My favourite places in Georgian nature

Currently I am already living in Georgia for 7 months. I cannot believe that it has been this long, luckily I still will have 1.5 months to go. The past months we travelled a lot within Georgia. One of the nicest things about Georgia is the amount and the diversity of nature here. So in this blog I want to write about my favourite places in Georgian nature so far!

Kazbegi & Truso Valley

Kazbegi is a mountainous area north of Tbilisi. The first time I visited Kazbegi was in November. Anias, Oubayda, Lucie, and Vibeke went on a trip to the Truso valley. Here we did a 20 kilometer hike through the valley, which was very nice and beautiful! Halfway through the hike we made a stop by a monastery, where we ate khachapuri and lobiani. Fun fact, it was actually my birthday this day, so the other volunteers sang for me and we ate cupcakes. This was a nice and memorable way to celebrate my 26th birthday!

The second time I visited Kazbegi was in February, when my mom visited. The landscape was so different then in November, now all the mountains were covered in snow. We visited the Russia-Georgia Friendship monument and the Gergeti Trinity Church.

Cave cities: Vardzia, Uplistsikhe and David Gareja

Georgia has three cave cities. All of them are beautiful and famous for different reasons.

The first cave city I went to is Vardiza. Vardzia is the biggest cave city of the three. The city is located in the south of Georgia. I visited Vardzia together with the other volunteers. This cave city I found the most impressive of the three cave cities, because it’s so big.

In the middle of the country, next to the town Gori, the cave city Uplistsikhe is located. Uplistsikhe is the oldest cave city in Georgia. I visited this cave city twice, one time when my brother was visiting and a second time when my mom was visiting. This cave city is actually quite easily reachable, as it’s not that far from Tbilisi.

David Gareja is the third cave city. It is actually a cave monastery and because of this, they call David Gareja the religious cave city. David Gareji is located in the east of Georgia and it’s actually quite close to Tbilisi. However, you definitely need a car if you want to visit David Gareji, because there is no public transport going there. The way there is actually quite interesting, because you are driving through the middle of nowhere and the landscape is quite desert-like. I visited this cave city together with Ilse (a friend I know from home).

Rainbow mountains

The last place I want to talk about in this blog are the rainbow mountains. The rainbow mountains are hills from clay, in all kinds of different colours. They are located in an area that’s in the east of Georgia, quite close to Rustavi. I visited the rainbow mountains twice, in two different places. In September I visited the rainbow mountains close to Rustavi and in February I visited the rainbow mountains next to the David Gareja Monastery. I found the rainbow mountains quite unique, as I had not seen something like this before. So I would definitely recommend visiting them when you have the chance.

Places I still would like to visit

In this blog I talked about my favourite places in Georgian nature so far. However, Georgia has many more nature and places worth visiting. Places I still would like to visit are Svanetti (a mountainous area north of Kutaisi) and Tusheti (a mountainous area north of Kakheti). Since I have not that much time left, it probably won’t work out to visit both of these places. However this gives me a nice reason to visit Georgia again in the future!

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