(July 6 – 10, 2026)
The packed marshrutka, a transport minivan of varying degrees of quality typical in Georgia, raced through the winding forested foothills rising above the Imereti plain, a central fertile agricultural basin of Georgia. As it climbed higher into cloud forests, I kept an eye on the GPS to signal to the driver to stop and drop Kate and myself off at the start of an inconspicuous jeep track veering off the main road.
Kate, another multi-month traveler from Australia, is in between guiding seasons down under and responded to a post of mine to the Trans-Caucasian Trail (TCT) Slack channel about hiking intentions and prospective partner inquiries. We met up for dinner one night in Tblisi and jived well enough to fill our packs with four days of food and set off a day later into the quiet hills of Imereti with a goal to hike to the remote village of Oni in Racha province about 70km away from there.
After unloading from the marshrutka, we bought some mushrooms from some roadside vendors and began following the jeep track up a lush forested valley passing several idyllic farms along the way. Eventually we began climbing into highland pastures and cloud forests above the valley floor. We navigated in and out of fog and kept our rain shells handy, but were mostly only dampened by the dew soaked vegetation that harbored an amazing array of brilliant wildflowers along our way. Soon we encountered a shepherd on horseback somewhat surprised by our presence but nonetheless helped signal to us the best path north.
The TCT is a stated long-distance hiking trail across Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, but as we walked one of its more “developed” sections, we came to learn its largely just a GPS route verified by clusters of volunteers and intrepid international hikers that have proven that “it goes”. Signage and trail work is largely non-existent, but it nonetheless provides an avenue for adventurous foot travel through bucolic countryside and mountain landscapes in lands not terribly well known but welcoming to wild camping.
After a long and at times muddy day, we arrived at a hilltop above the village of Speti where an 11th century Georgian orthodox chapel provided an exceptional view, a forest to camp in, and a shelter to cook under once the mist finally did give way to a steady and then torrential rainfall. Just prior to the chapel, we passed several serene farms where old men tended to their corn fields. I could not help but see them and think how much I hope I am doing the same in my old age: cultivating a sense of absolute peace and serenity while partaking in an ancestral craft of the ages that ties man to his ecological roots and an interconnectedness to the land that with careful stewardship can yield him bounty and sustenance.
The following morning, we departed slowly from camp waiting for a break in the rain and eventually wound our way down to the villages of Speti and then Drbo and began charting course up the next valley that would carry us several thousand feet higher towards the King Tamar Cliffs. Early on, however, the “stream” that we were supposed to cross a handful of times was presenting itself as a raging creek that rose above Kate’s knees on the fourth crossing. We decided to break for a snack and discuss matters. I had received a national weather alert text the day before warning of several days of severe weather that would affect broad swathes of the country. Given the downpour the night before, I was slightly concerned that if we determined later on that we needed to backtrack at any point that this already powerful creek may present an even more difficult crossing on the return.
We discussed the alternative of hiking back to the village and getting a taxi to Oni that same day. From there we could hike back up to the King Temur Cliffs from the other side, or possibly find another hike in the high Caucasus just beyond Oni. Neither of us was particularly committed to this route as it was one we chose as a convenient test run not far from Tblisi prior to venturing on to bigger objectives higher in elevation as the lingering snows retreated from high passes.
Taxi it was.
We arrived in Oni that late afternoon and got our first glimpse of the truly regal heights of the high Caucasus beyond. We identified a trail to pursue the next day from the village of Shovi about a 45 minute taxi further that would take us up to a viewpoint of the Buba Glacier and would still be below what we understood was the current snow line at the time. I downloaded the gpx file, briefly read a trail description, and packed for the next day.
The following morning the skies had cleared entirely and as the taxi climbed higher towards the headwalls of the remote Caucasus valley nearing the border with Russia and the disputed, breakaway territory of South Ossetia, the snow-capped mountain peaks towered like giants above us. The taxi driver attempted to drop us at a popular trail head to a high alpine lake but we insisted he take us further to Shovi. He shrugged and carried onward.
Once he dropped us off, we began finding our way, passing what seemed like a reasonably modern resort building yet which turned out to be ominously abandoned. Alongside it was the massive apron of a landslide that I recall lightly being covered in the trail description that made for a challenging start to finding an actual trail.
We eventually punched our way through a half mile of undulating peaks and troughs of the concrete-hardened mud and rock to find a jeep track on the far side of the mouth of the valley. We should have started from the start of that track we determined. Still, now that we had firm and smooth tread, we carried on. Soon after though, we encountered a jaw dropping scene of another resort hotel smashed through its bottom floor or two with landslide debris, one of its auxiliary buildings being half buried entirely. In Georgia as a whole, there are plenty of abandoned and rusted out edifices, but this was a clear and apparent environmental catastrophe. Not allowing ourselves to be bogged down too much by the scene, we pressed on up the moraine towards the forest beyond.
Soon enough, we found an actual hiking sign and a real trail. Hooray!
The tread was solid as it climbed up a ravine and stoutly gained altitude in lung busting fashion. The Caucasus mountains are steep and vertical relief is dramatic. Once we turned out of the drainage and began contouring through forest and high alpine meadows the wildflowers and grasses grew waist to chest high, and I had to feel for the trail with my feet will also reading the land for the most faint indication of prior impact by a passing person or animal…”Heeeyyyy bear!” I called on occasion through particularly thick stands.
