of them added up — change the length, the month, the budget or the pace and build it again.
Stories set here
Fixed points in the year
The record
What we hold about Georgia, where each figure came from, and when it was last checked. The score says what this country is for, not how good it is — it is useful once you are already interested and is not a reason to be.
- Capital
- Tbilisi
- Currency
- GEL — Georgian lari
- Languages
- Georgian
- Population
- 3,720,382 (2019) — Natural Earth 1:50m admin 0 countries
- ISO codes
- GE · GEO
- Time zone
- GET (UTC+4, no DST)
- Membership
- No EU or Schengen membership
- Typical day
- €25–75 per person ≈ GEL 70–200 indicative
- Best months
- May, June, September, October
- Quieter months
- April, July, August
- Facts checked
- not verified why this matters
Europe Experience Score
How this is calculated — derived from our own tagging, not from measurement. It says what a place is for, not how good it is. The tick on each bar is the median across the whole Atlas, so a bar short of it is a dimension this place is not for.