Driving Georgia: Kazbegi, Gudauri and the Military Highway

The Georgian Military Highway leaves Tbilisi and climbs north for about three hours to Stepantsminda, the town most people still call Kazbegi. The road is paved the whole way and carries real traffic: tour vans, local trucks and rental cars all sharing the same two lanes as the valley narrows and the villages thin out.

The high point is the Jvari Pass, at roughly 2,379 metres, where the road switches back hard against the mountainside before dropping into the Gudauri basin. Gudauri is Georgia's main ski resort and sits right on the highway, so in winter this stretch means snow tyres or chains as much as it means a drive, and it is one of the first places closures are announced.

Past Gudauri the road drops toward Stepantsminda, and Gergeti Trinity Church appears on its ridge above the town, the view most people are driving up here for. A capable car earns its keep on this route: the surface itself is good, but the gradient and the hairpins on either side of the pass reward the extra ground clearance and grip an SUV gives you.

Kakheti sits east of Tbilisi, and Telavi, the region's main town, is about two hours away on a paved road. This is Georgia's wine country: rolling vineyard country rather than mountains, and the drive out feels closer to a countryside tour than an expedition.

There is no pass to climb and no rough surface to plan around. The road is sealed the whole way, traffic thins out once you clear the city outskirts, and any car in the fleet handles it without a second thought. It is the easiest of the four routes on this page by a wide margin, and the one that needs the least planning.

Most people build a full day around Telavi: a winery stop or two, lunch, and a look at the old town before the drive back. Because the road never climbs into snow country, this is also the route that stays open and easy in every season, including the depths of winter.

Mtskheta, Georgia's old capital, is about 20 km north of Tbilisi, close enough that most visitors treat it as a half-day trip rather than an overnight one. The road is short, paved and flat, and the drive itself is barely part of the story.

Jvari Monastery sits on a hilltop above the town, looking down on the point where the Aragvi and Mtkvari rivers meet, and it is usually paired with a walk through Mtskheta's old streets and churches below. It is a route with almost no driving decisions to make: no pass, no season to plan around, no car requirement beyond a full tank of fuel.

Because it sits so close to Tbilisi, Mtskheta also combines well with the start or end of a Military Highway day, if the schedule allows for both routes in one long day out.

Tusheti, and its main village Omalo, sit in the far northeast of Georgia, and getting there is a different proposition from the other three routes. The track in is unpaved for long stretches, narrow, and cut into the mountainside with drops that do not forgive a mistake.

This is the one route on this page where a genuine four-wheel-drive vehicle is not a comfort choice but a requirement, the same as the rough tracks toward villages like Ushguli further west. The track is seasonal: it opens once the snow clears in early summer and closes again with the first heavy snowfall, cutting Tusheti off from the road network for the winter months.

Anyone considering Tusheti should treat it as a full expedition day, not a side trip squeezed around something else, and should check current conditions before committing, since a single storm can close the track with little warning.