Georgia buries its wine. Then it drives you up a mountain.
Which Kakheti day gets you into a family marani instead of a tasting room. What the Kazbegi run really costs once the 4WD is added. Whether Kutaisi earns its own base. Reviews of every tour you can book in Georgia.
The wine road, the mountain road, the old town, the canyons.
Four bookings a first week in Georgia hangs off. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The wine dayKakheti Wine Region: Signagi and Bodbe Tour with 10 Wine TastingsTwo hours east into Kakheti, and ten tastings deep between Sighnaghi and Bodbe before lunch is served.
02The mountain dayDay Trip to Kazbegi and GudauriThe Military Highway to Stepantsminda and back inside a day. Ten and a half hours, most of it worth it.
03The first afternoonTbilisi Walking Tour Including Cable Car and Traditional BakeryOld Tbilisi on foot, up the cable car to the fortress, and a bakery that has been feeding the lane since before the Soviets.
04The Imereti dayCANYONS & CAVE Tour from Kutaisi – Okatse, Martvili & PrometheusOkatse, Martvili and Prometheus in one run out of Kutaisi. Green gorges above ground, a river a kilometre below it.
Everything north of Tbilisi sits on one road. Pick how far up it you go.
The old highway to the Russian border is four hours of reservoir, pass and ridge. Every minibus in the city drives the same tarmac. What separates them is the turnaround point.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Highlights of Caucasus Mountains-Jinvali,Ananuri,Gudauri,Kazbegi(Group tour)
Ananuri and the waterA fortress on the Zhinvali reservoir, an hour out. The half-day version.
Over the Jvari PassUp to 2,379m past the Friendship mosaic, then back down for dinner.
All the way to GergetiStepantsminda at the end of the road, and the 4WD track to the church.
All 65 days to the end of the road →
Tbilisi for most of it, Kutaisi for the canyons, Batumi for the sea.
Three cities sell three different countries: sulphur baths and hanging balconies in the capital, caves and gorges out west, a Black Sea boardwalk with waterfalls behind it. Then the three places everyone leaves the city for.
Georgia’s most-booked days out.
Every Georgian tour, reviewed →These carry more travellers than anything else in Georgia. What earns each one its slot is underneath it.
1
Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastings
Review of a $29 Kakheti day trip from Tbilisi with Sighnaghi, Bodbe Monastery, lunch, and nine wine tastings.
From · $29
Read our review →
2
Highlights of Caucasus Mountains-Jinvali,Ananuri,Gudauri,Kazbegi(Group tour)
from $29
3
Day Trip to Kazbegi and Gudauri
from $29
4
Day Trip to Mtskheta Gori and Uplistsikhe
from $29
5
Tbilisi Walking Tour Including Cable Car and Traditional Bakery
from $19
6
Day Trip to Armenia Including Homemade Lunch
from $59
7
Kakheti Wine Region: Signagi and Bodbe Tour with 10 Wine Tastings
from $13
8
Mtskheta,Jvari,Bazaar,wine tasting,Chronicles of Georgia
from $20
Tbilisi sits two hours from nearly everything worth the drive.
Uplistsikhe is a city carved into a rock shelf. Mtskheta was the capital for six hundred years before Tbilisi existed. David Gareja stands on the Azerbaijani border in striped desert. All three are a morning pickup and a late dinner back.
Tbilisi is a balcony city with a sulphur bath underneath it.
Everything in Tbilisi →
Carved wooden balconies hang over the Mtkvari on brackets that look temporary and are not. Under Abanotubani the water comes out of the ground at forty degrees. The cable car crosses from the park to the fortress in three minutes.
Old Tbilisi on foot, cable car included
Sololaki and Betlemi at the hour the light gets on the balconies, then the cable car up to Narikala. Nothing here is far apart, which is why guiding it is worth the money.
Supra, khinkali and a bohemian district crawl
Nine tastings through the courtyards off Aghmashenebeli, with somebody explaining why the toastmaster keeps standing up. You will not need dinner afterwards.
Concrete, mosaics and the Chronicles
The Bank of Georgia headquarters stacked like dropped bricks, the Chronicles of Georgia on its hill above the reservoir, and the estates the empire left behind on the edge of town.
Kutaisi is the base for the canyons and the caves.
Martvili is a green gorge you float through on a rubber boat. Prometheus runs a kilometre underground with a river at the bottom of it. Katskhi is a monk’s church on a limestone pillar. Gelati and Bagrati are eleventh-century and a short taxi apart.
