Why ten days, and what the extra three buy
Ten days in Georgia is not seven days done more slowly. It is the seven-day route — capital, high Caucasus, wine valley — with one specific region attached to the end. Svaneti, in the north-west, is where villages still stand behind their own stone towers, people speak a language other Georgians cannot follow, and Ushguli sits at 2,100 metres under Shkhara, 5,193 metres of ice closing the head of the valley.
The shape of the first week does not change, because the logic still holds: arrive low, go high, come down for the wine, then go west. Svaneti goes last for two reasons. By day eight you are adjusted and walking well, and if the western forecast is foul you can cut the leg without unpicking the rest of the trip.
Now the honest arithmetic. Of the three days you add, two are transit. Getting from Tbilisi to Mestia is a night on a train plus three winding hours up from Zugdidi; getting out is either a nineteen-seat plane that cancels for cloud or the same nine hours in reverse. Ten days does not buy three rest days in the mountains — it buys two nights in Mestia and a great deal of moving. If that sounds like a poor trade, the drop-one variant below is the fix, and most people should take it.
Everything here is road, rail and one optional flight. Times are door to door on the real road rather than distance divided by an optimistic average, and prices are 2025 in lari.
The route in one line
Four bases, nine nights, and one of those nights spent horizontal on a train rather than in a bed. This route does not loop: it ends in the far north-west, so leave a day's margin before your flight home from Tbilisi, or check whether Kutaisi suits your airline better.
The two-nights-minimum rule still applies, and the train night does not count as rest. You will step off in Zugdidi before six having slept badly, and the three hours up to Mestia that follow are not a day off either.
Days 1 to 4 · Tbilisi and Kazbegi
The first four days are the seven-day route unchanged, for the same reasons. Tbilisi is at four hundred metres in a river gorge, which is why the old town is vertical. Two nights let you land, walk the right bank and sit an hour in the municipal sulphur baths at Abanotubani — GEL 20–50 (2025) for a private room — before anything goes uphill.
Day three is the Georgian Military Highway: three hours north past Ananuri fortress on the reservoir, over the Jvari pass at 2,379 metres, down into the Terek valley at Stepantsminda with Kazbek filling the windscreen. Arrive by one and do nothing strenuous. The pass is the one part of these four days weather can cancel outright, mostly December to March.
Day four is Gergeti and it rewards an early start: ninety minutes on foot to 2,170 metres, or twenty by 4x4 for GEL 50–60 (2025) a seat. Be up there by nine and the fourteenth-century church is yours; the Tbilisi day-trip vans arrive around eleven. Afternoon: the Gveleti waterfalls, the Dariali gorge, or the Truso valley if the track is open and dry.
Days 5 to 7 · Kakheti, then the night train
Day five is the long cross-country leg: four hours from Stepantsminda to Telavi over the Gombori road. If that sounds heavy after two mountain days, drop back to Tbilisi for the night and go out to Kakheti in two easy hours next morning. On the ten-day version you are returning to Tbilisi on day seven anyway, so the detour costs you a hotel change and nothing else.
Two nights is enough to do the valley properly. Sighnaghi for the two-kilometre defensive wall and the Caucasus on the far horizon, Telavi for better food and less charm, and between them the cellars: two in a day, three at the outside. Family marani tastings from GEL 10 (2025); estates with tasting rooms GEL 25–50.
Day seven is a hinge, not a rest day. Be back in Tbilisi by early afternoon — two hours from Sighnaghi, GEL 10–15 (2025) by marshrutka into Isani — leave the bags with your day-one guesthouse or in station left luggage, eat early, and be at Tbilisi central station for the Zugdidi train around nine in the evening. Buy that ticket days ahead on railway.ge or at any station counter: in July and August the four-berth compartments go first and the open sleeper is what is left.
Days 8 to 10 · Svaneti
The train reaches Zugdidi around ten to six, and the Mestia minibuses are parked outside the station door waiting for it: GEL 30–35 (2025), three hours, leaving as they fill, which after the train is quick. The road is paved and relentless — switchbacks above the Enguri reservoir, unlit tunnels, cattle. You are in Mestia by half past nine with a whole day and no room until noon, so start with the Svaneti History and Ethnography Museum, whose icons and manuscripts are far better than a town this size has any right to.
