Tbilisi then Mestia Hike
Notes from a Newbie Hiker
TLDR: We didn’t finish the hike! Possibly because we’re newbies and we chose the route via Tsvirmi instead of the more commonly chosen one via Zahebshi.
Not sure if you want to read along if you’re interested in an actual guide.
Day 1: Arrival
Arrived at Tbilisi, hopped into a cab (to the tune of Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus) via Yandex, or you can use Bolt as well. But do know that you’ll be harassed by potential drivers that might quote you scalper prices at the airport (Felt a little like Indonesia for those SEA-readers).
The hotel we stayed in:
It is collocated with the Tbilisi Railway Station and we opted for this because we have to catch an early train out to Zugdidi for our hike from Mestia to Ushguli. Almost or rather you can find these style of architecture around: brutalist buildings that are prevalent around Georgia. Why? Is it because they’re lazy to coat and paint them? Or is it more practical to leave them as such since buildings here come and go?
Brief research: They wanted to show the real building materials. It was also a cheap and fast way to build. Inherited right from the Soviet era.
BTW, if you can’t tell, the image above was doctored with Siri AI. To reframe, and clean up some unnecessary cars in the foreground lol. I’m addicted and honestly it might make me an even lazier photographer knowing that I can fix everything in the post-process right on my phone.
Day 2: train to Zugdidi
Trains, trains, trains! We bought second-class cabin tickets, partly because we bought them late, but turns out they are decent enough. Equipped with a table and an armrest. Try to guess more accurately the direction that the train is heading towards, and to buy the seats facing in the same direction to reduce chances of motion sickness and a more pleasant journey.
For 40 GEL, these marshutkas will take you from Zugdidi to Mestia in under 4 hours! TW: might be puke inducing as the Sprinter spirals up the mountain.
Day 3: Onwards, hike!
This is day 1 of our hike from Mestia —> Ushguli. To prepare ourselves as newbie hikers, we did not prepare…
However, I think in retrospect maybe we should’ve paid for Alltrails or Maps.me? If other experienced hikers can recommend. We basically relied on ‘Organic Maps’, a free version that supports importing the trails into the app and rendering it offline — a crucial feature of hiking as we might lose signal along the way.
Greeted / departed Mestia with a lovely sight of an Orthodox Church. Onwards!
Some of our sights as we hiked along the way, from Mestia and first to the Hatsvali (we took the incorrect, more difficult path!). According to a guide we read online, we should reach roads after about 30 min but we did not. We might have missed a turn.
After about (I can’t remember how long and might need to check my Strava), we reached the base of a cable car which, with the power of 25 GEL, we can skip the hike up Zuruldi.
At the peak of the cable car station, once again, we made the mistake of trying to find food at a pretentious, hippie joint.
Even after 40 or so minutes, our food was not ready lol. At least they were jamming to great music! Songs by Elton John, Hall and Oates, Beatles, and the likes. After the last Radio Ga Ga, we call it quits and went back to the restaurant just by the cable car station.
Greeted first by the resident dog as we found out way to the seats on the patio.
To our decent surprise, the food served here was actually good! And we had the comfort of a toilet to make motions in the ocean.
And then we journeyed again.
According to another guide, we should take the trail that leads us to the transmitter tower, for an insane view of the mountains and scenery. We did indeed get a majestic view of the Caucasus landscape. BUT THE decline was so steep that it might as well have been a cliff. What in the world of a guide. We bumped into a Mountain Biker who actually descended from that plateau and himself touted it to be super steep and wouldn’t advise. He added that it wasn’t the official trail and if we’re beginners, we should turn back and get onto the official route. That was mistake number 3. We had to backtrack before the route diverged into two paths. The way to the transmitter wasn’t even trivial to begin with as we met with a steep incline.
And so, during our backtracking (just like a graph algorithm. Maybe we should have cached it like a DP problem and that would have been a bit more efficient? But how to cache in real life?), we faced a steep decline. At that point, and as I have already known beforehand that I am not good at dealing with descents, my quads started to cramp on every step. It was difficult to descend with haste. About every 5 minutes or so, we have to stop and rest. And I applied the Tiger Balm muscle rub spray to numb the pain and stop the cramps from happening.
We then journeyed onto the official trail and it felt like we were on the journey to Mount Doom as two little Hobbitses.
Along the way, the cramps attacked me and I have to succumb to it like a little bitch. Chris Bumstead voice echoed in my head “don’t be a skinny bitch”. I only got one part of that down, not being skinny.
The descent from there was not all fine and dandy though. The soil were soft, mushy, and the path narrow. Every step you take (the Police will be watching you) on your descent, the grounds shift and depress with your weight. You’ll be thinking: wtf is going on, is this even real ground or are you just imagining things? Does hiking just make you question life choices, and life in general? Was I going insane? Are we humans? Or are we dancers, how are my vitals?
We reached the split point where one path will take us to Chobani/ then Tsvirmi in about 1 hour and 50 min, or another path that will take us to Ieli in 30 min. At that juncture, it was about 6:15 pm and the stipulated timing for Sunset was 6:50 pm. With about 45 min to lose sunlight (and without being equipped with headlamps nor torches), we chose the path to Ieli. We did not want to be stuck in the forest when night falls and not knowing the terrain that we’ll be in.
In about 30 minutes, we saw the light! (As it shines on the sea, it’s blinding! But no one knows, how deep it goes?)
From where we stood, that was the sight of Ieli village. And internally, I rejoiced a little. Finally, some form of civilisation. Hurrah!
As we trudged along, we were hoping to just find a guest house where locals are able to drive us to our destination in Tsvirmi, or to stay the night, whichever made more economical sense. While descending into the village, a random cow appeared right behind me and was annoyed that I was blocking its path. It was almost the size of a Toyota Estima, and you can imagine the horror as I my hurried steps and hobbled with sore feet.
The sun sank below the horizon, and we were unsure whether we were stepping through cow dung or merely damp earth. And the damn cow was still on my back! With some more distance, we bumped into a villager who was herding his cows back to his home. Oh and gladly, he speaks quite fluent English. He convinced us that we are more than welcome to stay at his place and we can pay him however much our supposed accoms price was in Tsvirmi. Because the other alternative would be a 3 hour car ride, as even when Tsvirmi and Ieli was 5km apart, there was no roads proper enough for a car to traverse through the villages, and have to go through the central hub that is Mestia. We obliged.
And that concludes the hike. To be continued for our experience at the Ieli homestay.