The Road to the Mountains — Mtskheta, Ananuri and the Drive That Tests You

Day 7 | May 1, 2026 | Mtskheta → Georgian Military Highway → Kazbegi 🇬🇪

Three vehicles. One road. A mountain drop on the other side.

A truck coming down. Our twelve-passenger Mercedes going up. A Fiat trying to pass somewhere in between. One wrong move and someone is rolling down the mountain. Nobody slowing down. Nobody stopping. Somehow — somehow — it works.

That was the drive. But before we got there, we had ancient Georgia to walk through first.

Jvari Monastery — 1,400 Years on a Hilltop

You leave Tbilisi heading north and the first thing that grabs you is a hilltop. Rocky. Isolated. A small stone monastery sitting right on top of it, looking down over the point where two rivers meet.

That's Jvari. It means Cross in Georgian. Built in the late 590s AD — which makes it over fourteen hundred years old.

The location is everything. You stand outside the walls and directly below you, the Aragvi and the Mtkvari rivers are merging on the valley floor. Mountains closing in on all sides. The ancient town of Mtskheta spread out beneath you.

A Russian poet named Lermontov wrote about this exact view in 1840. Called it one of the most beautiful sights in the Caucasus. Standing there yourself, you completely understand why.

The reason the monastery sits on that specific hilltop goes back even further. Saint Nino — the woman who brought Christianity to Georgia in the 4th century, whose tomb we'd visited at Bodbe two days earlier — is said to have erected a wooden cross right on this spot. When they built the monastery in the 590s, they built it around that sacred ground.

There's an austerity to Jvari that stays with you. No grand decoration. No attempt to impress. Just stone and endurance. Fourteen hundred years of it.

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral — The Spiritual Heart of Georgia

From Jvari we drove down into Mtskheta itself. And then the next stop hit differently.

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. Built in the 11th century. UNESCO World Heritage Site. The name means pillar that brings life in Georgian.

What makes this place extraordinary to Georgians is the belief that the robe of Christ — the actual garment worn at the crucifixion — is buried somewhere inside. A saint brought it here from Jerusalem in the 4th century. That belief has held for seventeen centuries and made this one of the most sacred Christian sites on Earth.

Walk inside and you feel it immediately. High ceilings. Stone. A quiet with weight. And then you look at the floor — you're walking on tombs. Royal tombs. Kings and queens of Georgia buried right there beneath your feet. Because if you're Georgian royalty, where else would you want to rest except beside the robe of Christ.

Without the story it's just an old church. With the story — you're standing somewhere that has mattered deeply to millions of people for a thousand years. Natia brought this place to life in a way no guidebook could.

Mtskheta Old Town — Pomegranate and Cobblestones

Outside the cathedral and into the town itself.

Mtskheta has a very specific feeling. Cobblestone streets. Stone buildings. Vendors on every corner selling local crafts, wine, sweets, spices. Someone once said it reminded them of Epcot — and they meant it as a compliment. Disney tries to recreate this kind of authenticity. Mtskheta is the real thing.

Walking those streets your brain starts filling in the noise. Traders. Kings. The Silk Road passing right through this exact ground. Mtskheta was the capital of the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli for centuries. This isn't just a pretty old town. It was the centre of a civilisation.

And then — pomegranate juice. Vendors everywhere with fresh-pressed pomegranate, deep red, sweet and sharp at the same time. If you're in Mtskheta and you don't stop for a cup, you're doing it wrong. We stopped twice.

The Georgian Military Highway — The Drive That Tests You

Leave Mtskheta. Head north. And the trip changes completely.

The Georgian Military Highway is legendary for a reason. It climbs from the valley floor up through the Greater Caucasus mountains to the Russian border. And it does not make it easy. Trucks everywhere. Potholes you feel in your spine. Blind corners. Traffic that operates on its own completely unwritten logic.

In deep winter this road is genuinely dangerous. People die on it in bad conditions. We drove it in decent weather and it was still completely wild. Trying to film it while it was happening around us was a whole other level of stress.