The afternoon is towers and a leg-stretch. Several tower houses let visitors up their ladders for a few lari, the Khergiani museum covers the Svan climber and the culture around him, and the Chalaadi glacier walk is two to three hours return from the trailhead a short drive down the valley. Koruldi lakes at 2,700 metres is the bigger option — 4x4 up, an hour on foot — and only worth the money in clear weather.
Day nine is Ushguli: forty-seven kilometres, two to two and a half hours each way, a shared 4x4 seat at GEL 60–80 (2025). Four hamlets at 2,100 metres, the Lamaria church on its knoll, Shkhara at 5,193 metres closing the valley. Dry, it is the best day of the ten. After heavy rain the unsealed stretches turn to mud and ruts, the drive stretches at both ends, and you buy five hours in a jeep for an hour on site. That is the real risk, and the fallback is the glacier, Koruldi or a slow day in Mestia.
Day ten gets you out, and how depends on your nerve. Vanilla Sky flies a nineteen-seat prop from Mestia's Queen Tamar airfield to Natakhtari, half an hour north of Tbilisi, for about GEL 65 (2025) — an hour and a quarter instead of nine, and cancelled at the first low cloud. Never stack an international connection on the same day. The road version is three hours back to Zugdidi, then a marshrutka to Tbilisi in about six, or the night train out of Zugdidi at roughly half past ten, in soon after six.
Getting into Svaneti: three ways, all long
There is no fast way into Svaneti. The road tax is the price of the region, and the only question is what shape you want to pay it in: a night on a train, a whole day behind the wheel, or a whole day in a van.
The night train is what we use. Tbilisi to Zugdidi leaves around nine in the evening and arrives before six, which converts a transit day into a night you were going to spend somewhere anyway. Sleeper GEL 30–60 (2025) depending on the carriage; the four-berth compartments are worth the difference and sell out first in summer.
Driving west is 340 kilometres to Zugdidi, mostly on decent dual carriageway, five and a half to six hours with stops. Then 135 kilometres and three hours up to Mestia. Do not do that second half after dark, and if you are self-driving, break the journey in Kutaisi or Zugdidi rather than arriving in the mountains at midnight.
How you actually move
For nine of the ten days the answer is the same as on the seven-day route: marshrutkas cover every leg for a few lari, and a hired car with driver for the Kazbegi day is GEL 200–250 (2025) for the vehicle, which is cheap split three or four ways.
Svaneti changes the sums. Your own rental is no use for Ushguli — most contracts exclude that road and a low two-wheel-drive car has no business on it — so you will be paying for a jeep seat regardless. If you drive west, the car then sits in Mestia for a day and you have bought yourself a long drive out.
Marshrutkas remain the honest backbone. Didube for the north and the direct Mestia van, Isani or Samgori for Kakheti, and the yard outside Zugdidi station for Mestia.
What ten days cost
Per person per day, measured in 2025, excluding international flights and the fortnight around New Year. It covers a bed, three meals, internal transport, entry fees and a tasting or two.
Svaneti runs ten to twenty per cent above the rest of the route. Dinner is usually in the guesthouse — half-board is the norm and no hardship, since Mestia's restaurants thin out after nine — and there is the jeep.
Three fixed costs move the total more than anything else: the Kazbegi driver, the Ushguli jeep and whether you fly out of Mestia. All are priced per vehicle or per seat, so four people pay a fraction of what two do.
When ten days work
The window is narrower than for the seven-day route, and Svaneti is what narrows it. Mid-June to early October is the honest season for Ushguli: the Zagar pass at 2,623 metres on that road holds snow late, and the jeep tracks above Mestia later still.
September is the pick again. Clear air in the west, Rtveli in Kakheti, and the Ushguli road at its driest. Book Mestia beds and the train early in that window — the town has plenty of guesthouses and they still fill.
August works but is the busiest month in Mestia and the worst in Tbilisi. Winter is a different trip: the Jvari pass closes for days, Ushguli is generally unreachable, and Mestia becomes a ski base rather than a walking one.
Six variants, and the one we recommend
The order — low, high, wine, west — survives most edits. What does not survive is keeping all four regions and adding anything else on top.
If you read one line in this guide, read the first row. Four regions in ten days means packing and moving seven times, and most people enjoy the drop-one version more than the full set.
Six ways ten days go wrong
Four of the six we have done ourselves, and the first two are the ones we hear about afterwards.
The questions that always come
These six reach us most, and none needs a long answer.