June 24 Beautiful Georgia - the beginning of a wonderful sojourn

I have run out of superlatives! Georgia exceeded our expectations. It is so beautiful, the food and wine delicious, the culture so rich in history dating back to pre-history. So you might think why not just leave it there? but the devil is in the detail as they say so I will attempt to describe some of what we saw and experienced. Our guide Nino, a born leader and passionate advocate for her country and fellow Georgians, brought it alive for us. Together with Gia, our excellent driver, we travelled 2000 or more kms from the capital Tbilisi, east into Kakheti the wine and fruit growing regions, north to one of the highest glaciers in the Caucasus (Mt Kazbegi 5047m), west to the upper Svaneti region. Both regions are in the Greater Caucasus Mountains and the roads are pretty rough. And finally we headed south for another of the highlights of the trip -  the C12th cave city of Vardzia.

Where to start? The following posts barely skim the surface of our amazing trip but first a map of our travels through this jewel of a country nestled in tower mountains. Note that we had to skirt South Ossettia when travelling from east to west and we could not go further west than Svaneti as that abuts the border with Abkhazia. That and South Ossettia are both separatist regions in Georgia that have declared indepencence but are not internationally recognised. They are not friendly neighbours. (Those regions are delineated on the map with green broken libes.)

The journey we took through Georgia starting from Yerevan