Explore Mtskheta-Mtianeti: The Military Highway to Kazbegi

Mtskheta sits where two rivers meet just outside Tbilisi and was Georgia's capital for roughly half a millennium; it remains the headquarters of the Georgian Orthodox Church, which makes it the country's spiritual centre in a working sense rather than a historical one. Svetitskhoveli Cathedral dominates the town — an enormous eleventh-century structure inside a fortified wall, and the place Georgian monarchs were crowned and buried. On the ridge above, reached by a short drive, Jvari Monastery is smaller, older and more striking for its position: a sixth-century church standing alone on a bluff with the two rivers merging below it, and the view from it explains the site's importance faster than any account of it could. Both are active places of worship rather than monuments, so modest dress applies and services are not a spectacle to walk through. Mtskheta works well as a half-day from the capital or, better, as the first stop of the drive north rather than a separate trip.

North of Mtskheta the road follows a reservoir to Ananuri, a compact seventeenth-century fortress with two churches inside its walls standing directly above the water — the most photographed stop on the route and a genuine one rather than a manufactured viewpoint. Beyond it the road climbs into Gudauri, Georgia's main ski resort, which in winter is the region's whole economy and in summer is a base for paragliding and high walking with the lifts running. Above Gudauri the highway crosses the Jvari Pass, the high point of the route, where an arc of Soviet-era mosaic sits on a terrace overlooking the valley. This upper section is where weather governs everything: it is maintained through the winter because the resort and the border depend on it, but conditions close it at short notice, which makes the state of the road a planning constraint rather than an aside.

The road ends for most visitors at Stepantsminda, a small town in a broad valley directly beneath Mount Kazbek. Above it, on a green ridge with the peak behind, stands Gergeti Trinity Church — the fourteenth-century silhouette that has become Georgia's defining image. It can be reached on foot in a couple of steep hours or by four-wheel-drive transfer from the town, and walking at least one direction is worth the effort. What most visitors miss is that Stepantsminda is a base rather than an endpoint. The Truso valley runs west into a landscape of mineral springs, travertine terraces and abandoned tower villages; the Sno and Juta valleys lead toward the Chaukhi massif and some of the best accessible walking in the country. Anyone who drives up, photographs the church and drives back the same day has seen the postcard and missed the region — an overnight here repays itself more than almost any other single scheduling decision in a Georgian itinerary.