Tusheti from Telavi — the Abano pass, honestly

The road to Tusheti starts about half an hour from this house, at Pshaveli, and it is the reason a number of our guests book two nights either side of a trip we have nothing to do with.

We are going to be straight about it. Tusheti is the most extraordinary place in eastern Georgia and the way in is genuinely dangerous, seasonal, and not something to add to a wine week because there is a spare day.

The road

Seventy kilometres from the valley floor to Omalo, and it takes five to six hours.

It is dirt the whole way after the first stretch. It climbs to the Abano pass at 2,826 metres, which is one of the highest drivable passes in the Caucasus, on switchbacks cut into the side of the mountain with drops on the outside and, for long sections, nothing between the wheels and the drop. There are stream crossings. There is falling rock. There is one lane in a lot of places and the convention for who reverses is learned rather than posted.

It appears on most of the lists of the world’s most dangerous roads and, unusually for that genre, it deserves to.

When it is open

Roughly mid-June to mid-October, and the snow decides, not the calendar. The pass is formally shut from about mid-October until about mid-June; in 2026 it opened on 20 June.

Some years it opens late May, some years the first serious snow shuts it in early October. If you are planning around it, do not book a flight on the assumption that a date in early June or late October will work. Ask locally in the week before; the drivers in Alvani know before anyone publishes anything.

How to get up it

Shared 4x4. The standard way. Jeeps stage at Kvemo Alvani, at the bottom of the road, and leave when they fill. In 2026 that has been running around 100–120 lari per seat one way.

A private vehicle with a driver. Roughly 500–650 lari one way for the car, or 900–1,200 lari for the return, again as of 2026. Split four ways that is not much worse than the seat price and you get to stop for photographs.

Your own 4x4. Possible if you have the vehicle and the nerve. A high-clearance four-wheel drive — a Delica, a proper Jeep, a Niva — is not optional and a rented sedan will not make it past the first hour. Most hire agreements in Georgia specifically exclude this road; read yours.

If you have never driven an unsealed mountain road with exposure, this is not the one to learn on. Take the shared jeep. The drivers do the run several times a week for a season and you will spend the journey looking at the mountains instead of the edge.

What is up there

Omalo is the administrative centre, in two parts — Lower and Upper — with the restored Keselo towers standing over the upper village. That is the photograph everyone has seen.

Beyond it the valleys open out. Shenako, with the only working church in Tusheti, a wooden one. Diklo, up above Lower Omalo, and its ruined castle on the ridge. Then west into the Pirikiti valley for Dartlo, which is the loveliest of the villages and is a protected heritage site, and on to Parsma and Girevi, where the road effectively stops and the trekking starts.

It is a national park, it is above two thousand metres, and it is empty. Sheep come up from the lowlands for the summer with the shepherds — this is where the guda cheese on your breakfast table comes from — and in September everything goes back down again.

The practical things nobody tells you until it is too late

There are no ATMs in Tusheti and cards do not work. Take all the cash you will need before you leave the valley. Telavi and Akhmeta are the last places to withdraw. Take more than you think.

Guesthouses run about 70–100 lari per person including dinner and breakfast, paid in cash. They are family homes, the food is excellent and the wine is not the point up there — Tusheti is a beer and aludi culture rather than a wine one.

Mobile signal is patchy to absent. Some guesthouses have satellite Wi-Fi. Assume nobody can reach you and tell whoever needs to know that in advance.

Parts of it are a border zone. Diklo castle and lower Diklo need a permit, and beyond Girevi you are heading for the Russian border. The permits are free and issued at the border post, but you must have your passport with you. Do not go up without it.

It is high and the weather turns fast. Warm layers and a waterproof, even in August.

How long you actually need

Three days minimum, and that is tight: a day up, a day there, a day back. Four or five is the version worth doing, which gives you Dartlo and a trek out to Parsma without watching the clock.

Anything less and you have spent eleven hours in a jeep to look at Omalo for an afternoon.

Should you go?

If you have a week in Georgia and you came for the wine — no. Go to the cellars, and come back for Tusheti another year with a fortnight.

If you have ten days or more, and you are here between late June and mid-September, and you are comfortable with a long rough day in a vehicle — yes, unreservedly. There is nothing else like it in the Caucasus and it is emptying out year by year as the villages age.

The nights either side

This is the self-interested bit, and it is also just how the logistics work.

The jeeps leave from the bottom of the road in the morning, and they come back in the afternoon, often late. Almost nobody manages Tbilisi to Omalo in one day and nobody enjoys trying. Sleeping in Telavi the night before puts you half an hour from Kvemo Alvani with your cash withdrawn and your bag packed; sleeping here the night you come down means a shower, a bed and a table instead of four more hours in a car.

We are four rooms with free parking, and we will hold your main luggage for free while you are up there — you want to go over the pass with a small bag, not a suitcase. Tell us your dates and we will also tell you honestly whether the pass is likely to be open.