How many days do you need in Georgia?

Georgia is about 27,000 square miles, roughly the size of West Virginia. Looking at the map, it seems like a country you could cover in five days. Then you drive it. Tbilisi to Ushguli in upper Svaneti is 250 miles (400 km) and it is a two-day journey. Tbilisi to Omalo in Tusheti is under 100 miles (160 km) and it takes most of a day, four to five hours of which is a single-track gravel road over a pass at about 9,350 feet (2,850 m).

So the question is not how many days you need to see Georgia. It is how many of the country’s separate worlds you are willing to pay for in driving time.

The short answer, by length

The number that matters is the right-hand column. Georgia tempts people into one-night stops because the map is small, and every one-night stop costs you a packing morning and an unpacking evening. Four hotel changes in nine days is comfortable. Seven is a tour.

Four to five days

This works, and we build it, as long as you know what it is: a Tbilisi trip.

Three nights in the capital, one full day in Kakheti with a family cellar and lunch, and a half day at Mtskheta with Svetitskhoveli in the town and the sixth-century Jvari monastery on the hill above the confluence. That is a very satisfying long weekend and Tbilisi is a better city than most people expect. Tbilisi in three days is the plan we use.

What you cannot do in five days is the mountains. Kazbegi is three hours each way on the Georgian Military Highway and it is worth two nights, not a day trip, because the weather decides whether you see anything and two nights gives you two chances at it.

Six to seven days

Add a second night in Kakheti, use Sighnaghi or Telavi as a base, and put in a proper unstructured day. This is a good week: you get the wine region at a human pace, the capital by district rather than by checklist, and Mtskheta without rushing.

It is still a lowland trip. The Greater Caucasus is a photograph on the wall of your guesthouse.

Nine days, the answer for most people

Nine days is where Georgia stops being a city break with excursions and becomes a country. The shape is Tbilisi three nights, Kakheti two, Kazbegi two, and a night either at the start or the end for the arrival and departure. That gives you the capital properly, the wine region properly, the old capital at Mtskheta, and the drive up the Military Highway to Stepantsminda with two chances at Mount Kazbek at 16,512 feet (5,033 m) and the Gergeti Trinity Church on its shoulder at about 7,120 feet (2,170 m).

It also gives you one day with nothing in it, which is the day people mention afterwards. Our nine-day classic route is exactly this.

Nine days does not include Svaneti or Tusheti. People try, and it produces a trip in which two of nine days are spent in a vehicle to reach somewhere you then have one day in. We would rather you did the nine-day route well and came back.

Twelve days, the first real mountain trip

Twelve is the first length at which one of the high regions can be done properly rather than glanced at.

With Svaneti. Fly or drive to Mestia, three or four nights, the Ushguli road in a 4×4, and one or two full walking days on the Chalaadi glacier or the Koruldi lakes track. Mestia is reachable most of the year on a paved road from Zugdidi, which makes Svaneti the more flexible of the two regions.

With Tusheti. Two of your twelve days are the Abano Pass, one in each direction, and there is no way around that. What you get for it is the emptiest inhabited landscape in the Caucasus: Omalo, Dartlo, Shenako, shepherds moving flocks, and almost no infrastructure. It is summer only, usually from around June until the first heavy snow in early October, and the road is genuinely rough. A small number of our travellers find it frightening, and we describe it in full before anyone books. Svaneti or Tusheti compares the two properly.

Twelve days with both mountain regions exists and we build it, but it is a walking trip rather than a general Georgia trip.

Fourteen days

Two weeks lets you cross the country west, which is a genuinely different Georgia. Svaneti, then down to Kutaisi for the Gelati monastery and the canyons at Martvili and Okatse, then the Black Sea and inland Adjara, where the Machakhela and Khulo valleys and the arched stone bridges are the good part rather than Batumi itself.

Our fourteen-day route does this, and the best two-week route through Georgia argues the case for it against the alternatives.

Twenty-one days

Three weeks is Georgia thoroughly plus Armenia over the land border at Bagratashen and Sadakhlo, which is a normal and workable crossing with the Debed canyon monasteries on the way. Twelve days and nine splits well.

This is the combination we recommend to anyone making this journey once, because the two countries are so unalike that the second half of the trip resets the first. It is also the only sensible way to see two Caucasus countries: Armenia’s land borders with Azerbaijan and with Turkey are closed, so there is no overland route between Armenia and Azerbaijan in either direction. Georgia is the connecting country. We state that as a planning fact and take no view beyond the practical one.

Where the cut-offs actually are

1. Below six days, skip the mountains entirely. Not because they are far in miles, but because the return leg eats a second day.
2. Below nine days, do not attempt Svaneti or Tusheti. The drive is the trip.
3. Below twelve days, choose one high region, not two.
4. Below fourteen days, leave the Black Sea out. Batumi is a casino and skyscraper city with a pebble beach, interesting for a night as an oddity rather than as a beach holiday.
5. Above twenty-one days, add Armenia rather than adding more Georgia. Georgia is finite and the returns flatten.

The drive times that decide everything

These are real times on real surfaces, not straight-line estimates, and they are the reason our routes look shorter on paper than people expect.

Plan this trip

Tell us how many days you actually have and a Georgia specialist will tell you honestly what fits and what does not, before you book anything. Free first outline, no obligation.

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Keep reading

• Georgia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Georgia
• Georgia month by month
• What a trip to Georgia really costs
• Georgia in 14 days: Svaneti and the Black Sea
• All our Georgia trips

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