Kazbegi

Day 377 (July 10, 2019) – Kazbegi (Stepantsminda), Georgia

Getting to Kazbegi from Telavi was one of our longest travel days in Georgia. Kazbegi, also called Stepantsminda, wasn’t all that far from us but there was no direct way to get there without our own car or paying for a taxi. We started early in the morning. The host from our guesthouse graciously gave us a ride into town where we caught a marshrutka that took us back to Tbilisi. Of course, a direct route to Tbilisi existed, but the van took the longer, circuitous route that brought us back nearly to Sighnaghi before heading towards Tbilisi.

Waiting for our marshrutka ride in Telavi to take us back to Tbilisi.

Back in Tbilisi again we took the metro from one side of town to the other where we boarded a second marshrutka that headed up into the mountains and towards Kazbegi. We followed a road called the Georgian Military Highway, which is one of the major roads connecting Georgia with Russia, so we shared the road with a lot of semi-trucks. It was mostly switchbacks the entire way and given that all the other cars on the road wanted to desperately pass the slow-moving semis on this two-lane mountain road, it was a bit of a frightening drive. I tried to not think about it too much as the marshrutka floored it around the curves, but we eventually arrived in the small town of Kazbegi just before dinnertime, only a few kilometers short of the Russian border.

Kazbegi was gorgeous. The town is in a small valley between enormous mountains. The largest of the mountains is Mount Kazbek, but the only time we saw the peak through the cloud cover was during the evening on our very last day. But even without a view of the town's namesake mountain, all the others were still quite the site to see.

Looking down on the town of Kazbegi.

The next morning, we woke up early and went for a hike up to Gergeti Trinity Church. It had been a long time since we had been on a proper hike, but fortunately this one wasn’t overly taxing, although it was steep. The trail started in town and continued up the base of Mount Kazbek. The early morning light was surreal. The sun was rising behind clouds and jagged mountain peaks and splaying rays of light all over the valley. 

When we reached the church, we took a break from hiking and had a few snacks. The church is quite photogenic because it’s sitting right on the edge of a steep drop-off, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Sitting on a wall at the church’s base we could see everywhere across the valley, as well as behind us where grassy slopes led up to Mount Kazbek. Every once in a while, the clouds surrounding Mount Kazbek would clear and we could see snow on the mountainsides. We continued hiking upwards, through fields of grass and wildflowers. This trail continued all the way to the top of the mountain, but we had no intentions of going that far. We only hiked far enough to be able to look back and get a great view of the church and surrounding scenery.

Gergeti Trinity Church.

On the hike back down.

After taking in enough of the view we hiked all the way back down into town and had a very well-deserved lunch. We spent the rest of the day recuperating from our morning hike, catching up on some reading, and writing a blog post. I could have easily spent another day in Kazbegi enjoying the scenery, but we had already made plans to heads towards the beach. The next day was going to be another long travel day for us.

We finally got a glimpse of Mount Kazbek's peak on our last day. The tiny outline of Gergeti Trinity Church is visible on the mountain peak to the left of Mount Kazbek.