And then — somewhere in the middle of all that chaos — you start climbing above the cloud line. The air thins. Temperature drops. Snow piling up on the roadside. Visibility closing in. You're not driving toward the clouds anymore. You're driving through them.

That's the Caucasus doing what the Caucasus does.

Ananuri Fortress — A Castle Above a Turquoise Lake

Before the real climb, a stop at Ananuri.

You come around a bend and there it is. A fortified castle complex rising above the Zhinvali Reservoir — and the reservoir is an almost impossible colour. Bright blue-green against the grey mountain landscape. The kind of colour that makes you look twice.

Ananuri was a stronghold for local Georgian lords for centuries — built to control the trade routes moving through the mountains. By the time we arrived, the drive had already taken something out of us. Hours on the road. The chaos of it. So you pull up to this castle above a beautiful turquoise lake and you just take it in.

Sometimes a place doesn't need to knock you sideways. Sometimes it just needs to be beautiful. Ananuri is beautiful.

The Cross Pass — 2,379 Metres Inside a Cloud

After Ananuri, you keep climbing.

The Cross Pass sits at 2,379 metres above sea level. Snow thicker. Temperature harder. The clouds closing in until visibility is down and everything is muted and grey and enormous. Still trucks. Still the constant maneuvering of vehicles on a road that wasn't built for this volume. But now all of it is happening inside a cloud.

That's one of those travel moments you can't manufacture. You just have to be there.

Arriving in Kazbegi — Russia is 12 Kilometres Away

And then — Kazbegi.

You pull in and feel the elevation immediately. The air. The rawness of the place. This isn't a polished destination. It's a mountain town at the edge of Georgia — rugged, real, lived in.

And then you look up.

There's a church. Ancient stone, centuries old. And behind it — Mount Kazbek. Third tallest peak in the Caucasus. Over 5,000 metres. On this day the mountain was completely clear. That enormous wall of rock and ice, fully visible, rising behind everything.

Russia is twelve kilometres from where you're standing. You can feel that proximity somehow. You've driven through ancient roads, ancient monasteries, mountain passes that armies and traders have used for thousands of years — and you're standing at the edge of all of it.

Memoir Hotel was the reward. Great hotel in the middle of all that wilderness. We sat at the bar with a cold Kazbegi beer — the beer named after the town we were sitting in — and looked out at the mountain.

That drink was earned.

Quick Facts — Day 7, Mtskheta to Kazbegi

Jvari Monastery: UNESCO World Heritage Site. Small entry fee. 10 minutes above Mtskheta. Go early — tour buses arrive mid-morning and the hilltop gets crowded fast.
Svetitskhoveli Cathedral: UNESCO World Heritage Site. Free entry. Active cathedral — dress respectfully. Look down at the floor; the royal tombs are easy to walk right over without noticing.
Mtskheta pomegranate juice: Street vendors throughout the old town. Fresh pressed. Non-negotiable.
Georgian Military Highway: Do not underestimate it. Hire a driver who knows the road. Not a first-time drive-it-yourself route, especially in spring when weather can change fast. Budget a full day with stops.
Ananuri Fortress: Free to walk around. The view over the reservoir from the walls is the shot. Allow 45 minutes.
Cross Pass: 2,379m. Cold even in late April/early May — have a layer in your bag.
Kazbegi beer: Brewed locally and named after the town. Cold one at the end of this drive is non-negotiable.
Where we stayed: Memoir Hotel Kazbegi — excellent base, great bar, and you can see the mountain from the property.
Our guide: Natia K. — Facebook. With us for all four Georgia days.

📍 JustoHops Recommends: Do both UNESCO sites in Mtskheta before you hit the highway — Jvari first for the view, Svetitskhoveli second for the history. Then drive north and let the Georgian Military Highway do what it does. And when you get to Kazbegi — look up before you do anything else.

Next up: Day 8 — a 4x4 up to Gergeti Trinity Church at 2,170 metres, Mount Kazbek fully visible, and the long drive back to Tbilisi feeling completely different from the drive up.

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