Mestia

Mestia is the chief town of Upper Svaneti, and its skyline belongs to the Svan towers: forty-five of them, each some twenty-four metres high and crowned with battlements. The Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography keeps part of the treasury that Georgia once sent up here for safekeeping, and the museum of the climber Mikheil Khergiani, the “Mountain Lion”, recalls a local hero.

The road climbs from Zugdidi past the foot of Shkhara, Georgia’s highest peak, with Ushba and Tetnuldi ahead. Walkers come from June to September, when afternoons reach fifteen to nineteen degrees and the trails to the glaciers and the Koruldi Lakes are open; skiers come in winter for Hatsvali and Tetnuldi.

• The Svan towers Forty-five stone towers rising over the houses of the town, about twenty-four metres each.
• Svaneti Museum History and ethnography, with treasures once carried into the mountains to keep them safe.
• Koruldi Lakes High lakes a short drive above town, easiest to reach from early summer to early autumn.