“I do not think anyone has hiked this trail yet this season. We may be the first.” I suggested to Kate.
-“It sure is beautiful though” she retorted.
And she was right. As we made our way through the grassy meadows the views to the south, east, and north began revealing a land of earthen pinnacles dawning shawls of late season snowpack, cascading glaciers, and geological grandeur that immediately assured me of precisely the reason I had made Georgia one of the primary stops along my Journey to Nowhere in Particular.
The overgrown nature of the “trail” wholly triggered flashbacks reminiscent of an epic six day journey I had hiking in the boat-accessible Kachemak Peninsula in Alaska many years prior, and while similarly stunning, it proved very slow going. We would check the GPX occasionally to ensure we kept the proper course, but upon reaching the first sweeping vista to the Caucasus continental spine and the Buba glacier pouring down from the summits, we acknowledged we were unlikely to reach the official viewpoint in time to make the return journey by the hour our taxi was scheduled to pick us up again later that day.
That, and a stark sign in Georgian script and English announcing the beginning of a Restricted Border zone requiring passport and an authorized border permit provided another strong suggestion that we had reached our zenith for the day. I certainly did not want to risk engaging in matters with any border guards camped out in the bush, yet I truly questioned how anyone could cross a border here unless they were an elite mountaineer.
We marveled at the glacial and alpine splendor and soaked up in the sensation of feeling terribly small in relation to the scale of the enveloping landscape around us while enjoying lunch and tea.
“My goodness. This is the stuff of fairy tales, if not at least the Sound of Music“.
Our way back proved much easier to follow now that we had beaten down a more noticeable path through the thicket, but our pace was still slowed at times by the simply stunning cacophony of wildflowers beaming about the meadows.
Once back down to the glacial moraine and the destroyed hotel, we took our time to evaluate the damage further. There were whole floors filled entirely with rock hard mud, akin to the cement like consistency of an avalanche having run its course and settling firmly at a valley bottom, and walls blown out and swept away entirely.
Strewn about one could still find odd artefacts of a momentary scene seemingly untouched from years prior – a bicycle with flat tires here, a child’s toy there, a bottle of wine on a balcony.
Along the jeep track that carried us back to the road in Shovi that avoided the main residual apron of the mudslide, we passed several more abandoned and destroyed buildings, and eventually reached a recently constructed and polished memorial.
“Seriously, what the hell happened here exactly?”
I had already stumbled across one unsuspecting tragedy during my travels in urban Serbia, but really was not expecting to find another in the remote alpine paradise of the high Caucasus in Georgia.
Kate apparently had read more than just the trail description and started really detailing what unfolded in greater detail than I previously understood.
One beautiful sunny day in August 2023 without a rain cloud in sight or any significant down pours in days prior, a massive 500,000 cubic meter rock had apparently sheared off a mountain side and punctured into the glacier up high. Within some time the fracture induced by the rock and the accelerated radiation from its mass onto the ice unleashed a tidal wave of sub surface water and a mudslide traveling at speeds incapable of fleeing as an idyllic resort community 1000s of meters and several kilometers away would soon come to find out. 33 people were caught in the mudslide that crashed into the village that afternoon and swept into the vast chalky grey apron that we had been picking our way across earlier that morning. 32 of the bodies were eventually recovered, but one remains missing out there, somewhere.
As we waited for the taxi to show up, I struggled to comprehend the scale and tragedy that unfolded here in what up until that truly sobering moment had only really appeared as an absolute paradise to me. Beyond acknowledging the simple raw capacity of nature to trigger an instance of radical upheaval, it was the thought of the purely incalculable randomness of the event that could abruptly claim so many unsuspecting lives.
Life is not supposed to happen like that we tell ourselves.
But in reality, none of us really ever knows what’s in the cards for our fate, no matter how careful and risk averse we chose to course our path.
If one could just as easily ‘go’ waiting for a train in Serbia, vacationing in an idyllic mountain valley in Georgia, or falling victim to a deranged, unsettled youth while grocery shopping in Boulder, Colorado, there are clearly no guarantees in life for any of us. As I had already learned, Life is precious, don’t let it slip away.
“No wonder no one seemed to have hiked this trail this season yet. It’s a damn graveyard.”
—
Back in Oni, Kate and I strolled about the village as perhaps the only tourists the town has seen recently. It was truly authentic Georgian countryside. We sampled the local Lobiani (cheese, bean, or veggie filled bread) and accepted an invite from our neighbors in the guesthouse to join for a barbecue of shashlik (pork kebab) and Armenian roasted aubergine salad. The man was an Armenian living in Tblisi and his wife was Kazakh. They had two adorable children playing about the garden and we shared stories in exchanges of broken English and Russian lubricated by glasses of local wine.
Kate and I would journey back to Tblisi the next day for a few days of relaxation and recharge before our next adventure. Having taken stock of widespread reports of raging rivers and a stubborn and slowly retreating snowpack from many popular alpine passes in the High Caucasus, we decided to head south to Armenia instead and tackle what is considered the crown jewel of the TCT there: a 120 km (72 mile) route across the Gegham volcanic mountain range of central Armenia.
I had built up so much anticipation for my time in Georgia, and had only briefly considered factoring a side trip to Armenia into my journey should time allow; yet, I would come to rate this next adventure as one of the greatest epics in my life time of global backpacking…
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