Every Kutaisi day out →
Georgian wine comes out of a buried jar and gets poured by a toastmaster.
Kakheti is two hours east and holds the cellars. Tbilisi does the market walks and the khinkali classes. Book the tasting for a day nobody in your group has to drive.
What you actually pay for a day out in Georgia.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The standard Georgian group day trip — ten hours, a driver, a guide, several stops — runs $29.
Group day trips, old-town walks, and the Kakheti runs that still pour ten tastings.
Small groups, the 4WD up to Gergeti, and the canyon-and-cave days out of Kutaisi.
Private drivers, the long hauls to Svaneti and Tusheti, and cellars that cook you lunch.
Three things that happen in Georgia and nowhere else.
Mountains and monasteries are common enough round here. A wine method older than the alphabet, a monk on a pillar and a mining town strung together by cable car are not.
Qvevri Wine
Georgian wine ferments underground in a beeswax-lined clay jar called a qvevri, skins and stems left in, sealed under the cellar floor until spring. UNESCO listed the method in 2013. In Kakheti the family cellars still work that way, and the tasting happens standing on the floor with the jars under your feet.
- 1Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,774 reviews
- 2Kakheti Wine Region: Signagi and Bodbe Tour with 10 Wine Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,019 reviews
- 3City of Love Sighnaghi, Bodbe. KTW. Wine House Group tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 376 reviews
The Katskhi Pillar
A limestone monolith west of Chiatura with a small church on top, reached by an iron ladder bolted to the rock. A monk lived up there alone for two decades. Visitors stop at the base, because the ladder belongs to the brotherhood, and the drive in passes the Soviet cable cars of Chiatura still hauling miners across the gorge.
- 1Chiatura Tour with Katskhi Pillar & Cable Car Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 95 reviews
- 2Soviet past – Private day tour to Chiatura, Katskhi pillar and Chronicles★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 29 reviews
- 3Soviet Story – Private day trip to Chiatura, Stalin’s museum and Katskhi pillar★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 15 reviews
Soviet Georgia
Gori keeps Stalin’s birth house under a colonnaded temple roof with his armoured railway carriage parked behind it. Above Gudauri a concrete amphitheatre from 1983 is tiled with a mosaic of Russian and Georgian history that nobody has decided what to do with. Tskhaltubo’s bath sanatoriums are still standing, mostly empty.
- 1Soviet Tbilisi Tour – Off the beaten path★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 45 reviews
- 2Private Tour to Mtskheta Stalin Museum Uplistsikhe Caves★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 16 reviews
- 3Chiatura and Katskhi Pillar One Day Urbex Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 14 reviews
Four Georgian trips that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on snow, on a mountain road that closes, on a jeep fleet that fills, and on a land border with a queue.
- 01Private Kazbegi Tour: Gergeti, Ananuri & Scenic ViewsThe last stretch up to the church is a rough 4WD track. The jeeps are a fixed local fleet and they leave with whoever booked them first.
- 02Svaneti Mountain Villages 4×4 Safari, tour from KutaisiMestia is nine hours by road or one small propeller flight a day. Neither of those is a same-week decision.
- 03Highlights of Caucasus Mountains-Jinvali,Ananuri,Gudauri,Kazbegi(Group tour)The resort runs roughly December to April, and the Jvari Pass above it shuts for avalanche work at no notice at all.
- 04Day Trip to Armenia Including Homemade LunchSadakhlo is a land border inside a fourteen-hour day. Passport in hand at the pickup, or the minibus leaves without you.
Winter closes the road north and opens everything else in Georgia.
From November the Jvari Pass runs on avalanche control and the Gergeti track goes under snow, so the Kazbegi day quietly becomes a Gudauri day. What that leaves is the good half of a Georgian winter: cellars, sulphur baths, a table of khinkali for six, and a ski resort forty minutes below the closure.
By place — the capital, the west, the mountains
By kind of day — cellar, canyon, ridge or ruin
Tbilisi, Mtskheta, Kakheti, Kazbegi, Kutaisi: the week almost everyone does first.
The newest Georgian tour reviews.
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Trekking Tour from Tusheti to Khevsureti via Atsunta Pass
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Kazbegi, Gergeti and Ananuri Full Day Tour from Tbilisi
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Tour to Kakheti. Sighnaghi –Bodbe Monastery –Tsinandali –Telavi –Winery –Gombori
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Taste of Georgia. Cooking-Class Khinkali, Khachapuri and more
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