Tours in Georgia

Start at a table. In Georgia a meal is never just a meal, and you will understand that the first time someone stands up, lifts a glass and talks for five minutes before anyone drinks. Bread comes out of a round clay oven. Cheese arrives melted inside it. Wine is poured from a jug, and it is often a wine you cannot buy at home. Everything else you see in the country, the mountains, the churches, the old towns, makes more sense once you have sat through one of these evenings.

Tbilisi is where most people land, and it rewards slow walking. Balconies lean over narrow lanes in the old quarters, sulphur bathhouses sit under their domes, and the Mtkvari river cuts through the middle with hills on both sides. Climb up toward the fortress above the city and look back. You will see how the place folds itself into the valley. Kutaisi in the west is smaller and calmer, a good base for caves, canyons and monasteries in the hills around it. Batumi sits on the Black Sea, with a seaside mood quite unlike the rest of the country.

Then there is the land itself. Kakheti is wine country, all vineyards and cellars where the family still makes the stuff in buried clay vessels. Svaneti and Kazbegi are mountain places, with stone towers, high passes and villages where the weather decides your plans. Up there you will want a local who knows the road.

Close to Tbilisi, a short drive takes you to Mtskheta, the old capital and the spiritual heart of the country. Many Georgians call it their Jerusalem, and you feel why as soon as you step into Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, where people light candles, cross themselves and linger. Jvari stands on a hilltop above the meeting of two rivers, and Samtavro sits quietly in the town below. A guide helps you read what you are looking at, and what it means to the people who come here. If there is a monastery, a cave city or a mountain valley you have read about and don't see listed, ask. A local guide can build the day around it.